Judas Me

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11:13 PM, Friday, January 13



The world spins around me in slow motion. I am reminded, absurdly, of that scene in every action adventure movie I have ever seen where the shit that was supposed to go down without a hitch, suddenly and inexplicably—gets a hitch.

But this is not a movie.

I hear the shots as a bolt of pain sears through my right shoulder and something hot and sharp pelts my scalp. I try to steady myself before it registers, I'm falling, backward, down a slippery flight of steps; falling with the weight of him, his dead weight that pushes me with force to the cold, hard ground.

I turn my head to see the lieutenant. He is red-faced and bug-eyed. The words his mouth form get lost in the symphony of bells that toll in my ears. But I don't need to hear what he is saying to know what he wants me to do. He wants me to move, to find cover, to get out of the line of fire. But I cannot move; I am pinned to the ground, immobilized by the big body of my partner, Erick Shannon.

And Erick is not moving.

I smell blood, a primal perfume as old as humanity itself, and I feel the warmth of it on my face as it trickles down from Erick's head—what is left of Erick's head—and I watch in stunned silence as it drips down onto the cold ground and turns to steam, then rises like a spirit into the crisp night air.

And, in the last seconds of slow motion stillness, just before I am jolted back to the real time madness of the moment, I taste it. On my tongue and in the back of my throat, I taste my partner's blood.

In an all-encompassing whoosh of activity and noise, big, black-booted feet rush past my head and I hear the unintelligible shouts of our targets and the controlled commands of my team. I hear something else, too. Something low and primitive and animalistic in its raw pain, and only when the sound ceases as I take an excruciating breath do I realize the sound is coming from me.

Hands. They grab me, pull me. Fingers dig into my flesh and drag me out from underneath the crushing weight on top of me. My first instinct, my only instinct, is to grab hold of Erick and drag him with me. But my fingers are pried loose without mercy and I am hauled, kicking and screaming, out of his reach. Into the cover of bushes at the side of the suburban back yard.

A routine bust.

We rolled up on the neighborhood less than a half hour ago, six of us, highly trained and unflappable, Kevlar-coated and heavily armed, veterans of the routine bust.

We sat in the van around the corner from the target house and readied ourselves in silence. I checked and rechecked my weapon and turned over the layout of the neighborhood, the yard, the house itself in my mind. I perform the sacred ritual not so much for the sake of preparedness as much as for the sense of exhilaration that comes from knowing my weapon, knowing my enemy, and knowing my duty.

Erick and I sat on the middle bench seat; Curt Cooper and Steve Jennings sat in the back. Mitch Turner had the wheel and the lieutenant rode shotgun. The mood in the van was somber; all evidence of the jocularity we demonstrated on the ride over, all of the jokes about Friday the thirteenth, vanished. In that moment, just before a bust—routine or otherwise—when the world outside is tranquil and unaware, in that moment, just before all hell breaks loose, we are focused and resolute; we are single-minded warriors equipped for battle and soaring on adrenaline.

At exactly eleven PM, we fell out and traversed the shadowed lawns of the quiet neighborhood. We moved with confidence in the dark like soldiers on covert operations. We stuck close to the ground and used hand signals to communicate thought.

We'd gotten a tip, a good one, according to the lieutenant, from a reliable source, and we knew our targets—Butch and Byron Jessup, the twin thugs who run this section of Renton—were inside their Rainier Avenue home with a fresh shipment of meth brought up from Lewis County.

We moved with stealth into the Jessup's backyard and maneuvered into position. Cooper held the warrant and he and Jennings and Turner eased silently around the house, into the front yard and up the front steps. The lieutenant and Erick and I maintained our positions in the back.

Our weapons drawn and at the ready, the lieutenant covered the windows and I followed my partner up the deck stairs, our boots barely a whisper on the wet, mossy runners. My right hand found his shoulder, like we were taught at the Academy, and I felt the muscle tense beneath my fingers.

We took up our positions to cover the back door—the most likely portal through which the Jessups might try to escape with three huge Narcotics detectives serving a no-knock warrant at the front door.

From the front, a loud explosion of metal slamming into splintering wood—Turner with the battering ram—signaled the beginning of the barrage.

Cooper and Jennings shouted in unison, “Search warrant! Get down! Nobody move!”

A woman inside the house screamed. A dog barked incessantly and a baby's persistent cry drove a spike of actualization through my brain: there is a baby in the house.

The back door crashed open and I heard the shots.

Shots fired.

Moments later—Moments? Seconds? Hours?—the shooting stops. Is it over? The baby cannot catch its breath. The woman cannot stop screaming. The dog is silent. Only one way a dog goes silent in the middle of a gun fight. I close my eyes. Poor dumb dog. Poor stupid thing. Never asked to get caught in the crossfire; never asked to get involved in its human's shit.

Sirens are close by; they whine and wail and pierce the night. Erick is hurt. He needs help. The EMTs will stop the bleeding.

The smell of gunpowder and blood fills my nostrils. Somebody's hands are on my right shoulder, just outside the Kevlar, pressing down hard, making it hurt. I bring my left hand up to push away the heavy weight on my shoulder and my stomach rolls.

“My gun,” I gasp out through clenched teeth.

“Shh.”

“Where's my gun?”

“God damn it, Nic, shut the hell up.”

The lieutenant; he leans with all of his considerable weight on my shoulder and glares down at me with uncharacteristic shock and panic in his eyes.

I shut the hell up.

But I need to find my gun.

He shouts, “Over here! Officer down!”

It is the last thing I hear before the world slants and sways and goes mercifully black.



12:00 AM, Saturday, January 14



“Do you know where you are?”

Ceiling lights zip by overhead, and a chubby, freckled face is in my field of vision, upside down, staring at me intently, looking so serious.

“Detective Boman, can you hear me?”

I am lying down, but I am moving. Gliding. I smell antiseptic and industrial strength cleaner. My shoulder is on fire.

“Detective Boman, please respond.”

I lift my left arm and somebody immediately pushes it back down.

“You're at Harborview,” I am informed. “We're taking you into surgery. Are you allergic to any medications?”

I shake my head. A bright light shines in my eyes. My Kevlar is gone. My body armor. My gun. Gone.

Something hard and plastic covers my mouth and nose. It pushes cold, acrid air into my nostrils, down my throat.

“Count backwards.” Male voice. Strong. Deep. Like Erick's. “Ten, nine, eight...”

A moment later, through the fog, Erick smiles down at me and tells me I did great. He pushes the hair off my forehead and squeezes my hand.

“You're going to be okay, Nic,” he says, but his voice sounds different, far away and echoic, as though he is speaking to me from the bottom of a well; or perhaps I am the one in the well. “Everything is going to be okay.”

“I'm okay?” I want to believe him, but I hurt. It is difficult to breathe and my shoulder feels as though it weighs a thousand pounds.

“You're okay.”

I am not okay.



2.

7:06 PM, Sunday, January 15



They're planning my funeral.

“Full regalia,” somebody's somber voice intones. I don't recognize it but the words reach me loud and clear from the other side of the curtain. “The Honor Guard are on alert and the mayor has already made a statement to the press.”

I hear my lieutenant ask, “When?”

“A week from tomorrow.”

They're going to bury me a week from tomorrow; I'm not ready.

The curtain slides in its track and I meet John Carelli's eyes. The lieutenant is the highest-ranking Task Force Officer assigned to the Seattle Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration and, as such, under normal circumstances, carries himself with certitude and conviction.

These are not normal circumstances. His broad shouldered six-foot-six frame is slumped and his black Polo shirt and jeans, the unofficial-official uniform of the Narcotics Unit, are wrinkled and sagging. He looks as though he has not slept in days.

Carelli runs a hand through his thick black disheveled hair and it continues on over the back of his neck and rounds the bend to rub the coarse black stubble on his jaw.

“Nic,” he says, his voice heavy with weariness. His hooded brown eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot. “How are you feeling?”

Not dead.

I open my mouth to speak but my tongue feels as though it has been dipped in cat litter and rolled around in the contents of the box. I try to swallow with a great deal of difficulty and I am rewarded with a spike of pain in the back of my throat that shoots through the morphine haze that rounds my edges.

Carelli pours me a cup of tepid water and helps me take a sip.

I drain the cup and manage to croak, “Jag bruten, löjtnant.”

“I don't speak Swedish, Nic,” Carelli reminds me gently. “In English, please?”

I close my eyes. “Broken,” I tell him. “I am broken, lieutenant.”

“The doc says you're doing great,” he tells me, and I am reminded of what Erick told me in the recovery room after my surgery.

“Where is he; is he here?”

Carelli frowns with his entire face. “Who; the doc?”

“Erick,” I whisper. He must not have been hurt as badly as I thought if he was able to visit me in the recovery room. I still have time to get some answers; answers only Erick can provide. “Is he here?”

“Damn,” Carelli says, and the grief in that one syllable, the regret infused in that one word sucker punches me with enough force to knock my head back onto the pillow.

Erick is not here.

My partner is a block away, at the Ninth and Jefferson Building, cold and alone, lying on a stainless steel table or, more likely, in a walk-in refrigerator. Erick Shannon is dead, his life taken by men who had no claim to it.

“Those fucking Jessups,” I whisper, and I feel the rage boil over and spill out through my tears. “Those mother-fucking Jessups.”

Carelli is unembarrassed by my display of crude emotion; he has no idea mine are not tears of a police officer mourning the loss of a brother in blue, the loss of a partner. Mine are tears of anger and frustration over the agonized hours I spent with the decision; the sleepless nights I wasted as I weighed the pros and the cons; the gut aches I endured while I made myself sick with worry I was wrong, even sicker with worry when I knew I was right. What now?

Carelli places his head in his hands. “I am so sorry.”

So am I.

“It should have been me,” he says, and the statement fires my fury.

“Don't say that,” I say between gritted teeth. “You have a wife and kids, löjtnant. Do not say that.”

“Erick's wife is pregnant,” he tells me on a sorrowful sigh, and I bite my tongue, because I know things about Erick and Miranda Shannon that John Carelli does not.



3.

1:47 PM, Tuesday, January 17



Carelli is back and he has brought with him my understanding the sole purpose for his visit this afternoon is to annoy the hell out of me. It isn't his fault, he is probably unaware of his own nervous energy, but it doesn't make the endless diatribe on the Cougars-Huskies game over the weekend that left his Alma Mater nine and eight, whatever the hell that means, any less vexing.

When he stops to take a breath, I tell him, “I didn't catch the game, löjtnant.”

He blinks. And takes the hint. “Has Michael been up to see you?”

I let out a groaning sigh. “For fuck's sake. I would rather talk about sports.”

“Okay,” he says quickly, and he holds his hands up in mock surrender. “I just thought, he's down in the ER today, maybe he came up to see how you were doing.”

“I haven't gotten a hot shot in my IV,” I grumble, “so I think it's pretty safe to say he hasn't been up to see me.”

Irritability, I muse. Classic. They cut my morphine dosage today.

“They're calling for more snow,” Carelli says evenly, sensing my tetchiness, in all likelihood sorry he brought up the subject of his eldest son; Dr. Michael Carelli and I have a tarnished history. “We're supposed to get hit with a huge storm tomorrow and Thursday. Going to be a real doozie, to hear the weather guys tell it.”

“Yeah?” I couldn't care less, despite the fact some twisted kink in my old man's aberrant libido fueled his desire to couple only with women who looked very much like himself, thus guaranteeing my pureness of birth; I am one hundred percent Swedish, and in my Scandinavian heart I love our city's infrequent snow storms.

“A lot of snow,” he confirms, peering out the window at the gray sky. “Freezing rain, too. You know what that means.”

It means patrol units will be busy because people in this area are relatively clueless when it comes to driving in the snow and ice; mostly because it is rare, partly because of the hills. Seattle is built on a succession of hills, perfect for visitors to stand atop and achieve pictorial orgasm, hell for the locals in those rare moments of snow and ice when City Hall refuses to salt the roads and Queen Anne Hill is closed to everything except daredevil sledders.

But I am in no mood to chitchat about the weather.

“Will I be out of here in time for Erick's funeral?” I ask. It is the only thing that concerns me.

“I'm pulling for you, Nic,” my boss tells me. “But it's ultimately up to your doctor and your physical therapist. That bullet minced your shoulder up pretty good.”

I am aware of what that bullet did to my shoulder. It missed the bone and had the decency to pass through-and-through, but I will have a scar, which does not particularly bother me, and I will have a long, hard road of weight lifting ahead of me to restore the muscle to where it once was, which also does not particularly bother me, and the only tattoo artist I will allow to touch a needle to my flesh has his work cut out for him in order to repair the damage done, which, at two hundred bucks an hour, bothers me a little, so I do not need a reminder from John Carelli of what that bullet did to my shoulder.

“He was my partner, löjtnant. I need to be there,” I tell him, and the fleeting thought I am a hypocrite for saying it breaks the surface of my foul mood.

Carelli pats my shin and lets his palm linger. “You impress the hell out of your physical therapist and I'll get you out of here no later than Saturday. Okay?”

It is the most I am going to get. “Okay,” I tell him, and I adjust the bed to facilitate rest; a subtle hint. “Thanks,” I add, as an afterthought. “I appreciate it.”

Carelli nods and removes his hand from my leg, but he makes no move for the door. “Listen, Nic,” he says, and I control my breathing to keep myself from expelling an aggravated sigh. “The department psychologist is going to come up and have a few words with you this afternoon about the shooting.”

Standard Operating Procedure, and not the sort of thing I typically discuss with my weekly shrink, the one Carelli found for me on the department shrink's recommendation, so I nod, giving my approval as though I have a choice.

“I know things were getting better between Erick and you, Nic, but I also know they weren't great.” He looks at me for confirmation but he is sorely disappointed; my relationship with Erick Shannon is not now, nor will it ever be, up for debate with John Carelli. “You don't need to go into any of that with the department doc,” he says, and I know my boss well enough to take that as a direct order. “How many more sessions do you have with Dr. Coates?”

I am five months into a mandated six month recovery program with Dr. Rebecca Coates, my weekly shrink, a psychotherapist who specializes in addiction.

I tell Carelli, “Three.”

He gives me a small nod. “Good. And then the whole unpleasant business will be behind us.” He winces, as though the words contain acid and they've burned his tongue. “I don't mean—”

“It's okay, löjtnant.”

He nods again, an atypical flush creeping up his neck. “Meantime, the department doc will be here at three. I told him he could have twenty minutes.”

I have never been shot before, but I have been stabbed, and I imagine the conversation will go pretty much the same.

Shrink: If you could say anything at all to the person who did this to you, what would you say?

Me: Vi skit på det.

Shrink: And what does that mean, Detective Boman?

Me: Literally? We shit on it. Interpretively? Forget about it. It's part of the job. I just want to get back to work.

But I will not mean it this time. Erick Shannon should not have gone out like that, in the line of duty, elevated to fallen hero status. The Honor Guard? A statement from the mayor? It makes me wonder what I am involved in—the highly classified investigation with my name on it—that not even the mayor knows of its existence.



4.

9:05 AM, Wednesday, January 18



I should feel honored Dr. Coates has made the journey across town for our weekly session, grateful for the house call to my hospital room, privileged she has braved the snow that moves rapidly through the city with its frigid whitewash and fills the streets—apparently the only story in the world worth discussing on the local news—but I don't; I feel irritated and uncooperative. She has not even unbuttoned her coat.

She stands rigidly at my bedside, her voice recorder held in one thin, gloved talon. Dr. Coates does not take notes. She digitally records our sessions, which she transcribes herself, then places all of the neatly printed pages into a sturdy accordion file folder that is over six inches thick; every page is saturated with red ink, Dr. Coates' many, many judgments. I am convinced she is writing a paper on me.

She asks, “Would you like to talk about the death of your partner?”

“Not especially,” I tell her in an insouciant tone meant to let her know her opinion on the matter is not needed, not wanted.

I can just imagine what she will have to write about that.

“And why not?”

I shrug my good shoulder. “Because I already spoke to the department shrink about it.”

Not the same psychologist I spoke with after I got stabbed. Carelli allowed Dr. Aaron James Rowlings twenty minutes; I gave him thirty, during which I wondered, but neglected to ask, if it was he who recommended Dr. Coates to Carelli last August or if Dr. Coates was the suggestion of the department shrink I saw two and a half years ago, after a fifteen-year-old crack-addicted miscreant decided to play pin the knife on my pelvis bone. I have no idea when the post changed hands.

“And how did that go?” Dr. Coates wants to know.

I barely remember what I told Dr. Rowlings yesterday, but it must have been good because he declared me fit for duty.

“He's pretty hot,” I state truthfully, less interested in her reaction to the statement than I might have been five months ago, but still I jab my epee for her riposte. “You've seen him. Don't you think he's hot?”

Dr. Coates twists her lips. “Niclas.”

I sigh, easily defeated in my enervation, and sparring with her is not as much fun as it used to be, before I discovered she is a fraud.

“It's a real tragedy when any officer falls in the line of duty, Dr. Coates,” I tell her sincerely, “but I can't say as though I am particularly broken up by Erick's death. He was a corrupt cop.”

That is not what I told Dr. Rowlings yesterday, and it is all I am going to tell Dr. Coates today.

“I'm more concerned with how you feel now that the man who accused you of sexual harassment is dead, Nic.”

I study the small woman standing next to my bed, with her perfect posture and bright red lipstick. Her jet black hair is pulled back so tight I could tell her water is wet and she would look surprised.

“You know that charge was bullshit,” I say, not for the first time. “What you should be asking me is how I feel now that the man who shook down half the local drug dealers and pimps in town for a cut of their profits in exchange for looking the other way is dead.”

“The charge was not bullshit, Nic,” Dr. Coates says evenly, and once again she chooses to ignore the fundamental heart of the matter. “You got away with it because your boss didn't want a scandal and because Erick was confused, but it was not bullshit. You made an unwanted advance—”

I snort. “Unwanted?”

“At first, yes. You made an unwanted advance on your partner because you think you can use sex to get whatever you want.”

When I was approached six months ago by Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jack Glynn of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and persuaded to gather evidence against my partner for their Public Corruption Task Force, I thought I could get Erick to confide in me by offering myself to him sexually. A real Mata Hari. Bottom line, Erick punched me so hard I had to relearn my own name and then, in what can only be described as the most extreme case of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, he made a complaint of sexual harassment against me.

Stupid of him, really; considering.

Carelli quietly mediated. He stated I could bring Erick up on charges of assault, and, because the whole unpleasant business occurred while neither of us was on duty and while we both had a skinful of vodka, the incident never made it to either of our personnel files; Carelli insisted on discretion. He also insisted Erick take anger management classes and I seek therapy for what he dubbed my high-risk sexual behavior that he fully believed was the direct result of stress brought on by the messy break-up of his son and me.

Plenty of stupidity to go around, really; considering.

I agreed to the terms and quickly made amends because, in order for my mission to be a success, Erick and I needed to remain partners, which we did, and that was something for which Carelli patted himself on the back; his way worked.

Or, perhaps what worked was Erick's base carnal curiosity and my ability to kill all of his cats. Every last one.

“It worked,” I say stubbornly.

“Yes,” she says in her judgmental tone. “From what I gather, the process was successful. You brought Erick into your bed and managed to collect evidence against him for the FBI. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“I was being sarcastic, Niclas. Using sex to get what you want is dangerous and unhealthy and you need to examine those means by which you came to gather that information. Ask yourself if it was worth it. Was your self-respect worth it?”

I don't need to ask myself anything. Of course it was worth it. The things I learned from Erick Shannon while he was working his way through a bucket list of experimentation with my body would have sent him to prison for a very long time.

Unfortunately, he got himself killed before that could happen. And now I am forced to face my own thoughts of corruption, forced to ask myself for how much can I be bought? Six months ago, the answer would have been plain. For no amount of money could I have been bought six months ago. Today, the answer is less simple. Today, there is a dollar amount on the table.



5:14 PM, Monday, January 23



The service was lovely.

Isn't that what people say? The service was lovely and the flowers were beautiful and the casserole was delicious.

We were spared the tired line about how peaceful he looked because Erick's was a closed casket funeral. The bullet that struck and killed him blew off the entire top of his head, from his nose up. I had bits of skull fragment in my hair when they wheeled me into surgery nine days ago. Bits of Erick's skull and brain matter and blood.

Miranda Shannon, as she clutched the flag from her husband's casket to her slightly swollen abdomen, accepted my words of condolence the same as she accepted the words of condolence from the cop who was on line in front of me, and the words of condolence from the cop who was on line behind me. She has no idea what I know about Erick. She has no idea what I know about her. She has no idea how close I am to turning her world upside down.