Luis, the still-eyed bodyguard, said, "I'll go with you."
After Weir's death Lon Sellitto had cut back the protection team to one officer.
"No, you stay here with my family, Luis. I'd feel better."
His wife asked cautiously, "If that's the good news, honey, what's the bad news?"
"I have to miss dinner," the prosecutor said, tossing a handful of Goldfish crackers into his mouth and washing them down with a very large sip of very nice wine, thinking, hell with it, let's celebrate.
*
Sachs's war-torn yellow Camaro SS pulled to a stop outside 100 Centre Street. She tossed the NYPD placard onto the dash then climbed out. She nodded to a crime scene crew standing beside their RRV. "Where's the scene?"
"First floor in the back. The corridor to intake."
"Sealed?"
"Yep."
"Whose weapon?"
"Linda Welles'. DOC. She's pretty shook up. Asshole broke her nose."
Sachs grabbed one of the suitcases and, hooking it up to a wheelie luggage carrier, started for the front door of the Criminal Courts building. The other CS techs did the same and followed.
This scene'd be a grounder, of course. An accidental shooting involving an officer and a suspect who'd tried to escape? Pro forma. Still, the event was a homicide and required a complete crime scene report for the Shooting I
ncident Board and any subsequent investigation and lawsuits. Amelia Sachs would run the scene as carefully as any other.
A guard checked their IDs and led the team through a maze of corridors into the basement. Finally they came to a yellow police line tape across a closed door. Here she found a detective talking to a uniformed officer, her nose stuffed with tissue and bandaged.
Sachs introduced herself and explained that she was going to be running the scene. The detective stepped aside and Sachs asked Linda Welles what had happened.
In a halting, nasal voice the guard explained that on the way from fingerprinting to intake the suspect had somehow undone his handcuffs. "It took him two, three seconds. All the cuffs. Just like that, they were open. He didn't get my key." She pointed to her blouse pocket, where presumably it resided. "He had a pick or key or something on his hip."
"His pocket?" Sachs asked, frowning. She remembered they'd searched him carefully.
"No, his leg. You'll see." She nodded toward the corridor where Weir's body lay. "There's a cut in his skin. Under a bandage. Everything happened so fast."
Sachs supposed that he'd cut himself to create a hiding space. A queasy thought.
"Then he grabbed my weapon and we were struggling for it. It just discharged. I didn't mean to pull the trigger. I didn't, really. But . . . I tried to keep control and I couldn't. It just discharged."
Control . . . Discharge. The words, official copspeak, were perhaps an attempt to insulate her from the guilt she'd be feeling. This had nothing to do with the fact that a killer was dead, or that her life had been endangered, or that a dozen other officers had been taken in by this man; no, it was that this woman had stumbled. Women in the NYPD set the bar high; the falls are always harder than for men.
"We collared and searched him at the takedown," Sachs said kindly. "And we missed the key too."
"Yeah," the officer muttered. "But it's still gonna come up."
At the shooting inquiry, she meant. And, yeah, it would.
Well, Sachs'd do a particularly thorough job on her report to give this officer as much support as possible.
Welles touched her nose gently. "Oh, that hurts." Tears were streaming from her eyes. "What're my kids going to say? They always ask me if I do anything dangerous. And I tell 'em no. Look at this. . . ."
Pulling on latex gloves, Sachs asked for the woman's Glock. She took it, dropped the clip and ejected the round in the chamber. Everything went into a plastic evidence bag.
Slipping into her sergeant mode, Sachs said, "You can take an LOA, you know."