Suspect Read Online Free PDF Page A

cards.
    Scott glanced at the clock, and was irritated to see they still had six minutes.
    “Can we bag it for today? I’m tapped out, and I have to get to work.”
    “One more thing. Let’s touch base about the new job.”
    Scott glanced at the time again, and his impatience increased.
    “What about it?”
    “Have you gotten your dog? Last session, you said the dogs were on their way.”
    “Got here last week. The chief trainer checks them out before he accepts them. He finished yesterday, and says we’re good to go. I get my dog this afternoon.”
    “And then you’re back on the street.”
    Scott knew where this was going and didn’t like it. They had been through this before.
    “After we’re certified, yeah. That’s where K-9 officers do their job.”
    “Face-to-face with the bad guys.”
    “That’s kinda the point.”
    “You almost died. Are you concerned this might happen again?”
    Scott hesitated, but knew better than to pretend he had no fear. Scott had not wanted to be in a patrol car again, or sit behind a desk, but when he learned two slots were opening in the Metro K-9 Unit, he had lobbied hard for the job. He had completed the K-9 dog handler training course nine days ago.
    “I think about it, sure, but all officers think about it. This is one of the reasons I want to stay on the job.”
    “Not all officers are shot three times and lose their partner on the same night.”
    Scott didn’t respond. Since the day he woke in the hospital, Scott had thought about leaving the job a thousand times. Most of his officer friends told him he was crazy not to take the medical, and the LAPD Personnel Division told him, because of the extent of his injuries, he would never be cleared to return, yet Scott pushed to stay on the job. Pushed his physical therapy. Pushed his commanding officers. Pushed his Metro boss hard to let him work with a dog. Scott would lie awake in the middle of the night, making up reasons for all the pushing: Maybe he didn’t know what else to do, maybe he had nothing else in his life, maybe he was trying to convince himself he was still the same man he was before the shooting. Meaningless words to fill the empty darkness, like the lies and half-truths he told to Goodman and everyone else, because saying unreal things was easier than saying real things. His unspoken, dead-of-night truth was that he felt as if he had died on the street beside Stephanie, and was now only a ghost pretending to be a man. Even his choice of being a K-9 officer was a pretense—that he could be a cop without a partner.
    Scott realized the silence was dragging on, and found Goodman waiting.
    Scott said, “If I walk away, the assholes who killed Stephanie win.”
    “Why are you still seeing me?”
    “To make peace with being alive.”
    “I believe that’s true. But not the whole truth.”
    “Then you tell me.”
    Goodman glanced at the time again, and finally closed the notebook.
    “Looks like we’re a few minutes over. This was a good session, Scott. Same time next week?”
    Scott stood, hiding the stitch in his side that came with the sudden movement.
    “Same time next week.”
    Scott was opening the door when Goodman spoke again.
    “I’m glad the regressions are helping. I hope you remember enough to find peace and closure.”
    Scott hesitated, then walked out and down to the parking lot before he spoke again.
    “I hope I remember enough to forget.”
    Stephanie came to him every night, and it was his memories of her that tortured him—Stephanie slipping from his bloody grip, Stephanie begging him not to leave.
    Don’t leave me!
    Scotty, don’t leave!
    Come back!
    In his nightmares, it was her eyes and her pleading voice that filled him with anguish.
    Stephanie Anders died believing he had abandoned her, and nothing he did now or in the future could change her final thoughts. She had died believing he had left her to save himself.
    I’m here, Steph.
    I didn’t leave you.
    I was trying to