Trusting The Sheriff. Janice Kay Johnson
feel much better the day after regaining consciousness, but when she was capable of thinking clearly, she chased herself in circles. What could possibly have happened? If Neal was alive, why wouldn’t the doctor have told her so? Or said, Gosh, I don’t know who Neal is?
And why couldn’t she remember?
An orderly had just removed her breakfast tray when she heard a cleared throat and Sergeant Michael Donahue stepped into view. He supervised her unit of detectives, and they all felt lucky. He could be gruff, but never failed to support them against higher-ups or the public when needed. He was smart and capable of compassion, and his detectives very rarely encountered a difficulty he hadn’t already met and overcome in his lengthy career.
He’d turned fifty-four back in February, when they threw him a surprise party. Donahue was still a good-looking man, his gray hair short but not buzz-cut. His wife liked to run her fingers through it, he’d tell them with a hidden smile. He dressed well, his suits appearing custom-made to fit his tall body and bulky shoulders, but within an hour or two at the station, he invariably looked rumpled. Abby had met his wife, Jennifer, who was known to roll her eyes on occasion when she dropped by the station and first set eyes on him.
“Abby,” he said, his face creased with what she took for concern. “You scared us.”
She managed a weak smile.
He pulled a chair close to the bed and lowered himself into it. “Shot twice.”
“So they tell me.”
The lines on his forehead deepened. “The doctor claims you have no memory of what happened.”
“The doctor’s right,” she said huskily. “I have this huge blank.” Her hand rose to touch her temple.
He studied her in silence for longer than she understood. Then he leaned back in the chair and said, “That’s a problem for us. The...scene where you were found is puzzling, to put it mildly. I’ve been hoping you can tell us what occurred.”
She gave her head a very careful shake. “I can’t. All I know is that I was found in an alley.”
“Neal was with you,” Donahue said, “also shot twice. Unlike you, he didn’t survive.”
Yes, she’d known, but the news threw a punch anyway. Abby felt tears burn in her eyes. “How?”
His face hadn’t softened at all. She didn’t see the expected sympathy. Instead, he had the kind of stony expression suspects saw.
“It appears that you shot Neal with your service weapon and he shot you with his. You apparently struck your head on the dumpster as you fell. You need to tell me if you’ve been having issues with him, or if he had a problem with how you handled any investigation.”
“How I handled...?” She gaped at him. “You think we quarreled?”
“How else can you explain the physical evidence?” he said implacably.
“I can’t explain anything! Neal and Laura are—were—my best friends! We never disagreed.”
“Then why would you have shot him?”
“Did you test for gunpowder residue on my hand?”
He hesitated. “We did, and didn’t find any. But the only fingerprints found on your Glock were yours.”
Something was very wrong.
“And Neal’s?”
“The same.”
“There had to have been someone else there,” she said, having trouble believing he’d suspect either of them. “You know both of us.”
“I’ve seen cops go bad before. It stinks, but it happens. If Neal did, I need you to tell me.”
She looked right into his eyes. “I’ll never believe he would.”
His graying eyebrows rose, obviating any need for him to say what she knew he was thinking: Then you have to be the bad apple.
* * *
SEVERAL OF ABBY’S fellow detectives came by to see her. Most of them had apparently gathered here at the hospital after she and Neal were found in that alley, holding vigil for her after they learned he was dead. She was told that Sergeant Donahue had worked the scene himself, along with an experienced detective, Sam Kirk. The CSI team had gathered trace evidence—too much of it. Alleys ranked right up there as the most impossible scenes. Employees from businesses along the block came out regularly to drop garbage into a dumpster or smoke a cigarette, grinding the butt out with a shoe and leaving it where it lay. Homeless people lurked, scrounging in the dumpsters, sleeping behind them, having sex and getting into fights. Cars cut through, passengers or drivers tossing litter out windows. Rats frequented the alley, as did stray cats.
The man who’d heard the gunshots and had the guts to run toward them rather than away would have left his own trace evidence. He claimed to have seen a dark shape standing over her, a man—he thought male—who ran away when he called out.
Sergeant Donahue was clearly not convinced the sole witness hadn’t conjured the sight of a villain to make himself appear more heroic.
Laura Walker never came. Abby called her a week after she’d regained consciousness.
“Laura? This is Abby. I wanted to tell you—” She was talking to dead air. A woman she’d considered a good friend had learned of Sergeant Donahue’s suspicions and immediately bought into them. What other explanation was there?
That was the first time in a very long while that Abby let herself cry—but only after the lights had gone out and she was alone. Better than falling asleep. Nightmares grabbed her the minute she dropped off. They were lurid and felt important. She’d wake gasping with shock and fear, but couldn’t remember any details.
Visits from her coworkers tailed off. They were busy; she understood that. But she wondered if they had any idea how isolated she felt when she trudged up and down the halls of the hospital, trying to regain enough strength to go home. Nurses and orderlies fussed over her, but that was their job. Why hadn’t she made more friends? The kind who would stand by her?
But she knew. She’d never quite fit in, wherever she was. Not as a child, migrating between her grandparents’ farm and a “normal” life with her silent, wounded father. Certainly not in college, where the sense of morality she’d absorbed from the deeply religious Amish part of her family separated her from other students. And then she became a cop, joining a small minority who were women.
Maybe she hadn’t really tried. Was she more comfortable alone? she asked herself, troubled.
Five days after she’d woken from the coma, Dr. Sanderlin told her she was ready to leave the hospital.
“I’ll have a social worker stop by to help you form a plan,” he assured her. “If you live alone...?”
“Yes.”
“You need to have someone around to help you. I’d rather not extend your hospital stay if we can come up with a solution, but I’m not willing to send you off to pass out or fall or have a traumatic flashback where nobody will see. If you don’t have family you can go to, I recommend at least a week in a rehab facility.”
Her father... No. They stayed in touch, but conversations were always stiff, awkward. She hadn’t even let him know yet that she’d been shot. He’d grown up in foster care, and now had no family but her. Her mother’s parents, who’d half raised her, were gone, too, but Aenti Nancy and Onkel Eli would take her in. She knew they would. The Amish were like that. They loved visitors, and they took care of the people they loved. Even people they didn’t love. If their church community included an irascible old woman who was difficult to like, they took care of her anyway, with generosity, humor and no grumbling. She’d heard her grandfather—her grossdaadi—say, “How would we learn to forgive, if the Lord didn’t give us cranky neighbors?”