Chapter 20: Suspended

Burke's POV

I unclipped the badge from my belt on Macy Gartside's lawn and put it in the captain's hand.

I had worn it eleven years.

It weighed less than I expected.

"The weapon," the captain said.

I unloaded it, locked the slide back, and gave him that too.

Macy stood next to me with a dish towel soaked red around her arm, and she did not say a word.

Then she did.

"He wrote it down himself," she said. "Before you asked him to. It's in your inbox."

The captain looked at her.

He was a tired man in his fifties with a gray mustache, and he had hired me out of the academy.

"Ms. Gartside, I read the email," he said. "That's the only reason he's suspended and not fired."

"He broke nothing today."

"He broke an April report. Today he sent a civilian into a house with a knife in it." The captain's voice was dry. "Both of those things are true."

"She went in because I couldn't stop her," I said. "And I put four officers in the street."

"I know what you did." He turned to Macy. "Get that arm stitched, ma'am."

He walked away.

Macy turned to me, with the evening light in her hair.

I wanted very badly to sit down on her curb and put my head in my hands.

She took my hand instead.

"Come to the hospital with me," she said. "You can be useless in a plastic chair."

At 3 a.m., with eight stitches in her forearm, she fell asleep on my shoulder.

The waiting room smelled of floor cleaner.

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