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“What do you mean?” He blurted it in exactly the same way he had heard countless family and friends of dead people do, back when he was a homicide detective delivering bad news.
“Will, she’s been killed. Are you hearing me?”
“Yes.” He let himself exhale. “Was she on the job?”
“No. We don’t have a lot of details yet. She was found on a boat.”
“Who knows? Anybody in the media?”
“Nobody yet. But you’d better get down there. This will be national news.”
“What am I supposed to do? What’s the plan? Is a homicide team coming?”
“It’s only you,” she said. “Go down and find out what they have. Then the commanders will hold a press conference. This is direct from the chief, Will. He wants you to begin an investigation.”
Will hesitated. “Amy, I’m the PIO.”
“You’re a veteran homicide detective, Will. You’ll be the liaison officer between this department and the Kentucky cops. As far as the chief is concerned, you’re the lead detective on this for us.”
The lead.
She added, “Now be nice to them down there.”
“On my way.”
“So are you going to…” A tall young uni stood at the car door. Then he saw it was Borders. The one who walked with a cane.
“He was kicking the other guy,” Will said. “Clarence Kevon James Junior. Street name of Junior. He’s on probation. I’ll add to your incident report later.”
“Great,” the kid said sarcastically. “You have powers of arrest, detective.”
“Paperwork comes with the job, son. I’ve got to go.” Before the uni could protest further, Will slammed the car door, backed up, and raced toward the Ohio River.
***
Kristen Gruber. Officer Kristen Gruber. He could see her face as he raced past Piatt Park, the Netherland Plaza Hotel, and the dense cluster of buildings that lined both sides of Fourth Street. The intense blue eyes, easy smile, and the blond hair worn in a pixie cut. But she was no pixie. She was one of the most gung-ho cops he had known. He even remembered her badge number.
In a roundabout way, Kristen was responsible for him having this job. She had been the public information officer. With her girl-next-door good looks, athletic build, and perfect television presence, she was ideal for the department’s makeover after the riots. She had set up the Web site and the Twitter account that Will now had to feed like a machine. Transparency, the chief said. She could have remained the PIO forever if it hadn’t been for the show.
LadyCops: Cincinnati was a reality TV show featuring three female officers, but Kristen was the star. She always had the first segment. Of course, the show was heavily sanitized, the calls routine and low-priority, the department always appearing business-like and professional. It was great publicity. Virtually every suspect was black, but nobody involve
d mentioned this fact. They had to sign releases for their faces to be shown, and many did so happily—such was the power of television.
As a result, the PIO job came open at precisely the time Will was able-bodied enough to return to work, at least to a desk job. Years before, he had been one of her instructors at the academy and she recommended him as the new PIO.
Will had a cop’s dislike of the media. He didn’t trust reporters. They got in the way and their stories could send a case sideways. The exception had been an old hand with the Cincinnati Post who smoked cigars, knew when to withhold detail, and had earned the respect of both Will and Dodds. The man had been on the police beat for twenty years and knew more about the department than most of the officers. Otherwise, about the last thing Will wanted was to be the department’s face to the media.
But the chief liked the idea—Will thought cynically because it would get the Cincinnati Police points to have a disabled cop in front of the cameras. He hadn’t been shot and wounded. But the cameras didn’t know that. Still, being PIO got him back on duty. He learned that most of the reporters were very lazy: they would take what he posted on the Web site or recorded on the information line and simply put it on the air or in the newspaper. The Post had closed and the Enquirer rotated through a string of rookies, none of whom had time to learn their jobs—this when the last newspaper in town wasn’t laying people off. The television stations only wanted “visuals,” as they called them.
It would have made for an easy job if the department wasn’t still living with the fallout from the riot: a class-action lawsuit, Justice Department intervention, and federal court oversight of reforms. Will was no different from most of the cops, who felt the politicians, the media, hell, even the police commanders had sold out the working officers, had no idea of conditions out on the streets. But when the issue reared up again, Will read the statements given him by his masters and drew his paycheck.
Now he crossed the Roebling Suspension Bridge, hearing the metal grates under his tires, feeling them rubbing against his brain. The riverfront had undergone a dramatic transformation in his lifetime and now it was all devoted to pleasure. The old rail yards were gone, as were most of the gritty multistory brick warehouses. Even the flying-saucer-shaped Riverfront Stadium had been supplanted by two showy and expensive replacements, one each for the Reds and Bengals. Even as the city lost population, it gained new development close to the water. The National Underground Freedom Center was new, and a fancy mixed-use project called The Banks was going up.
Will barely appreciated any of this at the moment. He was thinking too much about himself. There was always a danger that someone video-recorded his encounter with Junior and on television it would be made out as a new sign of racial insensitivity. That would land him in an internal investigation or worse, charges of racial profiling and excessive use of force. What really happened didn’t matter. The cop was guilty until proven innocent.
That led to brooding on his limitations, too. His weak left leg’s muscles were now in fierce spasms from the effort of standing. He pushed his left foot into the floor of the car, barely stopping the limb’s protests. What had happened on Central Parkway was an intense reminder of what he could not do.
Yes, he was lucky to be alive—he told himself that every day. And the surgeons had removed the rare tumor inside his spinal cord in time so, with much work, he could walk again. Only a few months ago, he had been in a wheelchair. Now he could stand and walk. The tumor hadn’t been cancerous. All lucky things, miracles even. But they couldn’t return him to what he was: a fully functional man, a real cop. They couldn’t take away his feelings that he had been allowed to return to duty out of a sort of professional pity rather for than the skills he still possessed, even if he couldn’t run and jump. That he had been allowed back in no small measure because his father’s name was on the wall: the memorial to police officers killed in the line of duty.
