Stone Cold Read online

  Stephen grinned dreamily and propped himself up on his elbow to examine the offering. ‘What would I do without you?’

  ‘Sleep,’ she replied, ‘and go hungry. There’s more food in the chiller if you need it. Right now, I’ve got to go to work. Do I look okay?’

  Stephen grabbed her arm and pulled her gently to him, kissing her on the lips. ‘You look fine, okay? Good luck on your first day.’

  ‘See you tonight.’

  Kathryn slipped into her heels and jacket and strode out of the apartment. The air was crisp and cold, the thin lawns outside the block encrusted with ice and the windows of her battered old Lincoln sheened with a light frost. The bitterly cold weather took its toll and it required several grinding, screeching attempts to both get the engine started and keep it running until it was warm enough to risk committing travel. It was like bringing somebody back from the dead.

  The drive was not a long one but it required negotiating from the city’s east side to the centre, through the usual slog of early–morning traffic. Kathryn drove through town and guided the geriatric car into a parking lot alongside the Great Falls Police Department, rows of patrol cars and a couple of motorcycles parked facing her and the Missouri River flowing cold and dark behind. Kathryn switched off the rattling engine and sat for a moment in contemplative silence. Today was the day. She was on her own. Focus on the future. There is no past. You have a job to do. Check your hair in the mirror.

  The car’s ancient fold–down mirror distorted her face, making her jowls look larger than they really were and her cheeks poke out as though she were a squirrel feasting on chestnuts. Her long brown hair matched her eyes. Not too much makeup, just a dab here and there. Professional. Smart. The I–don’t–need–to–plaster–my–face–in–gunk look that she imagined smart guys, like police detectives, might like.

  Kathryn reached down to her left hand and removed a silver commitment ring from her finger. It has been given her by Stephen after their first year together, a token of their love. She looked at it fondly for a moment, warmed briefly by the hazy memories of happiness, and then she opened the glove compartment and tossed the ring inside before slamming it shut. It felt as though a breeze block had been lifted from her shoulders.

  Now, get out of the car.

  Kathryn got out of the car into the cold air, careful not to catch her suit on the greasy door. She slammed the door hard to make sure the catch caught, and then slammed it again when it didn’t. Her reflection in the grubby window now looked angular, almost gaunt.

  ‘Miss Stone?’

  Kathryn whirled. ‘Yes?’

  A uniformed officer with short blonde hair peaking from beneath her cap smiled at Kathryn’s startled response. ‘Easy there, tiger. You’re due to meet Detective Griffin?’

  ‘Yes, at ten,’ Kathryn replied.

  ‘Don’t sweat it,’ the officer replied. ‘You should have seen me the day of my first arrest: two teenagers lobbing stolen ice–cream into a lido and then at me when I intervened. I looked like a walking vanilla with cherry by the time I’d apprehended them. This way, please.’

  Kathryn followed the officer into the station, past the front desk with its armoured glass window and through a security door into the station proper.

  A small operations room filled with busy desks constituted the centre of the station’s activities, where detectives sat with their heads down talking quietly on phones or searching computer screens with furrowed brows. A municipal law enforcement agency, the overall department was manned by eighty or so sworn men and women supported by some forty civilian staff, along with two canine patrols and the subject of Kathryn’s visit: the HRU team.

  The HRU or High Risk Unit was considered a Red Flag team, qualified and certified for use around the state and region when needed. Routinely activated for calls within the city, it had also occasionally been used outside the city upon request. The unit consisted of four components: entry teams, negotiators, snipers, and medics. Overseen by the TAC Commander, it was comprised of officers throughout the agency doing their day to day duties in patrol, detectives and support services that, upon HRU activation, were alerted and reported for a briefing with their equipment readied before transport to the scene of any crime.

  Several weeks before, a pair of riders from the notorious Bandidos motorcycle gang had spiked themselves to the eyeballs on peyote buttons after a drinking session in Tuffy’s Bar and abducted a nine year–old girl, Amy Wheeler, before holing themselves up in an abandoned farmstead down by the lonely waters of Muddy Creek. Local residents had called the police and the HRU had spent nearly eight hours talking down the bikers, who were armed with sawn–off shotguns and a severe lack of interest in staying alive. A pair of Great Falls detectives had joined the HRU entry team on the request of CCSO.

  The HRU team had done a fabulous job. Unfortunately, the bikers had continued to take drugs in favour of using their brains. Drunk on their own biker–gang prowess and the nameless chemicals surging through their bodies, they decided to go down fighting when the HRU team, believing them to be on the verge of a suicide pact, decided to burst in.

  In the shoot–out that followed their captive Amy Wheeler was hit by a ricochet and fatally wounded. Both bikers were apprehended, two police officers lightly injured. In the inevitable investigation into the event, although all officers were rightly cleared of any wrong–doing, a forensic examination by the ballistics team had identified the weapon that had caused the shrapnel burst that had killed the little girl.

  A shot fired by the sidearm of Detective Scott Griffin, in support of the HRU team.

  Kathryn knew the procedures that were performed as a matter of course in the wake of fatal shootings by the police, but she had read the file with particular care in this case. Detective Griffin’s gun had been collected as evidence. The Critical Incident Stress Management System had been activated, with a mandatory debriefing of all officers involved taking place within seventy two hours. Detective Scott Griffin had been placed on paid administrative leave for a few days to process what had happened, but had reportedly returned to work a few days later. A GFPD Firearms Use Review followed, along with an internal non–criminal investigation which quickly identified that Griffin’s shot was targeting one of the bikers and also identified the unfortunate ricochet which caused Amy Wheeler’s death.

  The State Department of Criminal Investigation, or DCI, had then conducted a criminal investigation. The following Coroner’s Inquest had taken place and had determined that Detective Griffin’s actions were entirely justified and that no course of action could have prevented the ricochet.

  Throughout the entire process, Detective Griffin’s actions and intentions as an officer of the law had been revealed as entirely within procedure and indeed exemplary. If there had been a problem with the officer’s actions, then the County Attorney’s Office – or, more likely the Montana Attorney General’s Officer, if DCI were investigating – would have reviewed the case and perhaps brought criminal charges against the officer. The FBI might also have considered civil rights violations against the officer, and Amy Wheeler’s family could have sought damages though a lawsuit against the agency. But none of these things had happened. Detective Griffin had been cleared to return to active duty, his record untarnished by the tragedy.

  Two weeks later, Griffin had been found slumped in a bar on the edge of town at two in the morning, incoherent with grief that a shot fired by his own hand had killed a child he was devoted to protecting even at the risk of his own life. Griffin was given a further leave of absence for two weeks, before being reinstated as a detective with the department and offered the support that he needed.

  The Great Falls Police Department was on the pioneering forefront of identifying and addressing the issue of Post–Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. Officers within the department had built a program to alleviate the stigma attached to the condition and educate officers and their families regarding warning signs and how to get hel
p. The Great Falls Police Protective Association, a private association for and funded by the department’s officers, had stepped in on Griffin’s behalf to arrange for time off, travel expenses and the cost of any treatment. Griffin had refused the more expensive option of a specialized program in Vermont, but had reluctantly agreed to see a local counsellor based in the city.

  Kathryn Stone.

  Despite the severe nature of the crisis that had brought about the death of Amy Wheeler, the case itself was considered relatively straight–forward, and hence Kathryn had been handed as her first assignment the task of rehabilitating the grieving officer. There was clearly no blame placed upon his shoulders, thus the grief was entirely psychological. Bad things sometimes happen to good people, and Kathryn knew that the search for explanations was fruitless and often damaging. Some turned to God or their families. Others turned away. The weight of a person’s guilt and the grief it caused them, over something they could not have possibly controlled, was an oft–underestimated mental health issue. Without boundaries for that grief to be contained it could easily spill into the detective’s private life and perhaps consume him entirely if proper perspective were not placed on the event and how he related to it.

  Psychology 101: perspective.

  The officer guided Kathryn to an office adjoining the operations room and knocked on the door, which was adorned with the name Capt. Gregory Olsen.

  The captain got up from his desk as they entered. Tall and broad, Olsen shut the door behind Kathryn as the female officer left and extended his hand to Kathryn Stone. Olsen was a long–service officer, his rugged features hewn from granite like mountains and thick white hair like the clouds that topped them, and a magnificent moustache nestled above his upper lip. Kathryn guessed he wasn’t far off retirement, and his seemingly eternal presence in the town afforded him as much respect, if not more, than that enjoyed by the mayor.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Ms Stone.

  His voice was so deep it sounded like boulders rolling down a hillside.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kathryn said, her hand feeling like a child’s being held by a bear’s paw.

  Olsen gestured to an empty seat beside his cluttered desk as he sat back down. ‘Not often we get call for a shrink in this office. Times are changing, I guess.’

  ‘Extraordinary times,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Big city shoot–outs are not a daily feature of your officers’ working lives.’

  ‘No,’ Olsen admitted. ‘Just as well it was Griffin and Maietta on the scene.’

  ‘Maietta?’

  ‘Jane Maietta,’ Olsen explained. ‘Griffin’s partner. Tough as saddlebags, a street kid out of Illinois made good.’

  ‘And Griffin’s a soldier?’

  ‘Former army,’ Olsen confirmed. ‘Two tours in Iraq so he knows gunfights, probably saw some shit he’d rather not go into. But the shoot–out at the farmhouse was different.’

  ‘How did the ricochet happen?’

  ‘He was shooting at one of the bikers, who’d drawn a bead on an armed officer who had just been hit in the leg and was left exposed. Griffin fired. The bullet hit the wall beside the biker’s head, bounced off a metal brace and hit the kid behind him in the left temple.’ Olsen pointed to his head, in case Kathryn didn’t know what a temple was. ‘There was nothing that anybody could do.’

  ‘How did Griffin react, in the immediate aftermath?’

  Olsen stared at her for a moment. ‘He didn’t dance a fucking jig, if that’s what you mean?’

  ‘It’s important,’ Kathryn said. ‘The more I know about how Griffin reacted to the event, the better I can understand how he’s handling it now.’

  ‘He didn’t know he’d killed anybody until he entered the building,’ Olsen explained. ‘Nobody did until HRU broke through into the building and ended the incident. It wasn’t until the kid’s autopsy that the bullet was recovered and matched to Griffin’s weapon. He was told the day after that.’

  ‘He didn’t see the child’s body?’

  ‘He did,’ Olsen exhaled, his gaze falling from hers. ‘He knew the bullet was his, I think, maybe instinct or something. Amy Wheeler died in his arms.’

  ‘Nobody thought to keep it from him?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Too much red tape,’ Olsen explained. ‘HRU need to account for literally every round they fire in these kinds of incidents, which meant that we did too. With a dead kid I could plausibly have figured that it made sense to claim that the bikers killed her, but that would have left a round unaccounted for. They went by the book, and rightly so did I.’

  ‘And how is Griffin coping at this time?’

  ‘He’s wired up pretty tight,’ Olsen replied. ‘He’s tough enough and smart enough to get through it all, but I don’t think he really knows where to begin. Griffin’s good, most ex–soldiers are, but likewise he’s too proud, thinks he knows best, always wants to work alone and that’s what got him into this state in the first place. He doesn’t even open up to his partner.’

  ‘And how would you describe his state, exactly?’ Kathryn asked.

  ‘Police officers have to be law–keepers, counsellors, fire–arms experts, mediators and often goddamned politicians all at once,’ Olsen explained. ‘There’s no real–life Jack Bauer out there running around playing maverick–cop, no matter what people see on the television. Griffin’s suffering from a lack of confidence, no matter how hard he tries to conceal it, so he’s built himself a wall to hide behind.’ Olsen sighed. ‘I guess it’s what you folk would call a coping mechanism, right?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Kathryn nodded. ‘He’s projecting his grief outward as anger. Is he working on anything right now?’

  ‘He’s been pulled off the front line,’ Olsen said, ‘and he’s not carrying a firearm until he’s over this. I’ve got him looking into our cold–case files. Desk job.’

  ‘How’s he liking that?’

  ‘He’s not. I’d rather he was in the field, but until the investigation is complete my hands are tied. You think he should be out there?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kathryn said. ‘I’ll figure that out after I’ve spoken to him, but generally the more normality that surrounds him the more comfortable he’ll feel. Any ideas on his home life?’

  ‘He doesn’t talk about it.’

  ‘Fine,’ Kathryn said. ‘Not talking about it is saying something in itself.’

  ‘That’s the kind of talk that’ll piss him off,’ Olsen pointed out. ‘We’re straight–talking folk out here, Miss Stone. Griffin doesn’t place much stock in all of this fairy–go–lightly psychobabble and nor do I.’

  ‘Noted,’ Kathryn replied. ‘He won’t like me seeing him every day either.’

  ‘You want to stick around that closely?’

  ‘He’s a former soldier, a patriot and a police officer,’ Kathryn said. ‘He’s earned the right for me to do a good job for him. What about the parents of Amy Wheeler? Have they been talked to, or met Griffin?’

  ‘No,’ Olsen replied. ‘They understand what happened was a tragedy and they’re good strong folk, enough not to start litigation against the department, but you can figure for yourself that they didn’t want a face–to–face with Griffin and he sure as hell doesn’t want to see them. As it happens, procedure means that Amy’s parents have not been informed of the identity of the officer responsible, and I think it’s best to keep things that way.’ Olsen watched her for a long beat. ‘You think you can set him straight?’

  ‘I don’t want to see another veteran’s family collapse and let them wander off to a life on the streets, okay? These guys did enough in Iraq and Afghanistan already, let alone fighting crime back home.’

  Olsen sucked in a prodigious lungful of air and blasted it out across his desk as he leaned back in his seat.

  ‘I’ve only got five detectives to play with Miss Stone, and a sixth rotational officer. The sooner Griffin’s back on the job, the better. You’ve got my support if you think this will help him.’

  ‘It
’ll help him,’ she said. ‘What’s at issue is whether he wants to help himself.’

  ***

  4

  ‘This is the room,’ the duty officer gestured Kathryn toward a closed door marked Interview Room 1. ‘Detective Griffin is waiting for you. Can I get you a coffee ma’am?’

  ‘I’m good, thanks,’ Kathryn smiled back.

  The officer turned and walked away down the corridor. Kathryn stared at the door in front of her. Get your act together. You’re here to help, so act like it. She took a deep breath and then pushed down on the handle and strode in.

  Bare walls. A brushed aluminium table bolted to a floor of grubby linoleum tiles. A single strip light, harsh and cold, set into the ceiling behind a cracked plastic cover that had been repaired with a strip of gaffer tape. Not the most inviting of rooms and hardly the best place to speak to a grieving man about such delicate matters.

  Detective Scott Griffin sat before her, a pair of clear blue eyes flicking up to meet hers. Thick brown hair framed a young face that was lined with world–weariness, the permanent late–night strain of law enforcement. Shoulders set, back straight. Ex–military, she reminded herself. Hands folded in his lap, a little too tightly to be natural. On edge. Uncomfortable.

  ‘Detective Griffin, I’m Kathryn Stone,’ she said as she closed the door behind her.

  ‘Pleasure, ma’am.’ A soft drawl, but no smile.

  ‘Texas?’

  ‘Odessa,’ came the reply, a faint glint of life in the blue orbs now.

  ‘You’re a long way from home, soldier.’

  ‘Army got me out and about. Long time ago now.’

  ‘Who are you trying to kid?’ she asked with an easy smile as she took a seat opposite Griffin. ‘Once a soldier…’

  Griffin managed a smile, sort of lop–sided where one side curled up and the other curled down.

  ‘You a local girl?’

  ‘No, I was raised in Nevada.’

  ‘Looks like we’re both a long way from home.’