Totally Worth It, page 7
As for Jesse Ducane, since her initial bombed meeting with the senior partner, Lexi’d seen her only in passing. There was never any kind of formal peace offering, but when they did see each other in the halls, their exchanges were cordial and professional. Usually it amounted to a head nod with a smile, sometimes even a quick good morning thrown in for good measure. In fact, just last week when they crossed paths in the ladies’ room, Jesse had looked at Lexi in the mirror and said, “How’s everything going?” as she soaped her hands in the sink. It was basically a rhetorical question, but her voice had sounded genuine enough. Lexi hoped this meant that despite their initial interaction, Jesse knew she wasn’t a total idiot.
She was doing a good job, of that she was certain. She was always early, she never rushed to leave, and she never left a project unfinished. Once it had become clear who the two frontrunners were for the associate positions, most of the other interns worked harder to get over than actually put in an honest day’s labor. Lexi had been bummed when she realized she had no shot, but Stanton Ducane was well respected in the legal community, and a good reference from a reputable firm could very well lead to lucrative employment elsewhere. So Lexi worked her ass off every time she stepped through the door, and for reasons that she knew were ridiculously desperate, she prayed that word of this made it to the top.
One thing was for sure, Allison noticed. Case in point, today she had given Lexi a break. While the rest of the interns were slogging through forty boxes of discovery material, Lexi had been assigned to cover the front desk after the receptionist called in sick. It was pretty much a day off and normally Lexi would have been grateful, but with so much idle time, her mind kept wandering to the night ahead with Julie.
At six twenty in the evening, as Lexi sat swiveling in the big leather chair counting down the last ten minutes to the weekend, the front desk phone rang. She answered, but before she could say anything, the woman on the other end of the phone spoke in a panicked whisper.
“I need to speak to Paul Harris. It’s an emergency.”
“Mr. Harris is not in today, can I take a message or offer you his voice mail?” Lexi said systematically. There was no immediate response, but Lexi sensed hesitation. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Not really.” The voice was a touch louder, but still barely audible. There was a short pause before the woman continued. “I need Paul. He’s my lawyer. And I’m having a lawyer situation.”
Lexi knew she needed more information to properly direct the call to one of the other lawyers. “What’s wrong?”
“I…I’m at work and I have a problem. They want me to sign a letter of resignation and if I do that, it’s over. My whole career. Over.” Lexi heard a muffled sniffle. “I need some help here. Being a cop is all I’ve ever wanted to do. But they’re telling me this is for my own good. If I just sign the papers and walk away, there won’t be any charges, no internal. I don’t know what to do. This is why I hired a goddamn lawyer.” The woman was more or less talking to herself but Lexi could hear the fear and anger behind the words.
And Lexi realized she knew this case. This had to be the police shooting that Paul’s intern, Beth, was talking about at lunch a few weeks ago. The cop who claimed she hadn’t fired the shot in question. “Okay, so what’s changed since the last time you spoke to Paul?”
“They just presented me with papers. Resignation papers. They said it’s in my best interest to sign them. Because then my file will be clean. But I won’t have a job either,” she added flippantly.
Lexi practically cut her off. “Don’t sign anything. Where are you now?”
“I told them I had to go to the bathroom. I’m hiding in the stairwell. You’re a lawyer?”
“No. I’m an intern.” Lexi felt as useless as that sounded. “But hold on. I’m going to get you some help. Just hold on for one second.” Lexi knew most of the partners were gone for the day. She had said good-bye to Allison half an hour ago. Without wasting any time she started for Jesse’s office immediately, only to turn around and come back to the reception desk. Picking up the receiver Lexi asked softly, “I’m really sorry, but what is your name?”
“Lucy Weston.”
“Okay, hang on, Ms. Weston. I’ll be right back.”
Lexi virtually sprinted to Jesse’s office and filled her in as quickly as she could. Almost before Lexi had finished speaking, Jesse picked up the call on speakerphone. “Ms. Weston. This is Jesse Ducane.” She spoke with absolute authority. “I understand you have a situation. Here’s what we’re going to do. First of all, go back to your office. Do not sign anything, under any circumstances. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Tell whoever it is you are dealing with—Who are you dealing with?”
“My captain, a deputy inspector, and someone from legal.”
“Okay. Tell them you have legal representation in this matter. Give them my name.” Jesse provided her phone number and email, spelling it out slowly so there was no chance for error. “Tell them to send that letter over to me right now and I will look it over. Then leave. Come here right away. Do you know where we are?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there before.” Lexi could hear the calm coming back into the voice on the other end of the phone.
“Great. Can you handle that?” Jesse asked.
“Yeah, I can do it. But what if they say I can’t leave?”
“They won’t. If they try to stop you, call me. Just, whatever you do, don’t sign anything. Okay. We’ll see you in a little while.”
With that, Jesse disconnected the call and turned to Lexi. “Go into Paul’s office and find the file. I’m going to try to get him on the phone. When you have the file, meet me in the conference room.”
*
Lexi sat in the conference room, reading the file. When she had completed the entire dossier and there was still no sign of Jesse, she checked the firm’s electronic files to see whether Paul had made any additional notes on the case. There were a few entries, but nothing substantial. Lexi was about to text Julie that she might be a little late for dinner when Jesse entered the room, two coffees in hand.
“So, no luck with Paul. He’s not answering. I did speak with Laney, but she’s clueless. So we’re basically going to have to start over.” She put a cup of coffee in front of Lexi. “I didn’t know how you take it, so I just got it regular. Hope that’s okay.”
Lexi nodded and took a sip. How weird was it that her boss was bringing her coffee? “Thanks. I read through the file and there are some notes in the system too. Here’s what I can put together. Lucy Weston, detective, assigned to the Violent Crime Squad at the eighty-seventh precinct. Member of the police department for nine years. September eighteenth, at one forty-seven a.m., accidental discharge in the detective squad room. One officer wounded in the leg. Lucy’s gun is the one that was fired. Lucy told Paul that she wasn’t in the squad area when the accident happened.” Lexi glanced up at Jesse who was leaning back in the chair taking it all in.
Lexi continued. “She left her service weapon in the top right desk drawer. She says she was in a different part of the precinct when it happened. And this is underlined in the file: Billy said Tony is the shooter. It was a joke.” Lexi looked up briefly, only long enough to make slight eye contact with Jesse, before she turned back to the file.
They sat together in relative silence, Jesse jotting notes while Lexi searched online for cases with similar facts. They both jumped when the office buzzer sounded.
Knowing her place, Lexi made her way to the reception area without being prompted.
While Lexi hadn’t given much thought to what Lucy Weston would look like, she’d expected a hardier woman. Lucy was taller than she—but then, at five-two, most people were—but had a slight, almost fragile frame, capped by a mass of dirty-blond hair. Lexi approached the door and Lucy looked up, revealing soft gray eyes. She had a tough but feminine appeal. The word weathered popped into Lexi’s mind. Lexi knew her age from her file, but standing just outside the door shifting nervously from one foot to the other, she seemed older than her thirty-one years.
When Lexi opened the door, Lucy formally reached out her hand. “Jesse?” Her voice held both anxiety and relief.
“No, I’m Lexi. The intern?” Lexi returned the woman’s firm handshake. “Follow me, Jesse’s in the conference room.”
They took the brief walk to the conference room, passing empty offices as they went down the hall.
“Detective Weston. Jesse Ducane,” Jesse said, extending her hand as they entered the room.
“Please, Lucy’s fine.”
“Have a seat, Lucy.” As Jesse gestured to the chair across from her, Lexi realized Jesse had rearranged the chairs so she and Jesse were set up side by side. Lexi took her place next to her boss.
“First of all, let me apologize about Paul,” Jesse started. “I’ll be working with you going forward. Myself and Alexis Russo, my intern.” She gestured toward Lexi. “You made it out okay?”
“It was like you said, I told them I needed to run it by my lawyer first before signing anything. They seemed so stunned, that I just walked out the door, no problem. It was kind of odd, considering they had just spent an hour trying to convince me to resign.”
“If you resign, then the department has their scapegoat. The whole thing becomes your fault, but you’re gone, so the department comes out looking good. Obviously we’re not going to sign it.” Jesse leaned forward. “But there’s still a lot missing for us. We read through Paul’s file but there’s not a real clear picture of what went on that night. I hate to do this to you, but we’re going to need you to go over it for us, step by step.”
Lucy nodded and reiterated her story including scant more detail than Paul’s file contained. Lexi could tell she was leaving details out and wondered why. But she sat silently and watched and listened.
Jesse dove right into the questions. “This incident happened at approximately two in the morning?”
“Yeah, around then.”
“You work midnights?”
“No, I’m four by. Sorry, four to midnight.”
“Were you on overtime?”
Lucy hesitated for a second. “No. Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
There was a short pause before Lucy answered. “Look. It’s complicated.” Clearly she wasn’t planning on elaborating, but Jesse won the waiting game. Lucy started and stopped several times before finally continuing her story.
“My squad, we see a lot of shit. And so a lot of times after a case is over or even after a rough night, we stay and hang out a bit. You know, to unwind.” Lucy looked back and forth between Jesse and Lexi. Her smoky gray eyes revealed the stress she was trying very hard to conceal. “You do it so you don’t bring it home with you. The job, I mean.”
Jesse nodded in response. “This unwinding, does it involve alcohol?”
There was no immediate answer. Lucy looked down at her hands and then up to the ceiling as though the answer might be written somewhere around them. She let out a deep breath as she stretched her neck against the back of the large boardroom chair, clearly fighting the urge to talk.
Lexi had heard the expression blue wall of silence. Watching Lucy hem and haw over what she should and shouldn’t say out loud, she supposed she was seeing it in action. It was painful to watch.
Finally, Lexi couldn’t take it. She leaned forward, stretching her arms across the tabletop, almost touching Lucy to reassure her. She spoke with sincerity. “Lucy—Jesse is going to help you. She’s the best. But you have to trust her. Tell her everything. She has to know what she’s dealing with. It’s the only way she can help you.”
Lucy took another breath before meeting Lexi’s gaze. “You don’t understand. It’s just part of the job. You see all this crazy, horrible stuff and you need to deal with it. Before you go home. Because the people in your real life, they don’t understand. They don’t get it. So it helps to be around the people who do. So yeah, after the tour, the bottles come out. And we sit back and have a few laughs and relax. It’s never on duty. It’s not like we’re a bunch of drunks or anything. But yeah, to answer your question, yeah, I was drinking that night. We all were,” she finished, looking directly at Jesse, an air of defiance in her voice.
“Okay.” Jesse put her pen down and lightened her tone. “Just so there’s no confusion later on. You didn’t fire the gun, right?”
“No, I didn’t fire the gun. I wasn’t even there when it happened,” Lucy snapped back.
“But it is your gun that went off. You are sure?”
“Yeah. It’s mine. I left it in my drawer.”
“So what happened?”
Lucy must have heard the concern in Jesse’s voice, because her anger dissipated some. “It’s this new kid. I guess he was trying to do some kind of practical joke.” Lucy shook off a halfhearted laugh and rolled her eyes as she explained. “Tony Raymond. He shouldn’t even be in the squad. The thing is, my squad, my team, it’s a pretty elite spot. We work good cases, and we catch bad guys. Real bad guys. The people you want off the street. Rapists, pedophiles, real pieces of garbage, those are the guys we go after. And we’re pretty successful. So it’s a tough unit to get into. And because of that, we’re all pretty tight with one another. But like six months ago, Tony gets assigned. He’s only on the job a few years, but his uncle is some big shot, an inspector, I think, so he gets assigned to our unit. And it’s bullshit, because it really doesn’t happen that way on our squad. We all made our bones to get here. I swear to God, there’s not one hook, until this fucking idiot gets assigned. The irony of it all is that he was a firearms instructor before he came to Violent Crime.” Lucy snorted in disgust as she rocked back in her chair.
“Tony is the guy who actually fired the gun.”
“Yep.”
“And you know that because”—Jesse flipped open the file—“it says here…Billy told you.”
“Not just Billy. Everybody. All the guys in the squad were talking about it when I got back. Tony even apologized to me. He was actually crying. Said he was just trying to play a joke. But that was all before IA got involved. As soon as that happened, everybody clammed up. All of a sudden, nobody remembers anything. Nobody was paying attention.”
“Why?” Lexi interjected, disbelief apparent in her tone.
“Because of the uncle.” Lucy’s voice was calm and collected. “He has a lot of juice. Doesn’t want the kid’s name sullied. Or his own, for that matter.”
Lexi pushed her laptop to the side. “Would it really be that bad? I mean, I know this is going to sound stupid but I Googled accidental discharges before you got here and they seem, well, not uncommon.”
“I know.” Lucy nodded. “Believe me, I’ve heard about them happening before too.” Her tone indicated that she was clearly still trying to figure it out herself. “We all thought it would just be glossed over. That’s basically what we were told initially, mostly because it involved Tony.” Visibly annoyed, she cocked her head to the side. “But something changed. I wish I knew what,” she said, nearly under her breath.
Lexi still couldn’t wrap her head around it, but she worried she was talking too much—after all, she was only a student. She caught Jesse’s eye, and Jesse’s subtle nod gave her the go-ahead. She asked, “But would the repercussions really be that bad for the other detectives if they were just honest about what happened?”
“I don’t know. They’re scared. In a way, I don’t even blame them. They’re afraid of retaliation. Like I said, it’s a great unit. We all worked hard to be there. Nobody wants to lose their spot. So I guess they’ll do what they’re told.”
Jesse picked up her pen. “When did the internal affairs unit get involved? You said it wasn’t right away.”
“I don’t know exactly. In the beginning our captain told us all that the incident was being kept quiet. Nobody got hurt, not really—seriously, it was basically a scratch. The bullet tore through Will’s pants and barely grazed his leg. I heard the department was working with him to make sure he was taken care of. He was getting ready to retire anyway. Now he’ll actually get a better package.” The corner of her mouth turned up a little at that realization. “Anyway, nobody wanted bad press and so we were told to keep our mouths shut. They told Tony that he would have to take a rip, like some kind of discipline for the incident. Then the Cap told me that because it was my gun, I might get a written reprimand for violating policy on securing your firearm properly.” She pursed her lips in frustration. “Then something changed. It got all spun around. All of a sudden the whole thing is my fault. Because it was my gun and suddenly I’m the shooter. And I have to take the hit for everything. When I wasn’t even there and everybody, I mean everybody, knows it.”
“Where were you, again?” Jesse asked the question offhandedly, although Lucy had yet to mention her exact location at the time of the shooting.
Lucy broke the eye contact she had used to get her point across. She looked down at her fidgeting hands. “I was downstairs. In patrol. I went to see the lieutenant.” The anger was gone from her voice, replaced by something decidedly different.
Jesse cocked her head to the side and crinkled her brow, effectively asking why without actually saying it.
“We’re friends,” Lucy offered in explanation, still unable to meet either woman’s stare.
“Did other people see you there?”
Lucy shook her head and curled her mouth in a frown.
“How long were you there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe forty-five minutes.” She was visibly uncomfortable, picking at her short fingernails repeatedly. “We met up in the bunk room.” Her neck was blotchy and her cheeks had reddened. Her voice was just above a whisper. “Sometimes we go there for privacy. To talk. We’re friends,” she said again, guilty as sin.
