Free Second Watch by J.A. Jance

Tasered by members of the local police department. Naturally, the errant students were claiming police brutality, even though so far the dash cams on the cops’ patrol cars seemed to back up the officers’ claims that they had considered themselves to be in grave danger at the time.
    I’ll never understand why kids think it’s okay to come to “peaceful demonstrations” armed with baseball bats, but maybe that’s just me.
    As soon as the police-brutality claim was raised, Bellingham’s chief of police, Veronica Hamlin, was on the phone to the attorney general’s office down in Olympia, pleading for backup and for an unbiased investigation. At that point, the police-brutality investigation could have landed with the Washington State Patrol, but Attorney General Ross Connors, as the ultimate boss of both that agency and ours, was the one who made the call to use Special Homicide.
    I doubt Chief Hamlin was thrilled when she learned that Squad B, under Harry’s leadership, would be the ones handling the investigation into her department and being responsible for pulling her bacon out of the fire—or not. After all, years earlier in her role as assistant chief, Ms. Hamlin had been the prime mover behind Harry’s being given his walking papers from that very same department.
    Sometimes what goes around really does come around. Of course, Harry wouldn’t ever leave some poor street cop hanging out to dry just to get even. He insisted that the investigation be scrupulously unbiased, which is why, as soon as it came up on Friday, Harry had put Mel in charge. She had spent Saturday and Sunday in Bellingham conducting interviews, and had returned to Seattle late Sunday evening so she could be on tap Monday morning for my surgery.
    “You know you can’t do that,” I said. “Harry needs you.”
    “Veronica Hamlin is a witch,” Mel said. “She’d sell those two poor cops down the river in a minute if she didn’t think that ultimately it would make her look bad.”
    “Which is why you need to go to work instead of hanging around here looking after me.”
    “What’s the matter?” Keith asked, grinning at her. “Don’t you trust us?”
    A lady waltzed into the room carrying my breakfast tray. The food looked better than it tasted. The omelet was rubbery, the orange juice was anything but fresh squeezed, the toast was unbuttered and cold, and the coffee was only remotely related to the high-test stuff we make at home, but I was hungry enough that I ate it all. And I was glad when Mel gave me a breezy good-bye peck on the cheek and then took off rather than sitting there watching me eat.
    True to Keith’s word, the PT ladies appeared the moment breakfast was over. Once again, they pried me out of bed. Then they put a second hospital gown on backward to cover my backside while we hit the corridor and walked. I wasn’t as worried this time, not as much as I had been the day before. I noticed that there were lovely pieces of art lining the wall—something that had escaped my notice the day before. I also noticed that this time the nurses’ station didn’t seem nearly as far away as it had the first time we went there. I climbed back into bed, proud of myself and thinking that was it for the day.
    “Oh no,” the therapist told me with a laugh. “Next up is occupational therapy. They’ll be here in an hour or so. Those are the people who will teach you to go up and down stairs and get in and out of beds and cars.”
    Again, I wanted to say, “Already?” I guess it would have been more of a whine than a question, but my ringing cell phone spared me from embarrassing myself.
    “How’s it hanging?” Harry asked.
    I already warned you that the man doesn’t have a politically correct bone in his body.
    “Better than I expected,” I said.
    “Thanks for insisting that Mel come in,” he said. “I need her bird-dogging the situation in Bellingham. Can’t afford to have any screwups on that one. With you out of