Free Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You by Laurie Lynn Drummond Page A

we didn’t ask about his fiancée, Ellen. His grades dropped some, but he pushed himself hard in the gym and out on the firing range. We never mentioned Katherine, although we saw her on occasion, slipping in during lunchto sit with Richard for a few minutes out in the breezeway. The cadets who hadn’t been on our shift tended to find excuses to walk down the breezeway past them for a soda or a cigarette. Richard and Katherine always nodded hello, but that was all.
    With only three weeks left until graduation, Hawkins washed out as expected, unable to avoid the reality any longer of less-than-passing grades and poor evaluations from his thirteenth-week ride-along. He’d never been particularly impressive on the firing range either. And he truly was a dipshit. Still, we all patted him on the back, said we were sorry to see him go, suggested he try again.
    That was around the time Richard turned morose and short-tempered; circles appeared under his eyes, and he often sat blankly during class, staring at the far wall above the instructor’s head. Sergeant Jackson gave him twenty push-ups one day at roll call for an unacceptable uniform. Katherine no longer visited at lunchtime.
    Who knows at what point she started to withdraw, or when she actually ended it, but we know it was before graduation. We learned over the years that her pattern was consistent: she selected one male from the academy class and always ended it before graduation. She would have let Richard down calmly, matter-of-factly, just before she’d handed him his graduation present, the graduation present she always gave.
    â€œEarly, I know,” she might have said. “But this is it, cowboy, between you and me, and I want you to have this before I go.”
    Did he say anything as she took the tiny St. Michael’s medallion out of its box, slipped the silver chain around his neck? Or did he just stare at her, stunned and bewildered, his heart skittering hard against bone?
    â€œThere,” she said, adjusting the medallion on his chest, her fingers lightly brushing his skin. “You know who St. Michael is, don’t you? The patron saint of police officers. You don’t have to be Catholic. He’ll keep you safe if you do the rest.” And she reached down and kissed him, a soft lingering kiss, before she stepped back and began to dress.
    â€œNice while it lasted, cowboy, but it’s over and no harm done. Go back to your fiancée. Go be a good cop.”
    Did Richard plead, cajole? Or was he more stoic, laying out arational argument? Did he explode in frustration, tell her he loved her, wanted to be with her? Whatever his approach, he would not have accepted her dismissal. He would not have walked away; he would have laid himself even more bare. Of this we are convinced.
    And why would her reply to him be any different than the reply she gave all the cadets who came before and after him?
    â€œSo you fucked the legend, Marcus. Congratulations. Now let it go.”
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    And so we graduated and hit the streets. It seems long ago. And it was, nearly twenty years now. Over half our original class has left the force—quit, fired, disabled. Two are dead, but not from the job. The rest of us are sergeants, some even lieutenants, working in departments as varied as Homicide, Auto Theft, Criminal Records, the Chief’s Office. Some of us still work uniform patrol, but we’re supervisors and rarely go out on the streets. Richard’s in Planning and Research, down at Headquarters, after a long stint in Armed Robbery. He’s married, but not to Ellen, and has two sons.
    Katherine died seven years after we graduated. The last the dispatcher heard from her, she was out with a Signal 34, a prowler, on St. Ferdinand Street. It was a busy night, full moon Friday, and when another unit finally arrived ten minutes later to back her up, it was clear she’d put up a fight: slashes and cuts, some of them deep,