Free Cuts Like a Knife: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 1) by M.K. Gilroy Page B

prepared and respecting my time. Instead I forced myself to keep quiet. I guess that’s why the boys stopped by and told me to keep it zipped—they knew it would be the hardest part for me.
    I think we’re coming to the end—maybe wishful thinking—of a pretty unproductive, ninety-minute interview, and I make myself refocus.
    “I don’t understand,” he says. “You said that in cuffing the alleged perp, you pushed him to the ground while your partner covered you with a drawn weapon. If the threat was nullified, why push?”
    “Tom, the punk may be an alleged smash-and-stash perp to you, from the comfort of your cushy IA office, but the knife he sliced me with was very real. Would you like to see my scar?”
    “You know the legal rules, Detective Conner; we say ‘alleged’ until a perpetrator is convicted. Don’t get off point.”
    “The bruise on my chin from a swing he took at me was pretty real too,” I say, defiant and undeterred. “You’ve been studying the report like it’s tomorrow’s final chemistry exam, so I think you know a lethal weapon, brandished at a police officer by an alleged smash- and-stash perpetrator, was recovered, bagged, and sent in as evidence. And the punk’s prints were positively identified. How many times do I have to repeat that?”
    “I understand exactly what you’re saying about the knife, Detective Conner,” he says as if speaking to a child who is a slow learner. “But I don’t understand the contradiction in your testimony.”
    “Tom, there is no contradiction in my testimony. If there’s a contradiction, maybe it is in your questions.”
    My heart is starting to race. I’m feeling nauseated. Am I in trouble? Over a punk? Had I contradicted myself in something I said?
    Another eternal pause. He looks up, closes the folder, places one hand atop the other on the table, and raises his left eyebrow with a polite, quizzical expression. I’m not going to answer an eyebrow, so he is going to have to ask it. We face off for thirty seconds, and I know that for a fact, because I count from one-Mississippi all the way up to thirty-Mississippi.
    He breaks the silence, asking, “How so?”
    Ever difficult and actually not understanding what he’s asking, I respond, “How so, what?”
    He stifles a sigh and asks politely, “How are my questions contradictory, Detective Conner?”
    “I’m glad you asked, Tom. When you asked if I used excessive force, the answer was no. When you asked if I pushed my attacker to the ground, the answer was yes. So maybe the questions aren’t technically contradictory, but neither are my answers. Yet you seem to find something contradictory there. I think your questions are ignoring an important qualifier. The qualifier is that the punk, someone who is suspected of beating a senior citizen half to death, wielded a weapon with deadly intent and needed to be restrained.”
    “And yet your training specifically prohibits using retaliatory force once an alleged perp is remanded. So pushing his face to the ground was unnecessary and extra.”
    “But he wasn’t absolutely, 100 percent remanded. I pushed him to the ground in the process of remanding him.”
    “But why with the force to create contusions and abrasions? You said yourself that your partner had a gun trained on him.”
    “Well, Tom, when you’re in the field, you learn a lot can happen between the time a dangerous criminal is initially subdued and when he is actually in handcuffs and contained in a safe space. With all the action of the previous few minutes, we didn’t know if he had another weapon or would make a desperate play for freedom that might involve additional harm to my body. If he had chosen to make things rough again, there may very well have been a moment when my partner’s gun was trained on me, not the punk.”
    Tom interrupts, “But he was flat on the ground. You had cuffed him. The hard push came afterward.”
    “Tom, let me repeat, the push was because (a)