Twenty-Three
Erin woke up to the sound of something at her door. A scratching noise. Her hand reached automatically for the gun by her bedside. She clicked the safety off as she stepped up. If she was someone's pawn, then that meant that there was an opponent. As soon as they noticed what was happening, they were going to come after her.
The door came open a little way before encountering the chain. Erin crouched down in the little hall that the apartment tried to pass off as a kitchen and trained her weapon on the door. When the chain shattered under the weight of someone putting their shoulder into it, she waited half an instant to see who it was before she fired.
The explosion in her hand was loud enough to make her head dance around and her vision go wonky for half a second. Her ears rang. She took another shot and the guy tripped over his own feet. Erin turned him over. Poor Ryan, the guy never saw it coming. Erin didn't feel particularly bad about it.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and dialed Roy first.
"I've got a situation here."
"What's wrong?"
"There's a dead body in my kitchen."
"Are you okay?"
"Our friend Ryan tried to break in. I defended myself."
Roy paused on the other end of the line a minute before answering. "Okay, we can take care of this. You called 9-1-1 yet?"
"Not yet, no."
"Okay. I'll communicate it to your people."
"Good. Make sure you communicate that I'm going to leave my firearm on the floor and move away. I'm going to be dis-armed and waiting for them."
"Good. Will-do."
Roy showed up at the apartment flanked on both sides by L.A.P.D. They all huffed over the body on her floor for a minute. She understood the position that she was in. She could have killed someone. On the other hand, it was still her right to defend herself from someone who meant to harm her. That she was a cop also meant that certain things would be understood, and one of them was that she knew what she was doing.
None of that made the body go away, or stopped the blood from staining her kitchen tile.
Roy spoke first. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. I heard him coming in. The chain latch was shut. He broke it getting in, and I took steps to defend myself."
"Good."
They turned the body over. There was a pistol in a shoulder-holster. She didn't recognize either of the uniforms, but then again she rarely did. They got on the radio and called in a medical team. The guy was sure as hell dead, but that didn't mean they could leave him on the floor.
The two of them took their sweet time getting to her, which she didn't mind. Erin's skin was starting to crawl at the feeling of having used her gun. They were as safe as anything, she knew. She'd used them every week at the range. Shooting paper had taught her that they didn't just go off willy-nilly.
Accidents happened, sure. But they didn't happen when you were careful and smart about what you were doing. Now, though—she had been careful. She might have been smarter, but with a. .38, the odds of blowing straight through and hurting a civilian were slim.
She'd decided to kill the guy, and there he was. Dead on the floor. Roy was saying something to her, but she wasn't listening. The instant she'd pulled the trigger kept playing through her head in slow motion. Maybe she would have been fine. Maybe he was just there to talk. Did she have the right to shoot a man for breaking in, not knowing what he would do?
If she had waited, and she hadn't been safe, wouldn't she have been able to deal with that when the need arose? Maybe not. Erin knew the odds of beating someone in a quick-draw weren't good. Even if you had the gun already in your hands, you still had to worry about aiming in a high-stress situation. It wasn't a situation she would have wanted to put herself in.
But that didn't mean she had the right to kill the guy, not even if he was a murdering son of a bitch.
More than that, though, the only play she'd made, the only information she had outside of what Craig had chosen to give her, was gone now. Ryan something-or-other, suspected in the murder of a young twenty-something with dark hair from Maine under a false name, was the only link that she'd been able to make on her own.
Well, now they weren't going to be able to question him, were they?
She heard the uniform asking her a question and asked him to repeat it. "Is this firearm registered?"
"Yes."
"Good." He ejected the magazine and counted off the ammunition. Five shots left out of seven. She watched him with a detached interest. The mechanical actions made sense to her. It was what she would have done. If a detective were to show up, which they might not waste one on, then the guy would tell him.
The detective probably would believe him, but it wouldn't stop him from checking. The uniform slid the magazine back into the gun and put it back where he'd found it close enough.
"You going to be okay, Detective Russo?"
She nodded absently. Too much was going on. Too many questions that she didn't have answers to, too many things she didn't want to think or worry about.
Roy crouched down in front of her, forced her to look him in the eyes. "Russo. You're fine. We'll pull this guy's prints, and get them going in a database. We'll be able to have his full name before long."
"Good," she said, but she didn't feel up to it. Why were they still talking about this? What in the hell was she doing here? Shouldn't they have taken her into the station?
"You'll need to stay in a hotel a few days."
"Okay."
The place exploded with activity as the EMTs arrived. They weren't in any sort of hurry, knowing that the guy was dead and all, but it didn't stop the place from being far too small for six people walking around it.
"You're fine. I know this isn't going to count for much, Erin, but you didn't do anything wrong, okay? If you need to talk to anyone, you have my number. I'll follow you to your hotel, and then I have to get back to work. Don't you hesitate to call if something happens. We still on for tonight?"
She didn't know. She was too tired and too scared to make decisions like that. Her head hurt and all she wanted was to sleep. But she was afraid that going back to sleep would just show her images of what had just happened. She didn't say any of that.
Instead, she nodded.
Roy gave her one last long, uncertain look before he put a hand on her knee and stood up.
"You're going to be alright, Erin. Trust me. You're going to be just fine, okay? Don't worry about anything. We'll look into this guy, and we'll find out who he works for. Who he works for, and any other information we can get ahold of."
"Thank you," she said softly. She wasn't sure it was right to be thanking him for any of this. Was he taking it easy on her because of what had happened between them?
"Don't mention it."
She took a deep breath and let herself sit back a second before getting up to follow him down to her Jeep. She didn't feel up to driving, right now. But sometimes you had to do things you didn't want to do.
She'd learned that a long time ago, and had it hammered home almost every morning for years. Now it was little more than automatic.