“They asked a lot of questions. I gave a lot of answers. They told me not to talk about it and said they’d get back to me.”

There was a long silence on the other end.

“You still meeting me when I get off? I can rub your temples and you can rub my legs. Everybody wins.”

He smiled and pushed the button for the elevator. “I’ll be there,” he said. “I just feel like I need to clear my head first. I haven’t really had time to think about what happened this morning.”

She knew what it felt like to shoot a suspect, and she was pragmatic enough to know that nothing could erase the image from Charlie’s mind—not even she.

“Take all the time you need,” she said, her tone empathetic but firm. “Just know you have to take what happened for what it was. If you do that, everything will be all right.”

“Okay,” Charlie said as the elevator arrived. “I’ll call you later.”

He disconnected the call and got on the elevator, riding to the basement to report to his new temporary unit—delayed police response.

The sergeant in charge knew who Charlie Mann was, and he knew what the young officer had been through that day. He cleared a space for Mann and ran him through a quick tutorial. The sergeant didn’t need another officer to answer phones at the moment, but he knew that Mann needed to be there to clear his head.

As he donned his headset and answered the low-priority calls that came down to DPR from the radio room, Mann pondered the details of the shooting.

Could he have waited a second longer? Should he have stopped after the first shot? What if he had allowed the suspect to live? He asked himself those questions while wavering between guilt and self-doubt.

The other cops in DPR had their own inner conflicts and spent their time alternately cursing their misfortune and counting their blessings. The ones who’d been injured on duty swapped jokes and war stories about their days on the beat. The others were less apt to share, to laugh, or even to speak. These were the ones who’d taken shortcuts or, worse, taken lives.

Mann surveyed the room and saw cops he’d read about in the papers. One had been accused of colluding with a confidential informant to plant drugs and skim reward money. Another had been accused of shooting a hated neighbor under the guise of self-defense. There were a few he didn’t recognize, including the one who came to sit next to him.

“I heard they’re gonna stick you with Coletti,” said the fat, red-faced cop as he slid into the cubicle.

Mann grunted in reply.

“Name’s Frank Dougherty,” the cop said, extending his hand.

Hesitantly, Mann shook it. “Charlie Mann’s my name.”