Page 106 of Forged in Secrets

“My former partner’s name is Josiah Everett, and he’s a good man,” Ben said firmly.

Grace let out a sigh of relief. “Present tense. Good. You had me nervous that you accidentally shot him or something.”

“Thank God, no, I did not shoot him. He’s alive and well, last I heard.”

“Do you guys still talk?”

Ben’s chest felt tight. That was a complicated question.

“No, but I wish him well.”

“So what happened?” Grace asked. “Why’d you get kicked off the force?”

“We responded to a call at a trailer park. Old lady heard a neighbor woman screaming and called 911.”

“Domestic?”

He nodded. “The guy answered the door, hammered drunk. We could hear a woman sobbing inside and we demanded he let us in to check on her. He refused, screaming about a warrant, the usual nonsense, no matter how much we explained to him what his actual rights were when we were facing an immediate threat to another person. The suspect was unpredictable. He slammed and locked the door without warning, and we heard the woman screaming again.”

Grace reached over and placed her hand on top of his as a patient in a wheelchair rolled past them. Ben was glad for a moment to breathe. The memories of that night still bothered him, even after all these years, but now that he was talking, he realized that it felt good letting the story out. Grace of all people would understand.

No matter what she went through, she never allowed darkness to dampen her light. She hadn’t let her trauma build walls around her heart.

“I started trying to break down the front door,” he continued. “Josiah ran to the back and started trying to get in that way. I could see the windows were all covered with planks. The glass was long gone. The woman was crying and begging for her life, and I was starting to panic a little.We both were. We should have grabbed him right away, but we didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you?” Grace asked, her face twisting in puzzlement. Ben didn’t blame her for being confused. He and the rest of his brothers generally knew how to act with conviction when necessary. Second-guessing wasn’t really their style.

He wanted to explain, but he didn’t want to make excuses. Not any more.

For years, he’d tried to blame everyone and everything but himself and Josiah, but the truth was, he’d let worries about his reputation and his career override what he knew was right in the moment. And in the end, he was worse off than he would have been had he just shoved the man in cuffs from the jump.

“You’ve seen how the police are treated by the media and by the general public when mistakes are made,” he said carefully. “SAPD saw the writing on the wall. Diversity training, sensitivity training, de-escalation training–some of it was helpful, some of it wasn’t, but it sent a message to me and my fellow officers: if you screw up out there, we’re not going to have your back.

“The suspect that night happened to be a black man. We both knew that we had to tread carefully, so we did. We talked to him at the door. We tried to de-escalate. Later, of course, with time to think, we realized we hadn’t even followed the training as well as we might have, but in the moment…it’s a lot harder than people realize to make the right call.”

Ben felt gooseflesh rising on his skin as he remembered. The pounding on the door. Wiping sweat from his brow. Shouting at the man as his girlfriend sobbed in fear.Not knowing where exactly his partner was. Calling for backup that wouldn’t make it in time anyway.

“At the end of the day, we both used poor judgment. The man was in that trailer with the woman he’d been beating up, and we were on the wrong side of the wall.”

Grace hadn’t taken her hand off of his, and he drew strength from her touch. At least she’d know the truth, whatever she felt about it. Or about him.

“I heard glass breaking, and I gave up on the front door and ran around to the back. I made it through the door to the laundry room just in time to hear one gunshot, and then another. I remember how my heart was pounding. I could hear the girlfriend screaming, and I guess I was yelling too, but I don’t really remember what I said.”

Ben paused, pressing his eyes shut for a long moment as Grace squeezed his hand tighter. Usually, he didn’t think about that night. He preferred to push it down deep, where the what-ifs and the could-haves lost their power to paralyze him. But just like his panic attack on their flight to South Padre Island, sometimes fear had a way of forcing you to face it.

“The suspect was on the floor of the living room, bleeding out. Josiah was trying to revive him, but it was very obvious he wasn’t coming back from two shots to the chest at close range. The girlfriend was hysterical.”

“Did Josiah explain what happened?”

“It wasn’t until later that we got a chance to talk about it, and by then, the investigation was underway, the media had shown up, and it was obvious nothing looked good for Josiah. The guy’s girlfriend was covered in bruises, and the situation was chaotic. Josiah was yelling at him to put his hands up, and the suspect didn’t comply. He thought the guy was reaching for a weapon.”

Ben swallowed hard.

“Josiah was scared for his life. He did what he felt he had to do.”

“The guy wasn’t armed, was he?” Grace asked.

“No. No weapons were found in the trailer at all. Just a small amount of dope, and of course, his obviously injured girlfriend. Like I said. Didn’t look good for my partner.”

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