Page 71 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
I can’t wait to grill my mother about this. All these years of judging my boyfriends and she married a gangster. Unbelievable.
My father turns brisk. “All right. Are you ready to give your statement to the police?”
Though I’m dreading rehashing it once again, it has to be done. I nod, paling a little.
“I’ll be right here with you. Just tell them what happened, exactly how you told me.” He pauses. A dark note creeps into his voice. “And don’t let their attitude affect you.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re LAPD, Chloe. They’re his coworkers.”
“So? Why should that make a difference?”
“There’s a code of loyalty among police. It’s a brotherhood, not unlike a gang, if truth be told. They have each other’s backs. In cases of domestic violence, many times the responding officers won’t report the attack if the perpetrator is another officer. They know he can be suspended, have his firearm taken away so he’s forced to be reassigned to a desk job, even lose his job altogether. It’s considered a relationship problem, a social worker problem, not real police work. I’ve heard policemen try to convince wives and girlfriends who’ve been beaten bloody that their man is just under a lot of stress at work.”
I feel sick. “That’s awful!”
He nods. “There are also cases, especially in custody battles, where women will falsely accuse their husbands of battery or child abuse in order to get the children taken away from them. Every officer has heard his share of those stories. So what I’m saying is don’t expect to be believed. On the plus side, I’m here, and they all know who I am, so while they might not believe your story, they also won’t be stupid enough to say it out loud. And I’ll make sure the report is filed with the chief, and followed up on.”
He rises from the bed, straightening his tie, squaring his shoulders. His voice gets low and rough. “And we’re getting a restraining order. That son of a bitch is going to stay far away from you, or go to jail.”
As I hide my shaking hands beneath the blanket, my father calls the officers into the room.
It’s not anywhere near as bad as my father has warned. For one thing, one of the two officers is a woman, an attractive young Latina who listens to me seriously, nodding, taking copious notes. For another, the male officer looks like he’s been on the job all of two weeks.
I suppose he hasn’t had enough time to be properly indoctrinated into the “brotherhood.”
The entire interview takes about thirty minutes. At the end of it, the female officer, Garcia, her badge reads, casually mentions they weren’t able to get a statement from Eric yet, who, to my horror, is somewhere in the same hospital.
“Why not?” asks my father.
Officer Lawrence, the young male, says, “Because he just got out of surgery.”
My father raises his brows. “Surgery?”
“Yep. A dislocated kneecap and shattered tibia, a broken arm, a ruptured spleen . . .” He consults his notepad. “Three broken ribs, some pretty serious internal bleeding that took a long time to get under control, and a fractured jaw.” He looks up. “Had to have it wired shut. He’ll be sucking all his meals through a straw for at least a month.”
A grim smile spreads over my father’s face.
Officer Garcia says, “We’d like to talk to your friend, Ms. Carmichael. The man who accompanied you to the hospital? We need to get his statement also.”
Fear slices through me like an arctic wind. If A.J. has done that much damage to Eric, will he be facing prosecution? Eric told me about A.J.’s prior record, I know all about the three-strikes law, and I’m pretty sure what he’s done will be considered aggravated assault. To a police officer, no less . . .
Desperate, I look at my father.
Without missing a beat, he says, “He’s my client. I’ll need to be present when his statement is taken.”
The two officers share a glance. Officer Lawrence says, “Of course. Is he here?”
From the doorway, a voice says, “He’s right here.”
Everyone turns. The officers share another look, but I’m staring at my father, holding my breath.
To anyone who hasn’t been in A.J.’s presence before, he can be overwhelming. His sheer size, combined with his crackling intensity, tends to frighten people. The way he glares at you from under his lowered brows doesn’t help.
And there’s the matter of the tattoos.
But my father merely gazes at him with a look of intense scrutiny. There’s no judgment, just a narrow-eyed, fierce assessment, a collecting of all the visual facts. He and A.J. stare at each other for what feels like a very long time.
