Page 155 of State of Affairs (First Family 1)

“I get why you feel that way, but like I said before, the last two years have been insane for you professionally and personally.”

“I feel sick about this.” She took a winding path to Capitol Hill, dodging the worst of the midday traffic.

“We all do the best we can.”

“No, we don’t all do the best we can. Most of us do, but the few who don’t make us all look like shit. Stahl barely bothered with the most rudimentary investigation. I want to take another look at all his cases from the time he first became a detective. If there’re others like this one, I want to know.”

“That’d be a monumental task.”

“That absolutely has to be done. I don’t care what it takes or how long, but we’re going to look at every one of his case files. We probably ought to do Conklin’s too.”

“Jesus, Sam.”

“I’m so pissed with myself. I knew full well that Stahl didn’t do everything he could with the Worthington case. That was the first time I tangled with him, when I sought him out to see what was being done, because I couldn’t forget Lenore’s awful grief. He told me to stay in my lane and mind my own business. What was I supposed to do with that? I was a Patrol officer, and he was a detective on his way to sergeant.”

“You couldn’t do anything.”

“No, that’s actually not true. I could’ve gone to my dad and asked him to look into it.”

“And what kind of trouble would that have caused you?”

“All the trouble,” Sam said, sighing. She hadn’t gone to her dad because she’d known exactly what kind of shit storm that would’ve created for her—and her dad. “I’m really spun up about this, on multiple levels.”

“I can tell, and with good reason. Let’s sit down and figure out a plan after things calm down for you.”

“We’re doing this. I don’t care if I have to do it on my own time. We’re doing a full review of all their cases, and we’re going to own the results.”

“You’ll need to loop the chief in on this plan of yours.”

“I will.” Sam had no doubt her beloved uncle Joe would feel the same way she did. There was nothing good cops hated more than bad cops. “It probably goes far beyond the two of them.”

“Maybe so, but in the grand scheme of things, I think it’s a small percentage.”

“That’s cold comfort to someone like Lenore Worthington, who’s had to wait fifteen years to find out what happened to her son.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“We can’t move on from this like we don’t know it’s a huge problem, Cap. Please tell me you agree with me.”

“I do, but we have to find a way to do this without making things worse for the chief and the rest of us. We can’t go at it like bulls in a china shop.”

“I guess I’m the bull in this scenario.”

“You said that, not me.”

Sam laughed. “I hear you. And I appreciate what you’re saying. It’s just so upsetting to realize how many corners have been cut in places where they shouldn’t have been.”

“I wish we had a full team of cops who approached the job like you do, but the fact is we’re a massive department full of flawed human beings. Some more so than others. We’ll fix what we can and find a way to live with what we can’t do anything about.”

“I guess I can do that.”

“I’ll talk to the chief, and we’ll sit down about this after you get done moving into the White House.”

“You just had to say that, didn’t you?”

He sputtered with laughter. “Are you or are you not about to move into the White House?”

“Don’t remind me.”

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