Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

wind knocked out of her, sore ribs, and a badly bruised ego, she was fine.
    ***
    John Merchant was another story. He had lost a lot of blood by the time he was loaded aboard the life-flight helicopter and flown to the University of Utah Medical Center. I sent Terry with him in case he said anything about this incident or the murder of Levi Vogue. He didn’t.
    For us, the bad news didn’t end there. The subsequent search of his home and car produced nothing that would connect him to the murder. Our best hope had been that the search would yield the murder weapon. What we did find was a refrigerator full of beer, more than a kilogram of marijuana, weighing scales, and plastic baggies—all the trappings of a small-time dope dealer. The weapon was a twenty-five caliber Beretta with the serial number filed off. Assuming he survived, Merchant was facing several new felony charges, including illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, multiple drug counts, and assault on a police officer. He’d also made himself a great candidate for having his probation revoked. Jenny Owens was anxious to go to work on that.
    As for me, I wasn’t doing so well. I’d been in this business for seventeen years, and I’d never shot anyone before. After the initial rush of adrenaline, reality was setting in. The incident unfolded in a flash. I’d shot someone. That person was fighting for his life and might die. How would I feel if that happened?
    ***
    It had been less than twenty-four hours since Levi Vogue had been killed. We had hoped John Merchant was the investigative lead that would break the case. Without evidence from the search linking him to the murder, I was less convinced that we had the right guy. We needed to determine his whereabouts at the time of the murder, and we needed to do it quickly.

Chapter Thirteen
    Kate and I spent the next two hours undergoing tape-recorded interviews with the Salt Lake City P.D. shooting team. In addition, I had the dubious distinction of being interviewed for a second time by a high-ranking representative from the Executive Director’s Office.
    Sloan had dispatched his administrative law judge, Rachel Rivers-Blakely, to do the honors. Rivers-Blakely was a tough but fair-minded attorney who had carved out a reputation while working for the Utah State Attorney General’s Office. She would recommend to Sloan whether my actions in the apprehension of John Merchant were consistent with the department’s use-of-force policy.
    Her primary responsibility in the Department of Corrections was to advise Sloan in matters relating to employee discipline and inmate grievances. In short, her job was to help keep Sloan’s ass out of a sling by limiting his exposure to civil suits from either disgruntled employees or unhappy prison inmates—and the department had plenty of both.
    At the conclusion of the interview, Rivers-Blakely informed me that I was being temporarily placed on administrative leave with pay, pending reviews by the Salt Lake County Attorney’s Office and by Sloan.
    Shooting incidents always result in two independent reviews: one by the department for policy violations, and another by the prosecuting attorney’s office, to determine whether State criminal laws had been violated. The potential consequences are serious. If criminal charges were filed against me, it would probably be career-ending, even if I wasn’t convicted.
    As I left police headquarters, McConnell caught up with me. She wanted to talk. We agreed to meet at a bar located several blocks from the police station. I arrived a couple of minutes ahead of her. I ordered a cup of black coffee for Kate and a Bailey’s Irish Cream and coffee for me.
    Kate arrived, and after a couple minutes of awkward conversation, finally got around to telling me what was bothering her. In a word, it was guilt.
    “Sam, I want to thank you and offer an apology.”
    “No apology necessary.”
    “I’m afraid I disagree. I do owe you an apology,” she said. “You’re in this mess because of something I did. If I hadn’t taken off on you when we arrived at Merchant’s home, the shooting episode probably wouldn’t have happened. I should have taken cover, rather than putting myself in a place where you had to come to the rescue. And by the way, thanks for saving my tail. Once I hit the ground, I remember two things distinctly. The first was the sensation of feeling like I’d been hit by a train, and the second was seeing