Read Broken: A story of hope and forgiveness Page 8

  Chapter 5

  Breach of Protocol

  “What the heck were you thinking?” Sheriff Anderson asked as he sat in his large leather chair behind his government-issued metal desk. He was yelling at Deputies Brown and Lind in the privacy of his office with the door closed, but he was so loud that his voice could be heard by all throughout the investigations area on the other side of the door. The walls and door shook as he pounded the top of his desk for emphasis. A picture on the edge of the desk fell onto the floor, glass shattering. Wheezing, he glanced at the desk where the picture had been sitting and choked out an obscenity as he tried to catch his breath.

  The Deputies were sitting in small wooden guest chairs across from him, side by side, facing their boss. Brown had an odd mix of anger and angst etched in his facial expressions, while Lind was smiling.

  “Do you find this funny?” Anderson yelled at Lind, again, the reverberations of his rage seemed to shake the door and the room’s only window.

  “No,” Lind replied. “I told him to wait, but he went in, anyway.”

  Anderson turned his gaze and the accompanying wrath toward Brown. “Is that true?”

  Brown was tempted to do what all the deputies did when confronted with contradictions by defense attorneys: lie. Instead, he felt compelled to squirm out of the situation without actually lying, just giving his boss part of the truth. “That’s not what I remember,” he said.

  Lind shook his head back and forth. “I told you it would mess things up,” he said defensively toward Brown, then turned to look at Anderson. “What else should I have done? He is my supervisor.”

  Brown looked toward Anderson. “I didn’t think we had a choice. Anyway, the blood, dent, and cloth gave us probable cause, and for all we know he might have been slamming down cold ones or gulping down shots of whiskey, so I made the decision to move in. Exigent circumstances. Any competent Deputy—” he paused and glanced at Lind “—would’ve done the same.”

  “I don’t have to tell you how ticked off the DA is. Get out of my office so I’m not forced to fire one or both of you on the spot.” He spun his chair around to the window, back facing the deputies.

  Lind and Brown immediately stood, shoulders slumped, and walked out of Anderson’s office. After leaving, Lind turned toward Brown, his face so close to Brown’s that he could smell his coffee-tinged breath, and poked his right, very strong index finger into Brown’s chest. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Ditto,” Brown meekly replied, fear leaching through his words as he turned his back to Lind and stormed toward the exit. He hadn’t expected such a response from a rookie.

  This bites, Brown thought as he walked out of the building, a one-storied, five office annex to the County Courthouse.

  He walked to his truck, got in, and sat silent for several minutes, so long, in fact, that he dozed off. Eventually, however, he awoke and drove home, looking forward to hugging his wife of fifteen years and kissing his babies: a twelve-year-old daughter named Elizabeth, and a five-year-old son named Elijah. They would take the edge off the anger he was feeling. They always did.