Bringing Adam Home - Les Standiford [90]
He’d left his locker on “day-lock,” he explained to Sergeant, meaning he’d closed his locker, spun the dial, then clicked in the first number of the combination and the second, leaving the dial a few spots shy of the third. It was the sort of thing many cadets did, for there was little time allotted between training sessions, and being late for roll call too often could mean washing out of the program. You’d hurry back to your locker, move the dial a few notches, grab what you needed, and hurry off.
His supervisor might have been aware of the practice, but it didn’t mean he condoned it. “You lost your fucking firearm?” the sergeant bellowed. “Do you know who cleans those locker rooms? The fucking jailhouse trusties. If you don’t come up with that pistol, we’re going to have to empty every cell and strip-search every inmate.” With that, he snatched up the phone and asked for Major Sandstrom, chief of the Dade County Corrections Department, to explain the situation. “Yes, that’s M-a-t-t-h-e-w-s,” he told Sandstrom. “No, not from Dade County. From Miami Beach.”
After a bit more consultation with his colleague, Grant hung up the phone and turned back. “Do you know what a colossal pain in the ass this is going to be? We’ll wait a few hours. Go find your goddamn gun. If you come up with it, we’ll save a hell of a lot of trouble. And if you don’t—” The sergeant broke off, shaking his head. Matthews had little doubt as to what the consequences would be.
Following lunch, the forty-man cadet class was once again assembled before the training sergeant, who wanted to make an announcement before they got back to their regularly scheduled business for the afternoon. Grant proceeded then to give the cadre a detailed account of Matthews’s profound screwup, and called for him to stand. Matthews rose, ramrod-straight, ready for the worst. “Have you found your firearm yet?” the sergeant demanded.
Matthews felt every eye in the room upon him. Many of his fellow cadets were squirming, well aware that there but for the grace of God they might be. “No sir,” Matthews responded, “but I have identified a suspect, sir.”
Grant shared a sadist’s smile with the others in the room. “Oh yeah?” he said. “And who might that be?”
“It’s you, sir,” Matthews responded.
There was a momentary silence, then a murmur swept the room. The sergeant’s face contorted. “Me? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I went to Major Sandstrom’s office during our lunch hour, sir. He told me he hadn’t received any call from you regarding any missing pistol. He didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.”
“Are you calling me a liar?” Grant said, rising from his seat.
“I’d like permission to interview you, sir. You’ve been instructing us on interviewing suspects, and I think you took my pistol to teach me a lesson. I’d like to ask if you, or anyone at your direction, might have gone to the locker room this morning and removed my pistol from my locker.”
By this point the sergeant’s face was an apoplectic mask. “Shut the fuck up and sit down, Matthews,” he said.
If he had harbored any suspicion that all of this had been something of a training exercise, the spittle flying from Grant’s lips convinced Matthews otherwise. Sometimes discretion was the better part of valor, he decided.
On the way out of the room after class was dismissed, one of his fellow cadets gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder. “You’ve done it this time, Matthews,” he said. “You’re out of here for sure.”
Matthews shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But I do know one thing. That bastard took my gun.”
His fellow cadet could only shake his head, and the two hurried off to class. Later that afternoon, Matthews returned to open his locker. Sure enough,