Page 18 of Justice for JoElla

“Wow. That’s…”Exactly what Mick told me, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t. “Horrible. I mean, really horrible. So you lost your job?”

“Yeah. And lost my medical license for a year. Hence the EMT gig.”

“Long way down for you.”

“Actually, long way up from unemployment,” Brandon said and thanked the server as she set his beer and cheeseburger on the table. “It’s been hard. Really hard.”

“I know the feeling.” The minute the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them.

“How so?”

Well, fuck me and all my horse’s ponies, her brain groaned. “I had an incident of my own.”

“Yeah? Couldn’t be worse than mine.”

“You don’t think so? I killed a fourteen-year-old boy.”

Brandon’s eyes bugged. “No shit?”

“No shit. Gang banger wanna-be. It was pretty awful.”

“Yeah, but he was armed, I’m guessing?”

“With a water pistol. But the red tip was missing, so I didn’t know it was plastic.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. And then the bangers who put him up to it started firing on us.”

“Damn! You’re lucky to be alive!”

“If it weren’t for my partner, I wouldn’t be.”

“So Mick saved your life?”

“No. I was a Taylorsville Police Department officer. Roy just hired me. I haven’t worked for SpencerCounty for very long.”

“Oh. I see. So what happened to your partner?”

JoElla sighed. “He got a promotion and a medal. And I got booted.”

“Wait. What? Booted? Why? You made a mistake anybody could’ve made! Hell, I wouldn’t have known the difference. I would’ve shot him too.”

“Yeah, but I’m supposed to know the difference, although I’m not sure how. And when they found out…” She stopped, but not soon enough.

“Found out what?”

She’d grilled him until she got him to tell her everything she already knew, so leading him into the discussion, even accidentally, and sharing nothing was unfair. She knew it?didn’t really care, but knew it deep down.Tell the man the truth, JoElla’s mind whispered. “That we’d been having an affair.”

“What did that have to do with the shooting?” Brandon asked innocently.

“Because.” How to explain it? “Because, according to the good ol’ boys network, it clouded my judgment. But according to the department, apparently that made him a stud.”

“They didn’t…”

“No. They didn’t, but they did in so many words. Who promotes a guy who’s messing around on his wife with his partner?”

“Did you know he was married?”