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assistance. We put our guns away in order to free them from the vehicle.”
    “You violated police procedures, didn’t you?”
    “We had an obligation to render aid.”
    “Yes, I know. You were trying to be kind to the ‘kids.’ But you’re admitting that you didn’t follow police procedures, correct?”
    “Look, I made a mistake,” I blurted. “But those kids were bleeding and vomiting. The car could’ve caught fire —”
    “Your Honor?”
    “Please limit your answers to the question, Lieutenant Boxer.”
    I sat back hard in the chair. I’d seen Broyles operate many times before in the courtroom and recognized his genius for finding his opponent’s pressure point.
    He’d just fingered mine.
    I was still blaming myself for not cuffing those kids, and Jacobi, with more than twenty years on the force, had been suckered, too. But Christ, you can only do what you can do.
    “I’ll rephrase that,” Broyles said offhandedly. “Do you always try to follow police procedures?”
    “Yes.”
    “So what’s the police policy about being intoxicated on the job?”
    “Objection,” Mickey shouted, leaping to his feet. “There’s evidence that the witness had been drinking, but there’s no evidence that she was intoxicated.”
    Broyles smirked and turned his back to me. “I have nothing further, Your Honor.”
    I felt huge wet circles under my arms. I stepped down from the witness stand, forgetting about my leg injury until the pain called it sharply to my attention. I limped back to my seat, feeling worse than I had before.
    I turned to Mickey, who smiled his encouragement, but I knew the smile was fake.
    His brow was corrugated with worry.

Womans Murder Club 4 - 4th of July

Chapter 21
    I WAS SHAKEN BY the way Mason Broyles had flipped the events of May 10 and placed the blame on me. He was good at his job, that slime, and it took all my strength to park my face in neutral and sit calmly as Broyles made his closing argument.
    “Your Honor,” he said, “Sara Cabot is dead because Lindsay Boxer killed her. And Sam Cabot, age thirteen, is in a wheelchair for life. The defendant admits that she didn’t follow proper police procedures. Granted, there may have been some misdoing on the part of my clients, but we don’t expect juveniles to exercise good judgment. Police officers, however, are trained to deal with all manner of crises, and the defendant couldn’t handle a crisis, because she was drunk.
    “Simply put, if Lieutenant Boxer had properly performed the duties of her job, this tragedy wouldn’t have occurred and we wouldn’t be here today.”
    Broyles’s speech outraged me, but I had to admit he was persuasive and had I been sitting in the gallery instead of the dock, I might have seen it his way. By the time Mickey stood to mount his closing argument, my blood was pounding so hard in my ears it was as though a rock band were jamming inside my head.
    “Your Honor, Lieutenant Lindsay Boxer didn’t put loaded guns into the hands of Sara and Samuel Cabot,” Mickey said, his voice ringing with indignation. “They did that themselves. They shot unarmed police officers without provocation, and my client returned fire in pure self-defense. The only thing she’s guilty of is being too kind to citizens who showed her no kindness in return.
    “In all fairness, Your Honor, this suit should be dismissed and this fine officer allowed to return to her duties without blame or blemish to her distinguished service record.”
    Mickey finished his summation sooner than I had expected. A gap opened behind his last ringing words, and my fear poured in. As he sat down beside me, the courtroom filled with slight mouselike stirrings: papers rustling, the clicking of laptop keys, bodies shifting in their chairs.
    I gripped Mickey’s hand under the table and I even prayed. Dear God, let her dismiss the charges, please.
    The judge pushed her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose, but I couldn’t read her face. When