“Well, Henderson suggested it. Thought maybe he was a bum or something, y’know? Potentially dangerous.”

“A bum?” Jack looked up with raised eyebrow, mouth opening as  if to say something else. He thought better of it and went back to writing the police officer’s statement. His pen hovered over the scattered reams of paper on his desk. He looked up again, “What made you think that?”

“Well, like I said; Henderson suggested it. Thought he was probably right. I mean, we found him lying under a bridge, y’know?”

A few brief moments passed between the men while they looked at each other expectantly. Jack waiting for that statement to be clarified and the officer imploring the him to understand without further explanation.

“Right. You saw someone lying under a bridge and you thought he was a bum?” Jack went back to recording the interview.

“Yeah.” The officer’s brow slightly furrowed itself on hearing his own thoughts for the first time since the incident. They didn’t reside there for long, however.

“What did you do on finding this ‘bum’?”

“We gave him plenty of warning.”

Another  moment of silence passed between the men this time Jack threw in a dry look for good measure. “What did you do when you found him?”

“We called out. Told him to stand up. I mean, we let him know we were the police then told him to stand up.”

Jack almost winced, “You told him to stand up?”

“Yeah, but he didn’t so we said it again and he started saying something. Couldn’t make it out; he was…incoherent.” The officer looked almost pleased with himself for managing to throw in a four syllable word. “Henderson said he was probably wasted, being a bum an’ all.”

“I’m sorry, wasted? Could you be more specific?”

“Oh, yeah, uhh…drunk.”

“Carry on”

“So then Henderson said we should get the tasers out just in case he got violent.”
Jack scrawled furiously  as he wrote the officer’s words. These were just notes, he had a voice recorder on his desk in case he missed anything. He doubted the officer had even noticed. “You got your tasers out in the event that the inebriated drunk got violent?” 

“Yeah. We kept telling the guy to get up but he just kept ignoring us. Henderson shot him first. Just a quick one, mind you. Didn’t make a difference, the guy started shouting, wasn’t making a lick of sense. Thought he was gonna start fighting us or something so I shot him too, just in case. I think Henderson lit him up the same time I shot.”

The officer looked up at Jack who met his gaze with a monstrous frown, “Mm-hmm.”

“So uh, we only did it a couple of times, lit him up I mean, y’know?”

Jack realised that the officer had no idea that the Department of Internal Justice could look at the circuits of every taser in use and within 5 minutes be able to tell exactly how many shots were fired and their intensity; he’d already received the report.

“Nineteen,” Jack’s eyes had almost become slits as he stared this man in the eye, as if trying to bore this number into the officer’s mind, “Nineteen,” he repeated softly, shaking his head.

“Oh god.” Colour drained from the officer’s face as he repeatedly swallowed from, what Jack hoped, was an effort not to vomit. “It couldn’t have been! I mean, we were only there for a couple of minutes before we…and…,” his eyes grew large.

Jack decided to finished the sentence for him, “and there’s a legal limit of 3 high level shots in one minute, meaning six shots in 2 minutes. Max.”

The officer had become very quiet, “Shit. But we called an ambulance. Henderson said we should do that. The guy had passed out, see?”

“I can imagine”

“So we did that and the meds came and we left them to it. We got another call a couple of streets away. Figured we’d go check it out and let the meds take care of the drunk. We didn’t know! How could we have known?”