0700 hours.
The best part of the late shift is the moment I take my gun belt off. Not because I hate the job. I don’t. Eighteen years in, if I hated it, I’d have found something else to do by now. I just like the moment when the weight comes off my hips, and I can finally breathe like a civilian again.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, it was after seven-thirty. The neighborhood was already waking up, while I was ready to crawl into bed. I shut off the engine and sat there for a moment, both hands resting on the steering wheel. My shift was over. No radio. No dispatch. No sirens. No Miller. That last thought made me smile despite myself.
I grabbed my bag and headed inside, kicking my boots off near the door. The house was quiet, exactly the way I liked it after a shift. I dropped my keys on the counter, pulled the elastic from my hair, and ran my fingers through the mess of red I’d spent the last eight hours keeping shoved behind my ears. I should have been thinking about sleep. Instead, I was thinking about my new partner. Miller.
Eight years on the job. Former Marine. Confident as hell. Sarcastic. Annoying. Competent. That last one bothered me more than the others. I’d expected another transfer with something to prove. Instead, when the shooting call came through, the swagger disappeared, and the cop underneath it showed up. Focused. Controlled. He knew what he was doing.
I noticed. I just wasn’t going to tell him that. Not yet.
I poured myself a shot of tequila and grabbed a cold Stella from the fridge, then leaned against the kitchen counter, staring out the window. My reflection stared back at me. Wild red curls everywhere, uniform wrinkled, makeup long since given up, and eyes that looked like they’d been awake for three days instead of eight hours.
Forty-two. Eighteen years on the job. Divorced. And apparently still stupid enough to get curious about people. I shook my head. “Don’t even start, Sienna.”
Miller was my partner. That’s all. And if I kept reminding myself of that, maybe I’d eventually believe it. I finished my drink, headed toward the bedroom, and glanced at the clock on my way. Almost nine. Tonight was another shift. Another eight hours. Another opportunity for Miller to get on my last nerve. I had a feeling he wouldn’t disappoint me.
On a kickstand, the leaned. The lineolum kitchen floor, the rain came down heavy. Weeping through the tin roof of my rental single-wide trailer, It was approaching time for work and I had just finished pollishing my Kawasaki and reading.
She had a gift of spots and sad eyes laying at my feet with her head of my shoes…“And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.” I was reading to Fifi, my Basset Hound, and best friend, “A Tale of Two Cities”. I adopted her from the Humane Society a couple of years ago. Training her to be “a sniffer dog” for tofu. At the moment she was suffering from an alergy and couldn’t scent the curds. She loved a good book.
2300: In the “Cookie Jar” the Boss briefed us.
We climbed back into the cruiser after leaving the station and starting our shift. I waited until Miller had settled into the passenger seat, then reached into my bag and tossed a coloring book and a box of crayons into his lap. He looked down at them. Then at me.
“Here,” I said, buckling my seat belt. “This should occupy your time.”
For a second, he just stared at me. “Seriously?” His eyebrows went up. “What the hell is this?”
“Something to keep you busy.” I gave him my most innocent smile. “You’re a Marine. I figured you’d be familiar with crayons.”
His mouth twitched. “Careful, Sienna.”
“Oh, I’m terrified.” I smiled and turned my attention back to the road. He held up the coloring book, turning it over like he was actually considering the possibilites. “You buy these for all your partners?”
“Only the ones who need supervision.” That got a laugh out of him. Damn it. I liked that laugh.
We were patrolling the East End, a stretch of industrial wasteland and crumbling tenements where the streetlights flickered like dying stars. The air smelled of ozone and wet asphalt. Miller was humming some tune that sounded like a funeral march, his fingers drumming a rhythmic, irritating beat against the dashboard of the cruiser. He looked too relaxed, his posture loose, while I felt the familiar tension coiling in my shoulders, a tight spring waiting for the first sign of trouble.
2315: Dispatched to Grace Tabernacle Pentecostal Church.
Dispatch reports a “Code 3 Sisterly Dispute” escalation.
2323: Arrived on scene. Inside Stereo speakers were blairing, “The race is run, the book is read. The end begins to show. The truth is out, the lies are old. But you don’t want to know”….Found two elderly females, Sister Beatrice (82) and Sister Maeve (84), locked in a high-stakes standoff…”float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
2325: Identified the weapon of choice. A heavy-duty, commercial-grade potato salad. It was smeared across the linoleum and Sister Maeve’s floral Sunday dress. She was pissed. “Look at what you “done” to my goddamn dress. You fuckin’ bitch.”
2345: Interviewed Sister Beatrice. She claims Maeve purposefully used store-bought mayonnaise in the church potluck dish instead of Blue Plate. Stated it was an “abomination in the sight of the Lawd.” Interviewed Sister Maeve. She retaliated by claiming Beatrice’s red velvet cake used artificial food coloring instead of traditional beet juice. Maeve deemed this “pure BS.”
The air in the fellowship hall was thick with the scent of vinegar and old grievances. As I stepped between them, the two women didn’t stop; they simply shifted their targets.The pastor intervened. He attempted to lay hands on the situation. Sister Beatrice nearly took his fingers off with her orthopedic walking cane. “Get your frickin hands off my situation.”
0215: Ocean-4, pulled into the parking lot of the Waffle House on 5th. We didn’t go inside; we just sat in the cruiser, the engine idling, watching the late-night crowd through the windshield. It was the only place in the East End that felt like a neutral zone, a sanctuary for the squad when they hear the calling for buttermilk biscuits and gravy. Miller had a small bag of hashbrowns scattered on the center console, and he was eating them with a level of focus usually reserved for bomb disposal.
“Get your hashbrowns off Ocean-4’s End Table, Miller”
“End table?” Miller paused, a hashbrown halfway to his mouth. He looked at the center console, then back at me, his expression one of genuine, confused curiosity. “Sienna, this is a Ford Explorer. It’s a vehicle. Why are you treating the cruiser like a piece of IKEA furniture…put a table lamp on it, but get out of my cheese crackers.”
“You should meet Fifi, Sienna. She’s the only one in this city who doesn’t argue with my nomenclature,” Miller replied, finally popping the hashbrown into his mouth with a triumphant smirk. He leaned back, the cruiser rocking slightly on its suspension. “And for the record, if we’re treating this car like a living room, I’m claiming the front passenger seat as my designated reading nook. I can see you already mentally decorating the trunk with a nice slipcover and some coasters.”
“Is Fifi the name you gave to your Kawasaki, or is there actually a dog involved in your life?” I asked, glancing at him. “Because if you’re naming your bike after a Basset Hound, we need to have a serious conversation about your mental health.”
“Fifi is a dog, Sienna. A very soulful, very judgmenty Basset Hound,” Miller replied, his voice softening with a sincerity that almost made me forget he was currently contaminating my cruiser with grease. “She’s the only thing keeping me sane in this zip code.”
0340: Dispatch broke the silence of the cruiser with a crackle that sounded like breaking glass. “Ocean-4, we have a report of a disturbance at the Old Mill Road compound. Caller is frantic, reporting a ‘forced spiritual realignment’ in progress.
It wasn’t your average soiree. It was a gaggle of naked Hare Krishna in a circle shaking tamborines, and chanting… “you put your right foot in, you take your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you shake it all about. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about.”
Miller was pissed.”Ok, all you mother fuckers, let’s wrap it up! Everyone, put your robes on, NOW!” I don’t care if you think you’re Howdy Doody, and we are confiscating these boxes of hot wings.” He look at Siennia and winked. The Hare Krishnas, momentarily stunned by the sudden aggression of a man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a recruitment poster for the Marines, but chanted,,,”When the twilight is gone, and no songbirds are singing.”
0700: Ocean-4 pulled police lot, with chicken bones on the End Table.
