Alex awoke the next morning just in
time to hear his alarm. 7:30; he had half an hour of privacy before the
Brendons appeared. He showered quickly and dressed immediately before
proceeding with the rest of his morning regimen. Meanwhile, he wondered what
sort of people they had been in life, what sort of work they had been involved
in. Were they the sort of people who kept to themselves, or was some social
outreach program missing its two most important figureheads?
All this consideration disappeared,
however, when Ted and Marlo showed up as Alex was on his way to work,
determined to be late as usual. Then Alex remembered the fight from the
previous night, and the way they had treated him. He refused to acknowledge
them as he stalked into the station (he noted, however, that when he swiped his
keycard, it happened to be right at 8:00:00 again), and moreover, decided that
today he would be more his old self again.
Out on beat, he repeatedly took the
duties involving the hot babes. He answered a call from a bartender downtown
who had cut a female patron off, but too late, and now she was staggering and
weaving her way down the sidewalk. Alex administered a few of the tests, but
the woman—beautiful as she was—reeked of alcohol and could not successfully
complete any of them. He guided her into the back of his police car (taking
private satisfaction that he was placing her next to Ted and Marlo), and
prepared to bring her back to the station. As he merged onto the freeway, he
glanced to his right and saw the two ghosts sitting in the passenger seat,
disgust and horror etched on their faces.
Alex raised an eyebrow
questioningly at them, and Ted replied, “She vomited back there.”
Alex rolled his eyes; now he would
have a mess to clean up before he could leave again.
Later, Alex was waiting at an
intersection when a bright-red Mustang skated right through the intersection on
a red light. Alex would have let someone else, like the patrol car down the
way, take care of it, but he’d glimpsed the wavy red hair in the front seat,
and didn’t see any reason not to take this one, just this once.
Calmly allowing the car to get just
a little ways down the road, Alex took the turn, fell in behind the car, and
turned on his lights, briefly flickering the siren so she would know she was
being pulled over. Alex had to grin at her spunk as the Mustang revved only
briefly before slowly crawling to the shoulder of the highway. He pulled to a
stop a respectful distance behind her, checked his hair, and slowly emerged
from his car, sauntering over to her window like he was boss.
She had not even lowered the tinted
window. Alex rapped on it, “Ma’am?” he called.
Very slowly—as slowly as she could
manage—the redhead brought the window down. She nailed Alex with an icy glare,
but Alex was confident enough in his abilities to not let her antagonism faze
him.
“Do you know why I pulled you over,
ma’am?” he asked politely, with a disarming smile.
She smiled back, but it wasn’t
disarmed, “Because you’re a masochistic—“ she spat an angry epithet.
Alex may have been the sort of guy
to try flirting with every girl he met, but he knew a lost cause when he saw
one. At once, he reverted to being all business. “License and registration,
please,” he instructed.
The redhead rolled her eyes, “Look,
how much will this cost?”
Alex stared at her, perplexed,
“Excuse me?”
The girl sniffed, “Just tell me how
much the ticket would cost, and I’ll pay it right here. I’m late for an
appointment in the city, and I just want to go!” The daggers had softened into
doe-eyes as she turned to him with a pitiful pout.
Alex shook his head, “I’m sorry
ma’am; I only write the tickets, I don’t deal with the payments—“
“I’ll give you double if you let me
off with a warning,” she offered.
Alex was almost scared at the way
she was not complying with his request, and the way she seemed not to care
about committing a federal offense in order to get her way. “Ma’am, I can’t
accept that,” he insisted, “and if you will not provide your license and
registration for me to write the ticket, I’ll have no choice but to arrest
you.”
“All right, fine!” The redhead’s
manner returned to the angry fire, and she quickly pulled out her driver’s
license and slipped the registration information out of her car. “Just hurry it
up, will you?”
“Now that I can do,” Alex said, accepting the card and the document
and returning to his car.
Settling into the driver’s seat, he
looked at the name.
Ted heard him gasp in surprise.
“Don’t tell me you know this one, too?” he asked.
Alex shook his head as he filled
out the ticket, “Nearly everyone in America knows ‘this one,’” he informed the
ghost, “I just wonder how many tickets she’s weaseled her way out of; she
seemed to have her methods well-practiced.”
“Speaking of ‘weaseling out’,”
Marlo piped up, “You’ve missed two calls on larceny, one pursuit, and at least
three motorist-in-distress calls while you’ve been dealing with this one
woman.”
Alex turned to her, “Now see? I
wouldn’t have missed those calls if I had just let someone else take care of
her!”
“Yeah,” Ted countered, “but you
only went after her because she was cute, didn’t you?”
Alex felt his ears burned and he
climbed out of the car and returned to the Mustang. The girl had her engine
running again.
“Here you are, ma’am,” he said,
returning her license and registration, and handing her the ticket, “Have a—“
“Yeah, yeah,” She immediately
shifted into gear and pulled away before he could finish.
Alex had to chuckle to himself as
he climbed back into his patrol car, “I could get her on speeding, probably, if
I wanted to.”
“You’ve got a call to answer,
bucko,” Marlo reminded him.
“Patrol unit found a bunch of guys
in—“
“Shh!” Alex interrupted Ted, “I’m
listening to the dispatcher right now.”
He turned up the dial, and drove
down the highway back into town, but in reality, Alex wasn’t listening to the
dispatcher. He wanted to get back to the station and fill out the forms for the
ticket he’d just written. That should kill another hour or so of his shift.
As he exited the freeway, his radio
clicked.
“Hey, Davis?” it was Detective
Gunderson, a capable, driven man from Alex’s station.
“Davis here,” Alex replied, knowing
that if Detective Gunderson was calling him, he shouldn’t mess around.
“Could you come down to 1608 Mallard
Court? Do you have any passengers?”
Alex saw the look that Ted and
Marlo exchanged as they remembered the last passenger Alex had taken. “Nope,”
he told the detective.
“Great; I need an extra car. We
just broke up a party here, and dispatch said you were the closest.”
“I’ll be right over, sir,” Alex
promised. A party on Mallard Court was still close enough to the city to be on
the more-upscale side.
When Alex arrived at the house, he
saw that the “party” must have begun sometime late the night before. He counted
two ambulances pulling away, and Detective Gunderson and another lieutenant had
their patrol cars full of hungover and stoned partiers. Gunderson brought three
scruffy men—two black and one white—over to Alex’s patrol car as he pulled up.
“Here, take these back to the
station, will you? Let Marnie know that these two are under possession with
intent,” he pointed to the black one on the end and the white man, “and this
one is under arrest for possession.”
“I can do that, sir,” Alex
responded. As the lieutenant herded the three perpetrators into the back seat,
Ted and Marlo transferred to the passenger seat.
“All set?” Alex joked as the
lieutenant closed the door.
The guys grumbled and cussed at
him.
Alex weaved around the blocks,
working his way toward the police station. Halfway between Mallard Court and
the police station, Alex happened upon the sight of a fellow “blue-shirt”
(junior officer) standing by the side of the road. He looked as if he had been
walking for some distance. Alex almost continued by him, but the young man
chased after the car so ardently that Alex felt compelled to stop the car and
pull over.
“Thanks, buddy,” the officer cried,
pulling open the door and climbing in so quickly, it was all Ted and Marlo
could do to scoot over and let him in; and where else did they have to go but
on either side of Alex in the driver’s seat? They sandwiched Alex between them;
his elbows were pinned against his sides, and he had their faces resting on
either shoulder. All three of them were exceedingly uncomfortable, but the
officer continued chatting, wholly unaware of the predicament he was causing.
“My tire blasted apart on Maple
Drive,” he explained, “and wouldn’t you know it, today happened to be the day
that I didn’t have the jack in the car to
change it! I really appreciate you picking me up like this; do you need to be
somewhere after you drop the—“ he gestured with this thumb toward the back
seat, “—load off at the station?”
“No,” Alex answered around Marlo’s
shoulder under his chin, “I have reports to fill.”
“Okay, I’ll ride back with someone
else; geez,” the officer reached past Marlo and gave Alex a nudge, “why so
tense? Loosen up a little, man! You’re stiff as a board!”
Yeah, because I’m crammed
between two people you can’t possibly know about! Alex thought to himself.
When they finally pulled into the
station, Ted immediately opened the door to let himself out—but the door was
still closed when Alex went for it. He bumped his forehead on the unexpected
window. The officer laughed, and Alex glared at Ted as he emerged from the car
and opened the door for the three perpetrators in the back.
After booking the three men with
Marnie, Alex drifted back to his desk and grabbed the ticket report to fill it
out. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon, but Alex felt like he already
spent his entire twelve hours in that car.
Oh well, he thought to himself, I just won’t take
very many calls this afternoon; it will give me a break. He smiled as he recalled the more pleasant beats
he’d had in the past, and the Ted Brendon noticed it.
“You’re not still thinking about
picking up girls, are you?” he asked, somewhat gruffly.
“And what if I am?” Alex retorted.
“What did you say?” Chris had just
been walking past his desk. Alex flushed as he realized he’d responded to Ted
aloud in a public place. “Nothing,” he told Chris. The junior officer shook his
head.
“Look,” he continued to the ghost
in a quieter tone, “I was actually just thinking about what happened this
morning,” he admitted, “and I just thought you should know that I am so tired
right now that I really don’t care about picking my own beat for the rest of
the day. You and Marlo can have at it.”
“Really?” Ted asked skeptically,
“You’re not just saying that to get us out of your hair for now, but in reality
once we’re back on the road you’re going to ignore us again?”
“No,” Alex murmured with a shake of
his head, “I really mean it this time.”
Ted stared Alex right in the eye,
and the young man briefly wondered if ghosts could read minds, because it seemed
like Ted was reading his just then. Finally, Ted answered, “All right,” and
left it at that.
Five hours later, Alex clocked out
feeling almost rejuvenated. Following Ted and Marlo’s direction hadn’t been as
taxing as he thought it would be. It was as if they acknowledged the fact that
he was too tired to fight by giving him simple, gratifying calls to answer and
patrols to run. At six o’clock, Adelaide had called him, and of course he had
taken that call even though he was on duty, but beyond that, the day had gone
by rather smoothly. Alex logged out for the day and stepped out onto the
sidewalk. Sighing, he began making his way toward his apartment.
Two blocks down from the station,
he noticed a particular group of night walkers who seemed suspicious: a young
woman walked alone, and following her at a distance of about ten yards were
three guys. At first, Alex dismissed it as a coincidence; it was just four
people walking in the same direction. After seeing the three hoods change sides
of the street right behind the girl, and adding to that the fact that they
never seemed to get any nearer to her, Alex began to get suspicious. He
continued to watch until he saw one of the would-be thugs break away from his
buddies. From his vantage point across the street, he saw the remaining two
gradually speeding up their walk to catch up to the girl, while he clearly saw
the third emerge in an alleyway ahead of the girl. They were going to block her
in, force her into the alley.
Just before the three hoods could
act, though, Alex hollered, “Hey!”
The girl finally stopped and looked
around herself. One of the guys decided to try and go for her anyway, but she
screamed and Alex ran across the street, “Get away from her!” he yelled.
The one in the alley recognized
Alex’s uniform and told his cronies, “It’s a cop!”
By the time Alex reached the girl’s
side, the guys had disappeared into the shadows of the night.
The girl smiled at Alex with
gratefulness in her shining brown eyes. Alex almost didn’t think twice about
her; she looked like she’d fit in with the Powerball crowd; he’d saved her from
the goons because he didn’t like them, not because he cared about her.
“Are you okay?” he asked, merely
because she was staring at him like she wanted him to say something.
“Yeah,” she sighed, gazing over her
forest-green skirt and adjusting her brown cardigan. “Thanks,” she told him,
looking up shyly.
Alex didn’t look at her twice. “No
problem,” he dismissed her gratitude automatically. “Have a good night.”
Alex walked back to his apartment,
satisfied with the events of the day—with the exception of the morning’s
fiascos.
“Almost everything,” he muttered as
he fell into bed and a dreamless sleep.
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