It was nearly an hour later when Officer Edwards sauntered into the apartment with his thin blue line traveler coffee mug in hand and close behind him. Perhaps Matt’s opinion was affected by his hate of the lazy officer, but he always thought Edwards had an ogre-shaped head. The man had pudgy cheeks and eyes spaced just a little too far apart. Matt felt bad for all the rookies fresh out of the academy who were forced to have him as their Field Training Officer. There weren’t many worse ways to be introduced to the department than learning from that turd.
Edwards whistled as he stepped over pieces of the bathroom door in the hallway, “Man, you guys made a mess in here.”
Taylor popped her head out from one of the kids' bedrooms to see who it was then quickly returned to the bedroom where she interviewed and distracted the two sisters. Taylor lost at rock, paper, and scissors and had to deal with the kids. It wasn’t that Matt or Taylor didn’t like kids, but neither had any experience handling them. At least Taylor had a bunch of nieces and nephews to talk with and babysit. Matt was a lone child and hadn’t babysat a day in his life.
When no one responded to his comment, Edwards gave himself a tour of the apartment, pointing out destroyed items to his doe-eyed rookie, who followed him around like an abused puppy.
“Alright, just chill here for a sec, okay?” Matt said to Robby Conrad.
“Yeah,” Robby said. His head bobbed as he spoke. He sat in the corner seat on the couch with his hands cuffed behind his back. The combination of alcohol and adrenaline dump from their fight had an effect on the giant, turning him docile and sleepy.
Matt walked past Edwards, ignoring his eye contact to peek his head into the kid's room. “Hey, guys. How we looking?” he said, brightening his face for the kids.
The two girls sat beside one another on the bed with their dinosaur and pink polka dot backpacks between their feet. The tears had long dried and Taylor must’ve been doing a good job distracting them because the room had been filled with laughter while Matt interrogated the suspect.
“Oh, you know us gals, just gossiping and such in here,” Taylor said, and the girl with the dinosaur backpack giggled. “They just got the call. Their aunt’s here to pick them up.”
Matt gave a thumbs-up and a playful wink at the girls before leaving the room.
Edwards and Matt stepped into the building hallway to speak while his rookie watched the suspect. Matt explained the story to Edwards as they had pieced it together. Maggie, the victim, had started the argument over some texts she found on Robby’s phone.
As always, cell phones began every domestic, Matt thought.
This culminated in Maggie slapping Robby which sent him on a tear, destroying their apartment. She called 911, and the suspect grabbed the knife, cutting her arm after chasing her into the bathroom and kicking the door down.
Edwards nodded as the two officers moved out of the way so the aunt could leave with her two nieces. Matt smiled and waved when the girl with the dinosaur backpack turned at the stairs and waved goodbye to him.
“Well, sounds like you’ve got all the story already,” Edwards said. “So, you guys want to do the report and supplement, then my rookie and I will take care of the arrest.”
A flare of fire burned inside Matt as he glared at Edwards, but before he could speak, Taylor stepped out into the hall.
“I’m sorry, say that again?” she said.
“What? You got everyone’s info already so…” Edwards’ voice trailed off.
Out of habit Matt looked down at his body camera and confirmed it was still recording. The litany of cuss words and insults he wanted to fire at this officer would have to wait.
Taylor started to speak but Matt cut her off, fearing she would not have the same restraint.
“That’s not how it works,” Matt said and pointed to two imaginary options before them with his hand. “You get all of it or none. If you want stat for the arrest, then you’re taking the paperwork, too.”
Edwards huffed and made a considerable show involving him looking at his watch and sighing even louder like an attention-seeking child throwing a fit.
“I didn’t realize how many crybaby officers we got here…” Edwards said. When he didn’t get a response, he rolled his eyes and sighed one more time before accepting to handle the call in his zone. “Alright, give me what you got, I guess I’ll do everything.”
Through clenched teeth, Matt and Taylor ripped out papers from their small notebooks with all the info on the family and their statements.
“54-58 is at the hospital where the victim was transported, they’ll have her info,” Matt said. Maggie had gone downstairs with the medics with tears in her eyes, begging Matt not to arrest her boyfriend. Matt was able to get several admissions of guilt from the suspect after Mirandizing him, so even if she didn’t cooperate in court, they might be able to get a few of the charges to stick. He ran down the evidence they had already collected and photographed, but Matt doubted Edwards was paying attention. Taylor and Matt waited in the hallway as Edwards and his rookie finished up.
Taylor glowered and mouthed the word “unbelievable” in reference to Officer Edwards.
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Matt shook his head in agreement. He felt his smartwatch vibrate and looked at who was calling.
“It’s Sarge,” Matt said to Taylor as he fished his cell phone from his pocket. “Hey, Sarge.”
“Why the fuck are the elevators not working in this damn building?” Sergeant Delray’s voice crackled from his phone’s speaker, and Taylor hid her laugh as Matt walked down the hall.
“Don’t know, maybe this is the city’s way of making sure you get your workout in for the night—my body cam is active, by the way,” Matt replied.
“I don’t give a shit. I’m not going up six flights of stairs just to pat you on the back. You got everything handled?”
Matt turned and saw Edwards’ rookie leading the suspect out of the apartment and toward the stairs. Edwards followed, scrolling through his phone. “Yeah, Edwards and his rookie are taking the suspect down now.”
“Oh, good ole Eddie decided to wake up long enough to handle his zone tonight, huh?” Sergeant Delray mused.
“He was fashionably late, so all the heavy lifting was done. A true master of his craft.”
“But you and Jess are good? Still in one piece?“
“Yeah, the blade didn’t catch us. Oh, we tried to get maintenance to fix the door but no one’s responding. We can close it, but it won’t latch.”
“10-4. Alls you can do,” the Sergeant sighed, letting a hint of his southern drawl linger in his words. “Just make sure to document it in the report.”
“Well, Edwards is doing the report—or I should say, Edwards’ rookie—is doing the report, so who knows what’s going to be in it.”
“Pfff. I’ll be goddamn lucky if it’s got punctuation. Good work up there. Come back to the station near the end of your shift to knock out your supplements for the legal intervention and use of force.”
“Will do,” Matt said as they hung up.
“He coming up?” Taylor asked as he walked over to her. Matt peered over Taylor’s body cam on her chest and confirmed the red light was off before double tapping the button on his own camera, turning it off.
“Hell no, he ain’t coming,” Matt said in his terrible attempt at a Southern accent.
“What’s he say?”
“He said we did a good job—well, I did a good job—he said you got to go explain your suicide dive to save that damn victim.”
Taylor rolled her eyes as the two slowly walked to the stairs. “If I had have known how much of a pain in the ass she was going to be, I’d have left her.”
Matt checked his surroundings to make sure no one was eavesdropping. He spoke softly, “For a second there, I thought I shot them both. I’m talking; the slack was out of the trigger when she hopped in front.”
“Damn,” Taylor shook her head as she processed how bad of a night it almost was. “As soon as she saw you aim, she bit the shit out of my arm and got loose.” Matt looked over and saw a slight browning of the skin where a bruise was forming on her wrist.
“Shit, you okay?”
“Yeah, whatever… she’s in love, I guess.”
“You can’t stop love,” Matt smirked.
They heard Edwards and his rookie check en route to booking on the radio when they had begun their descent down the stairs. At the fifth floor, dispatch raised them.
“54-52.”
“Go ahead,” Taylor said into her mic.
“Just a heads up, ma’am. We have another call in that building. A disorderly neighbor, apartment 1306.”
They both stopped as if their feet were stuck in quicksand.
“Did she say—” Matt started.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Taylor sighed before responding to dispatch. “54-52 direct, close us code 7 off of this call. Send us that call. We’ll check it out.”
They turned around and started the tiresome march up to the thirteenth floor. The complaints they made echoed around the stairwell walls.
“This is how I know there’s no justice in the world,” Taylor huffed as they rounded the tenth floor. “Edwards avoids his zone, does no work since his rookie does it all, and nothing bad ever happens to him. Then there’s us. Handles his zone. Saves those two girls and that pain in the ass woman… We’ll probably get suspended for cussing on bodycam.”
“Shit, I forgot about that,” Matt said, taking two steps at a time just because he knew it annoyed his partner.
“And now we get shafted with a BS call on the thirteenth floor of Edwards’ zone!”
Matt said between breaths, “You know, it could be worse…”
“Don’t even—”
Matt beamed a wide smile at Taylor, “It could be on the fourteenth—whoop.”
At the turn of the eleventh-floor landing, Matt ran into a pair of men coming down the stairs. There was a younger man with olive skin, a thick black beard, and a gaunt jaw in a light blue windbreaker who stumbled backward in surprise, but the second man took the brunt of the hit from Matt’s six-foot-four frame. Matt winced when he looked down and saw the age of the man’s face, who he knocked down.
Of course, it’d be the senior citizen I body-checked.
“Oh, sorry about that—you okay?” Matt asked and offered a hand to help the man back up. The man eyed the hand for several seconds as if it were a trick before taking it.
“Yes, yes—thank you,” the elderly man said with middle-eastern accent. His beard was more salt than pepper, but despite his fall, he didn’t seem hurt. Matt couldn’t help but stare at his wrinkled skin and the severe features of his face. There was a birthmark that looked like a divot at the top corner of his cheek. The young man in the blue windbreaker helped the older man to his feet, then glared at Matt.
Father and son?
“Okay, sorry again,” Matt said, letting the two pass.
Taylor, who had just been observing the situation, asked, “Where you guys heading to?”
“Just picking up my nephew,” the older man said as they continued down the stairs. “Thank you.”
Taylor gave Matt a curious look and glanced back down at the pair of men disappearing down the stairs as if something was off. Matt had been more focused on apologizing he hadn’t noticed much in the way of their behavior. While Matt and Taylor were both attentive officers, Matt did notice Taylor’s pessimistic tendencies did assist her in seeing suspicious behavior in suspects better than Matt. But that was because She saw everyone as suspects first and then as people. It was a small distinction but one that worked for her if she didn’t mind spending her life always assuming the worst of everyone.
“What?” Matt asked. Taylor stared for a moment and shook her head free from the thought.
“Nothing,” she said.
The two silently continued up the stairs until they reached the twelfth floor.
Matt smirked and turned obnoxiously to Taylor, “Twelve down, only one to go.”
The last thing Matt recalled was Taylor’s scrunched face as she swung a punch into Matt’s arm. He never felt the punch.
The force from the explosion flattened both officers to the stairwell and blew them in different directions like a tornado tossing cars. The ceiling broke apart, searing heat burned everything, and orange flames consumed Matt’s vision.
