8. Fire Prevention Week
Fire Prevention Week
ANDY
I opened my locker and the list was there, same as every morning.
I'd typed it out my second year on patrol and taped it to the inside of the door. Everything I needed to transfer into Patrol Investigations.
[x] Blue to Gold training
[x] Search Warrant Preparation and Execution certification
[x] Fourth Amendment coursework
[ ] Forty hours of ride-along time in Patrol Investigations
[ ] Documented criminal investigative experience
[ ] Written exam
[ ] Oral board interview
[ ] Two supervisory recommendations
Recommendations I could figure out. Zeus would be the first ask. Doug was on track for sergeant. Once he made it, maybe he could write the second.
The documented investigative experience would need to come from a qualifying unit.
A rotation, a temporary assignment, real investigative work that counted on paper.
My patrol supplementals didn't check that box.
But I'd been training myself anyway, being particular with every call I responded to, documenting every read, every observation, every detail that didn't sit right.
That was what my father did as a patrol officer before he made detective. He treated every call like it mattered, and by the time he transferred, he already knew how to work a case because he'd been working them from the street his entire career.
That left the ride-along. Forty hours shadowing patrol detectives on their cases, sitting in on interviews, watching them process evidence and build files. The request to schedule those hours went through my direct sergeant.
Which meant I'd have to talk to Elliot.
I stared at the line until the letters didn't mean anything anymore. Years of preparation. The courses, the supplementals, the late nights building this file. And the one thing standing between me and the transfer application was a signature from the man I'd walked out on a few weeks ago.
I could ask him. I'd have to, eventually. It's not like he could deny the request. For what? Because we broke up? That would be a nice interesting conversation with HR. A sergeant blocking his patrol officer's career development because she stopped sleeping with him. I almost wanted him to try it.
I sighed and pulled my bag from the hook.
I'd give myself time. Until I was confident I could face him without giving him the satisfaction of seeing what it cost me. Maybe I'd email him next week. CC Human Resources. Professional. Documented. A paper trail he couldn't touch.
Yeah. That was what I'd do.
I closed the locker and headed for my desk.
"Walsh."
I stopped halfway across the bullpen. Burns was in his doorway.
"I need you for Halloween night. Patrol in the residential neighborhoods, trick-or-treating hours through midnight. People tend to be more cooperative around a female officer when there are kids involved."
"I'll be there, Lieutenant."
"Good." He leaned against the frame. "Are you set for the school presentation this afternoon?"
"I'm set."
"Good. Let me know how it goes."
The school gymnasium smelled like floor polish and poster paint.
A banner across the far wall read Fire Prevention Week in red block letters, and rows of small chairs faced the staging area.
Cops on one side of the staging area, firefighters on the other.
A display table near the door held plastic fire hats and coloring books about stop, drop, and roll.
I found the officer coordinator, confirmed the schedule, and took my position near the side entrance. My job was straightforward: talk to the kids about home safety, answer their questions, be visible.
The firefighters had the main stage. Engine 110 was parked outside the gym doors, driven onto the school grounds so the kids could climb on it after the assembly.
Travis was helping a kid try on a fire helmet, crouched down with a patience I'd never seen on him.
The whole crew looked different here. Softer, less brusque.
Nothing like the guys who threw steak knives at dartboards and challenged me to bench press competitions.
Captain Thompson gave his presentation about fire safety, escape plans, what to do if your clothes catch fire. I gave mine about home safety, emergency numbers, what to do if you see a stranger. The kids asked questions.
Do you carry a gun? Yes.
Have you ever caught a bad guy? Many times.
Are you a real cop?
I showed them my badge and they believed me.
After the presentations, the kids lined up to climb the fire engine. I felt a tug on the hem of my shirt.
"Excuse me?"
A little girl, maybe six, her head tilted up, studying my uniform with absolute concentration.
Blonde hair. A pink bow clipped to the top of a ponytail.
Her blue eyes moved from the badge on my chest to the duty belt on my hip to the braid pinned at the back of my head.
Something about her face was familiar, but I couldn't place it.
"Hello! What's your name?" I crouched down to her level.
"Birdie." She said it like a fact, already past it. "I like your hair."
"Thank you, Birdie."
"How do you get it like that? All twisty at the back?"
"It's a braid. I wrap it up so it stays out of my way while I work."
She thought about that for a second, head tipping one way and then the other. "My daddy tries to do my hair but he's really bad at it."
I bit down on a smile. "Is that so?"
"Yeah. He can only do ponytails." She held up her ponytail as evidence. Then she looked at me again. Her eyebrows pulled together.
"I didn't know girls could be cops too."
She didn't say it as a question. She said it as a discovery, like the world had just rearranged itself in front of her eyes.
"We can," I said. "And we're pretty good at it."
She grinned, wide and unguarded, and something about it tugged at me. Like I'd seen that grin somewhere before.
A teacher called the kids back to line up. Birdie looked over her shoulder, then back at me.
"Bye!" She waved and ran off to join her class.
I watched her go, still trying to place the face.
She was almost back to the line when she broke off and ran toward the crew. She threw her arms around one of them, and he crouched down and kissed her forehead.
"See you tomorrow, Daddy!"
Wyatt Brooks straightened up and watched Birdie run back to her teacher.
Blonde hair. Blue eyes. The grin I couldn't place.
His daughter.
I'd been hearing a child's laughter from across the street for weeks. Through open windows, on the porch, drifting across the block on quiet evenings. I always assumed it was coming from one of the other houses. I never once connected it to him.
The guy who grinned at me on scene calls, who sat down beside me at the bar without being invited, who spotted me at the gym with his hands hovering over the bar.
That was a man with a family. A daughter meant a mother.
All those times he'd turned on that charm, the jokes, the conversations at The Lantern, walking me home like it meant something.
There was a woman somewhere raising his child.
My stomach dropped.
A few days ago, at the gym. The tightening in my stomach that had nothing to do with the weight. I noticed his arms. His shoulders. I lay on that bench, looked up at him, and felt something I hadn't let myself feel since Elliot and I broke up.
The whole time, he had a daughter and a wife at home.
I'd been looking at a married man the same way Elliot's other woman had been looking at mine.
I picked up my bag and walked out of the gymnasium before anyone could see my face.