An Unlikely Phoenix Read online

  Everything had.

  “They announce the detective’s list yet?” Marcus asked him quietly.

  Ryan glanced over at his sometimes partner. The big man’s biceps strained at the short sleeves like a bull in the chute, barely contained. He sometime teased Marcus about always wearing his little brother’s shirt to show off, but he knew that showing off the merchandise did more than get the man a few phone numbers. It served as a warning to those suspects who were on the fence about whether or not fighting their way out of a situation was a good idea or not. If Marcus got hold of them, it never was.

  “S’posed to be today,” he answered.

  “Today’s almost gone.”

  Ryan’s gaze flicked to the green numbers of the digital clock high up on the wall at the front of the room. 2059, it read. Marcus was right. In three hours, it would be tomorrow. “I guess the bosses like to create some suspense.”

  Marcus let out a subdued snort of contempt. “If they spent any time out on the street instead of sitting in their offices, conspiring and kissing each other’s asses...”

  “...they wouldn’t be brass, then, would they?” Ryan finished.

  “Truer words were never spoke.”

  Ryan let the conversation die. In the patrol car, he might have tacked on a couple more exchanges, because no one could overhear and he knew he could trust Marcus. But in the drill hall, ears were everywhere, and some people liked to make a big deal about every little thing. He didn’t need that. Things were tough enough already.

  The door swung open. The officer nearest to the door called the assembled group to attention, and everyone snapped to the position, standing ramrod straight, staring directly ahead.

  Sergeant Potulny took his time getting to his place at the front of the room. Only after he’d set his iPad on the lectern and cast a discerning gaze across the assembled shift did he give an almost reluctant, “Stand at ease, men.”

  Ryan, along with the rest of the officers, relaxed, training his eyes on Potulny. He stood in the second row, his view of the sergeant partially obscured by the braided head of Jennifer Koslaw, one of his academy mates. He wondered if the universal use of the term ‘men’ still bothered her, or if that forced social convention had just become one more adjustment to make.

  Sergeant Potulny read off the district assignments. He and Marcus had the sixth, which had become the norm over the past year. Potulny liked to say the sixth district was high crime committed by low people, a phrase he’d taken from the shift commander, Lieutenant Schwab. Nothing said kissing your boss’s ass like repeating his pet phrases.

  Pet phrase or not, it was an accurate assessment of the sixth. When the city redistricted, creating eleven smaller districts instead of the original six, the borders were gerrymandered to ensure that the sixth district held most of the high crime areas. This allowed much of the city to boast good numbers while mostly ignoring the bad numbers coming out of the sixth.

  Ryan knew they drew that assignment as a passive form of punishment, but he didn’t care. He liked to work, and there were plenty of opportunities in the sixth to do just that. Besides, while the inhabitants in the sixth might be ‘low,’ as Lieutenant Schwab and his lackey sergeant described them, Ryan found them more honest than most people these days. Not about their criminal activities, of course, but about most everything else. It was actually refreshing to only be lied to about crime.

  “Now, some of you might be wondering about the promotional list for detective,” Potulny said, his reedy voice barely filling the drill hall. “Command has informed me that the list will be posted on the department intranet before midnight. Final list position were determined based upon the last two assessment categories. For those of you who aren’t aware, those categories are political affiliations and commander’s review.”

  Potulny gave Ryan a dark glance. Ryan couldn’t tell if it was because he was happy or unhappy with the results, and where Ryan had eventually landed. He thought he might have read a sense of satisfaction in the sergeant’s eyes, which could only mean one thing – he’d dropped down in the rankings.

  The sergeant moved on, detailing some subversive activities in a park in the eleventh district, which was the posh area of downtown that had been heavily gentrified over the past five years. Ryan was secretly relieved he didn’t have to deal with the so-called subversives or the complainants. It wasn’t what he thought of as real police work.

  When Potulny finished the briefing, he gave the room another meaningful assessment. “Be safe out there, men.” He called the assembled officers to attention again. “Honor your city and your president,” Potulny said, snapping a salute to his brow.

  Much of the room followed suit, returning Potulny’s salute. When the shift salute was introduced a year ago, after the President officially nationalized all police departments, it had been characterized as voluntary. Ostensibly, it still was, but Ryan noticed fewer and fewer officers demurred. Those who did, looked down at the ground, avoiding the harsh gaze of the sergeant. That action, meant by many as a gesture of disgust, was re-cast as an expression of shame, and now those who didn’t salute were dubbed “shamers” by those who did.

  “MAGA, brothers,” Potulny said with conviction. “Making America Great, Always.”

  “MAGA,” intoned the assembled saluters.

  Potulny dropped the salute and the officers did the same. “Dismissed,” the sergeant said curtly.

  Ryan turned immediately to the back of the room and gathered up his duty bag. Marcus did the same. Sergeant Potulny remained at the lectern, watching. As Ryan walked past, headed toward the door, Potulny held up his hand stopping him. “How long are you going to stay a shamer, Officer Derrick?”

  Ryan considered for a moment, then said, “I just choose not to salute, sergeant. That’s my right, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Potulny admitted. “But why you’d choose not to be a patriot is beyond me.”

  Ryan didn’t respond.

  “You’re a smart man, Officer Derrick. Anyone can see that. But you might want to get with the program, before the program gets with you.”

  “Thank you, sergeant.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” Potulny snapped.

  “No, sergeant.”

  Potulny scowled and shifted gears. “Maybe when you see the promotional list, you’ll start to figure things out. Stop wasting your talent and get on board.”

  Ryan didn’t reply. Most of the time, he’d found that to be the best response.

  “Go on,” Potulny snapped. “Get to work.”

  Ryan obeyed, leaving the room while Potulny glared after him.

  MARCUS WAS WAITING for him in the basement sally port with the car. “What did Pot Belly want?”

  Ryan glanced around to make sure no one heard, then shook his head. “Same as always. To mess with me.”

  Marcus shook his head in disgust. “All the time with that guy.”

  Ryan put his bag in the trunk and closed it. “A man needs a hobby.”

  “I suppose. And if he wasn’t screwing with you, he’d be torturing pet mice or something.”

  Ryan opened the driver’s rear door to the car’s armory. A pair of bright orange, less lethal shotguns and jet black assault rifles were secured against the cage. When he reached for the first one, Marcus said, “Already cleared, locked and loaded.”

  “My man.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why?”

  “Makes you sound ridiculous.”

  Ryan closed the door and went around to the passenger side of the patrol car. The prisoner compartment took up the passenger half of the back seat. He popped open the door, searched under the plastic covered seat to make sure the previous prisoner hadn’t dumped something there, then gave Marcus a thumbs up. Ryan settled into the front seat, ensuring that the sliding partition in the shield between the front and rear was closed. Two nights ago, he’d been driving and Marcus forgot to close it. Once they had a prisoner in the back seat, th
e man had proceeded to spit at them through the opening.

  Marcus fired up the engine. Twelve cylinders of raw power rumbled to life. They pulled out of the basement sally port and headed to the sixth.

  On the way, Ryan logged them into the Mobile Data Computer. He quickly perused the calls that were holding, then switched the tab to the intranet announcements page.

  Nothing.

  “What do we got?” Marcus asked. “Anything good?”

  Ryan toggled back to the calls holding screen. “A few burglary reports, two stolen cars, an assault report and a trouble unknown.”

  “Let’s go with the mystery before the dispatcher tags us with paper.”

  Paper. He could hardly remember writing police reports on actual paper, even early in his career, and no one did now. But some terms died hard deaths, and this was one of them.

  Ryan selected the trouble unknown and self-dispatched them. The address was on the far side of the district and would take at least ten minutes to get there. He switched back to the announcement page and hit refresh.

  “You know, checking every three seconds ain’t going to make it pop up any sooner,” Marcus told him.

  “Keep your eyes on the road.”

  “Just saying.”

  Ryan hit refresh again, then settled back in his seat.

  “Why you want to be a detective anyway? Working patrol is where it’s at. Something different every day and when you go home at the end of it all, you’re done. Clean slate, every day.” He shook his head. “Detective goes home, he comes back to the same case files, plus maybe some new ones stacked on top of that. It never ends.”

  “Maybe. But detectives work day shift.”

  “Not robbery/homicide. They work the whole clock, just like us.”

  “Well, I won’t be going into robbery/homicide, will I? New dicks get property crimes, and property crimes works a straight day shift with weekends off. You know what that means?”

  “Yeah. It means you get boring and fat, all at the same time.” Marcus snorted derisively. “Day shift,” he muttered.

  “What it means is family time. Normal family time. And that’s something Nathalie and I have never had.”

  “You’ve got family time now. Just because it isn’t based around whatever everyone else’s schedule is like, so what? You tuck your little girl into bed before you come to work, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, now. What happens when her bedtime isn’t eight o’clock anymore?”

  “You kiss her on the forehead and tell her good night before you leave, and let Nathalie do the tucking. Melina won’t mind.”

  “I mind.”

  “So you’re just being selfish, then.”

  “I’m not being selfish. I don’t sleep with my wife, Marcus.”

  “Neither do I, and you don’t see me carping about it.”

  “You’re funny. Can you be funny and drive at the same time? Because I didn’t think you were talented enough to do both.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Look, I just want a normal life, okay?”

  “There is no normal.”

  “Fine,” Ryan conceded. “Then I want a different life than this.”

  Marcus was quiet for a few moments. When he spoke again, his tone was more serious. “You know you didn’t get no political points. You’re not even on the supporter rolls, much less a party member.”

  “I know.”

  “And if you think Lieutenant Schwab gave you any more points than the absolute minimum he had to for seniority and your performance record, you’re dreaming.”

  “I know I’m not dreaming, because I’m stuck with you.”

  Marcus refused to take the bait, and remained solemn. “Did you score high enough on the written exam and the skill segments to offset that?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan admitted. He thought about what Potulny said about the list coming out, and added, “Probably not.”

  “Then stop checking the announcement page, and just do police work.”

  “All right.”

  “Let’s make the MOST of it, brother.”

  Ryan grinned. Their private joke stood for Making Our Sixth Tolerable, and was a jab at the MAGA lemmings they worked with.

  “My man,” he said, and when Marcus started bitching about that phrase again, he almost forgot about the detective promotion, the politics of the job, all of it. Instead, he was just a patrol cop headed on a trouble unknown call with his partner, nothing else to worry about except whatever was waiting there for them.

  Chapter 2

  In 1829, Sir Robert Peel famously drafted his Nine Principles of Policing as a guide to the newly founded London Metropolitan Police Department, the first concerted attempt at modern policing. In one of these principles, Peel contended that ‘the police are the public and the public are the police.’ This seemingly simple concept is one from which, arguably, the law enforcement profession strayed considerably during the late Twentieth and early Twenty-First century. The development wasn’t a sudden shift, but rather a slow drift. The advent of motorized patrol vehicles in the 1940s signaled a beginning of a slow detachment between many law enforcement agencies and their respective communities. Rather than frequently interacting with a police officer on a foot beat, community members saw these same police officers drive by in squad cars. This created a social distance that gradually but eventually grew into a divide. Citizen interaction with police became largely limited to either being victimized by crime or perpetrating it. This social divide increased by another factor when the so-called War on Drugs was launched in the 1970s. This drug war was driven by federal emphasis and supported with federal dollars, though admittedly it was met with enthusiasm by most state, county, and municipal agencies. This concerted federal effort included the sale or granting of excess military equipment to these various agencies, regardless of actual need. It should have come as no surprise that this trend ultimately led to the greater militarization of the police and further exacerbated the estrangement of the police and the community members. An uptick in social unrest intensified the issue, and the race riots of 2026 unfortunately presented a stage upon which this hostility played out. When police agencies responded to these instances of unrest, one should not be surprised to learn that they did so utilizing the tools at their disposal, including the military-style equipment and weaponry that the federal government had provided. Images of police that were virtually indistinguishable from military members engaged in conflict with rioters may not have been widely broadcasted due to increasing media controls, but still photos and snippets of video inevitably leaked out. Violence is always unpleasant to view, and even legal and proper uses of force appear brutal in nature. The riots of 2026 in multiple cities were brought under control, but accomplishing this restoration of order came at the cost of using tactics that police would cite as necessary and that many in the community called abusive. As a result, relations between these two factions continued to deteriorate, and at an accelerated pace.

  Certainly, this phenomenon was more pronounced in some areas than others. Urban centers, particularly those with a larger minority population that already had a history of poor police relations, were especially susceptible to this development. By the time the aforementioned race riots of 2026 precipitated the President’s move to nationalize all police, the gulf between many citizens and the police who were sworn to protect and serve them had grown to point at which rational discourse was rare.

  Violence, however, remained a common mode of communication.

  — From An Unlikely Phoenix by Reed Ambrose

  THE TROUBLE UNKNOWN call turned out to be nothing showing, and when Ryan contacted the original complainant, even the man’s description of what he found suspicious was vague and confusing. When Ryan got back into the car, Marcus gave him a questioning look.

  “Six to five the complainant’s on drugs and none of what he saw happened,” Ryan said.

  “What did he see?”

  “A cou
ple of guys talking.”

  “And that’s suspicious because...?”

  “Because the complainant’s on drugs.”

  “Ah.”

  They caught a domestic dispute next, and it was textbook. The couple wasn’t married but had two kids together. Both were drunk and there were no other witnesses. She had a red mark and swelling on her cheek. He claimed she did to herself. There was no way to know, and the law was clear that with the evidence they had, the situation required a mandatory arrest. When Ryan explained this to the man, he started to get worked up. If he’d been drunker, he might have gone, but when he cast an eye at Marcus’ hulking frame, thought better of it.

  As soon as they finished booking the DV suspect into jail, a fight call came over the Mobile Data Computer and the air at the same time. Marcus buried the accelerator.

  “Why are you hurrying?” Ryan asked him.

  “Not this again,” Marcus grumbled.

  “Seriously,” Ryan said. “The dispatcher said this looked like a mutual. Why risk everything that can go wrong by driving fast just to interrupt a couple of knuckleheads who are smacking each other?”

  “Because that’s our job,” Marcus told him, cutting hard around a corner. “That’s what we do.”

  “It’s definitely what we do.” Ryan braced himself against the door as Marcus completed the turn and punched it again. “I don’t know for sure if it’s our job.”

  “Keeping the peace is our job.”

  “So is keeping the public safe. You think it’s safe to drive like this when you don’t have to?”

  “Man, you’re looking at it all wrong. This here, is what I sometimes get to do. Drive fast, fight bad guys, and take them to jail. It’s fun.”

  “We should take our time getting there, let these two tire each other out.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Safety can be fun, my man.”

  “Oh, come on. Stop saying that.”