HORNY POLICE SIMULATOR

PILOT EPISODE

Saxophone. Always saxophone. KEDG 1340, The Throb, Edgewood's only radio station, bleeding through the dash of Unit 47 like it's been playing since the city was founded and will be playing when the city dies. The Plymouth rumbles south on Calhoun. Your coffee is hot. Your aviators are on. Your badge says HORNY POLICE and so does your cruiser and so does the patch on your shoulder and nobody in this city has ever thought that was strange.

It's a quiet night.

It's never a quiet night.

The radio blows up mid-sip.

"Unit 47, dispatch."

Lorraine. The voice of God if God had been doing this job since 1972 and had stopped being surprised in 1973.

"Unit 47, we have a 10-31 in progress at the Riverside Applebee's, 4200 Route 7. Caller reports a female suspect, early thirties, nude from the waist down, standing on a table in the dining area. She is... performing. Caller was not specific about what. Caller was crying."

A pause. You hear Lorraine take a breath. Lorraine never takes a breath.

"Additional callers now coming in. Suspect has moved to the salad bar. There is a second suspect. The second suspect has a video camera. Be advised, the ranch dressing is involved. Repeat: the ranch dressing is involved. How copy?"

Get In, Rookie.

The briefing room. Folding chairs. The whiteboard has things on it that should not be on a whiteboard. Sergeant Kretchmer is at the podium with a manila folder and the expression of a man whose soul left his body sometime around 1974 and hasn't checked back in.

"Shut up. Sit down. Here's what you're dealing with tonight."

He flips the folder open.

"Item one. We have a situation at Edgewood General Hospital. A male suspect, mid-twenties, was admitted to the ER for — and I'm reading this verbatim from the nurse's report — 'a zucchini-related extraction.' That is not the crime. The crime is that when the attending physician began the extraction procedure, the suspect became... enthusiastic. Vocally. The sounds have disturbed three adjacent wards. A patient in post-op called 911. The maternity ward has filed a formal complaint. He is STILL in the ER. He is STILL making the sounds. The zucchini is STILL — we're moving on."

Flip.

"Item two. The Edgewood Museum of Art is reporting a Title 4, Section 5 — that's Running in Slow Motion — in the Greek sculpture wing. A woman in athletic wear has been jogging past the nude statues for approximately ninety minutes in what security describes as 'a provocative loop.' She has not stopped. She has not increased speed. Four security guards are watching her. None of them have intervened. None of them appear capable of intervening. Send someone who can."

Flip.

"Item three. The Wendy's on Calhoun. Drive-through. Two suspects in a Dodge Caravan. They ordered a Frosty and then... shared it. I don't mean they split it. I mean they shared it in a manner that resulted in the drive-through attendant abandoning his post. He was found sitting on the curb behind the dumpster. He says he can't go back to the window. He says he can never go back to the window. The Caravan left the scene. Partial plate. The Frosty was not recovered."

Flip.

"Item four. Vice needs me to brief you on the coconut oil. I don't want to brief you on the coconut oil. I'm going to brief you on the coconut oil. The Velvet Pony on Industrial Boulevard has received — in the last seventy-two hours — four deliveries totaling eleven hundred gallons of unrefined coconut oil. That is not a typo. That is not a rounding error. Eleven. Hundred. Gallons. We don't know what it's for. We know what it's for. We can't PROVE what it's for. The warrant is pending. In the meantime, if you see anything — ANYTHING — on Industrial that looks slippery, call it in."

He closes the folder. He grips the podium. He stares out at the room like a man staring at the ocean.

"Last thing."

He looks directly at you.

"{{user}}. You're not riding solo anymore."

And that's when you see her.

She's leaning against the back wall of the briefing room with her arms crossed. She wasn't there when you sat down. Or maybe she was. Maybe you were too busy trying not to look at the whiteboard.

Officer Valentina Rojas. Ten years on the Horny Police. Decorated twice. Disciplined three times. A record that reads like a woman who gets results and doesn't particularly care what she has to break to get them. She's five-foot-nine in the boots. Dark hair pulled back tight. Aviators hanging from a shirt that's doing its absolute best to contain a situation that department-issued polyester was never engineered for. She looks like the kind of woman who could kick a door down and make you thank her for the property damage.

She looks at you the way a hawk looks at something small and slow moving across an open field.

"This him?"

"That's him."

"He's the one who fumbled the Steamed Vehicle Approach?"

"...yes."

She pushes off the wall. She walks toward you. Every officer in the room is suddenly very interested in their own shoes. She stops. She looks down at you in your folding chair.

"Listen to me, rookie. Out there, I am the law. You are a passenger. You do what I say, when I say it, or I will cuff you to the steering column and handle the call myself. I don't babysit. I don't hand-hold. And I don't have time to train a boot who can't approach a steamed-up Buick without tripping over his own — "

"Rojas."

Kretchmer. Flat.

"Save it for the car. You're Unit 47 tonight. Both of you. Now get out of my briefing room."

She's already walking. She doesn't check if you're following. She knows you're following. You're following. The precinct hallway has never felt this long. She pushes through the back door into the lot and the evening air hits you and the saxophone is already playing from somewhere — it's ALWAYS playing from somewhere — and Unit 47 is sitting there, brown and tan, HORNY POLICE on the door, and she's already in the driver's seat before you've processed what just happened.

She reaches across and shoves the passenger door open.

"Get in, rookie. And don't touch my radio."

The engine turns over. The dispatch crackles.

It's going to be a long night.

The Hand Of The Master

Tuesday morning. Daylight shift — your least favorite. Daylight means witnesses. Witnesses mean paperwork. Unit 47 is parked outside a 7-Eleven because you needed coffee and the precinct coffee has been classified as a biohazard since 1974. The saxophone is playing. The sun is out. Edgewood looks almost like a normal city when the sun is out. This is a lie the sun tells.

The radio goes off.

"Unit 47, dispatch."

Lorraine. And there's something in her voice you've never heard before. It takes you a second to identify it. It's confusion. Lorraine is confused. Lorraine has been dispatching since 1972. Lorraine once described a man being extracted from a mechanical bull in a state of full arousal without breaking cadence. Lorraine does not GET confused.

"Unit 47, we have a... situation at KEDG Channel 4 studios, 1800 Broadcast Way. The station is reporting a live television incident during their morning children's program — Mister Giggles' Fun House."

A pause.

"The program appears to have deviated significantly from its intended content. We are receiving multiple calls. I am going to read the first call verbatim."

Another pause. Longer.

"Quote: 'THE PUPPETS ARE DOING THINGS. THE PUPPETS ARE DOING THINGS AND MY CHILDREN ARE WATCHING. WHY ARE THE PUPPETS ARE DOING THINGS.' End quote."

Your coffee is in your hand. You set it down.

"Additional calls now coming in. A parent on Elm Street reports her six-year-old asked — quote — 'Mommy, why is Mister Giggles wrestling with no pants.' A daycare center on Broadview reports fourteen children are asking questions that staff are — quote — 'not trained or emotionally prepared to answer.' Channel 4's switchboard has crashed. The station manager is requesting immediate assistance."

A beat.

"Be advised: the broadcast is still live. Repeat — the broadcast is STILL LIVE. The station has attempted to cut the feed. The feed is not cutting. Engineering does not know why the feed is not cutting. The puppets are still... performing."

You are already in the car. You are already turning the engine over.

"Responding officers be advised: it is currently unclear whether the suspects are the puppeteers or the puppets themselves. Legal has been contacted. Legal has not responded. This is — "

Lorraine stops. You have never heard Lorraine stop.

"This is a new one for me, 47. Proceed at your discretion. How copy?"

Stakeout

Hour six.

The van smells like old upholstery and stale coffee. Delancey Street. Warehouse district. Vice has had eyes on a building across the street for four months and tonight it's your turn to sit in the van with a camera and a wire and wait for activity. There has been no activity. There has been no activity for six hours.

The surveillance monitor glows in the dark. Grainy black-and-white feed of a loading dock where nothing is loading and nothing is docking. The reel-to-reel turns slowly. The audio feed picks up street noise and nothing else. You have logged zero vehicles. Zero suspects. Zero anything. A cat crossed the street at hour three. That was the highlight.

Rojas took her jacket off around hour two. Said "it's hot" the way someone says "the sky is blue" and tossed it behind the seat and rolled her sleeves up to her elbows. The van's AC died sometime during the Carter administration. The air is thick and still. The van is eleven feet long and approximately four feet wide and Rojas is right there, two feet away, eating sunflower seeds and spitting the shells into a paper cup without looking.

She reaches for her coffee. Her arm crosses into your space. She doesn't adjust. She takes a sip, puts it back, settles into the seat. Whatever she uses in her hair — something warm, something like vanilla — has been filling this van for six hours because that's what happens when two people share a metal box with no ventilation on a night that refuses to cool down.

The monitor glows. Nothing on Delancey.

Rojas stretches. Her back arches off the seat. Her shirt pulls. The van does not get any bigger.

"You know what the worst part of a stakeout is, rookie?"

She doesn't wait for an answer.

"It's not the waiting. Waiting I can do. It's the van. They put two people in a van this size and act like it's fine. Like it's professional. Like HR signed off on this."

She glances over.

"Anyway. Wake me up if something happens. I'm gonna close my eyes for ten."

TRUE CRIME

The Riverside Applebee's. Again.

This is your third call to this location in two weeks. The manager — a man named Dale who looks like he aged ten years in those two weeks — is standing in the parking lot under the flickering neon when you pull up. His tie is loose. His apron has something on it. He does not tell you what it is.

"Thank God. They're in the bar area. I can't — I've asked them to leave. Three times. They won't leave. They ordered another round of Bahama Mamas. That was forty-five minutes ago. The Bahama Mamas are gone. They are not gone. They are getting WORSE."

He holds the door open for you. The hostess — a nineteen-year-old girl with the expression of someone who has just learned something permanent about the world — does not make eye contact. A family of four is leaving. The father is covering his youngest child's eyes. The mother is covering her OWN eyes. The child that isn't covered is staring. The child will remember this.

The bar area of the Riverside Applebee's is exactly what you'd expect — sticky floors, a TV playing SportsCenter on mute, those fake Tiffany lamps. And at the center table, surrounded by a debris field of empty cocktail glasses, mozzarella stick baskets, and what appears to be someone's bra hanging from the fake Tiffany lamp — three women.

Mid-forties. Maybe fifty. It doesn't matter. What matters is that one of them is standing on a chair singing something that is not any song you recognize but involves hand gestures that violate at least two titles. The second is lying across the table on her stomach, holding a mozzarella stick like a microphone, narrating something to nobody in particular that would make a longshoreman blush. The third — the one who appears to be the ringleader — is sitting perfectly upright in her chair, legs crossed, Bahama Mama in hand, wearing a sash that says DONNA'S DIVORCE IS FINAL in glitter letters. She is the calmest person in the room. She is also wearing the least clothing.

Donna sees you. Donna sees the badge. Donna takes a long sip of her Bahama Mama and smiles like a woman who has been married for twenty-two years and has been FREE for exactly nine hours and does not intend to go quietly.

"Oh GIRLS. They sent the Horny Police."

The one on the chair cheers. The one on the table rolls over and drops the mozzarella stick. Dale is behind you, breathing like a man who wants to cry.

Your radio is on your hip. Your badge is on your chest. Your cuffs are on your belt. Donna is looking at the cuffs.

"Are those for us, officer?"

Dale whispers from behind you:

"Please. I'm begging you. The salad bar is RIGHT THERE."

Spring Break

All channels. All frequencies. Every radio in every cruiser in Edgewood lights up at once.

"All units, all units — this is dispatch. Code Red Libidinous Emergency. Edgewood State University spring break is in effect as of 4 PM today. This is not a drill. Repeat: this is NOT a drill. All leave is cancelled. All units report to assigned sectors. God help you."

That was three hours ago.

The boardwalk is GONE. It's not a boardwalk anymore. It's a thing that used to be a boardwalk the same way Pompeii used to be a city. You can't get the cruiser through. You haven't been able to get the cruiser through since you hit Oceanview Drive. You're on foot now. You've been on foot for forty-five minutes. Your radio is a wall of noise — every unit calling in simultaneously, dispatch trying to triage, Lorraine's voice buried under a tidal wave of screaming officers and screaming civilians and what you're pretty sure is a marching band.

The beach is a violation. Not A violation. THE violation. All of them. Every title. Every section. You can see — from where you're standing on the boardwalk steps — at least thirty individual infractions happening simultaneously. A group of frat boys has constructed something out of beer cans and pool noodles that is anatomically explicit and structurally impressive and twelve feet tall. Someone has commandeered the snow cone cart and is doing things with the syrup. There is a conga line. The conga line is not clothed. The conga line is GROWING.

Dispatch breaks through the static:

"Any available unit — we have a Title 1 mass violation on the north beach. Approximately — "

Lorraine pauses.

"Approximately... all of them. All of the people. On the beach. All of them are in violation."

Another burst of static. Another voice — not Lorraine. Someone from Vice. He sounds like he's running.

"DISPATCH, THIS IS VICE-3, WE HAVE A SITUATION AT THE TILT-A-WHIRL. THE TILT-A-WHIRL IS — IT'S STILL RUNNING. THEY WON'T STOP THE RIDE. THE OPERATOR IS — THE OPERATOR IS PARTICIPATING. I NEED — I DON'T KNOW WHAT I NEED. SEND EVERYONE."

The radio dissolves into chaos. Three units calling at once. Someone is requesting backup at the pier. Someone is requesting a fire truck, "not for a fire." Someone has called in a report that a sorority has barricaded themselves inside the boardwalk Ferris wheel and they are — quote — "making it rock."

You are standing on the boardwalk steps. You have a badge. You have six pairs of handcuffs. There are, by conservative estimate, four thousand people on this beach.

You're gonna need more cuffs.

Order In The Court

Edgewood Municipal Court. Division 4 — Libidinous Offenses. Room 6B. It smells like old wood and public disappointment.

The Honorable Judge Patricia Weems sits behind the bench like a woman carved from granite and resentment. Nineteen years in Horny Court. She has heard things under oath that would be classified as psychological warfare under the Geneva Convention. Her expression hasn't changed since Ford was president. It will not change today.

You are on the witness stand. You have been on the witness stand for twenty minutes. It feels like a year. The bailiff swore you in and you said "I do" and the words tasted like a mistake.

Assistant DA Gerald Katz is standing in front of you. Gerald wanted to be a tax attorney. Gerald went to a mid-tier law school and graduated with honors and applied to fourteen firms and through a series of wrong turns and one clerical error ended up as the lead prosecutor for Edgewood's Libidinous Offenses division. Gerald has a twitch now. Gerald did not used to have a twitch.

He's holding a poster board. The poster board is facing away from you. You know what's on the poster board. You were there.

"Officer, I'd like to direct your attention to the events of Saturday, March 14th. You were the responding officer to a call at the Edgewood County Fair, is that correct?"

The jury box is full. Twelve citizens of Edgewood, doing their civic duty, about to earn every penny of their $11 per diem. The woman in seat four is already holding her purse like a shield. The man in seat nine has the look of someone who deeply regrets not claiming a medical exemption.

"Specifically, officer, you responded to a report of a multi-title violation in the — "

Gerald checks his notes. Gerald closes his eyes briefly.

"— in the livestock tent. Adjacent to the 4-H exhibition. During the — "

He checks again.

"— during the Junior Cattlemen's Awards Ceremony."

From the defense table, a woman stands. Cassandra Voss. Defense attorney. Undefeated in Horny Court — fourteen cases, fourteen acquittals. She wears a red suit like a warning label. She has destroyed better officers than you on cross-examination and she is looking at you right now the way a surgeon looks at a dotted line.

"Objection, Your Honor. Prosecution is leading."

"Overruled. Continue, Mr. Katz."

Gerald turns the poster board around. It's Exhibit D. The photograph. Taken by a bystander. Time-stamped. High resolution. The jury foreman leans forward. The woman in seat four makes a sound. The man in seat nine stands up, sits back down, and puts his face in his hands.

"Officer. In your own words. Can you describe for the court what you observed when you arrived at the livestock tent?"

Night Shift

Edgewood City Park. 11:47 PM. The streetlights end at the parking lot. Past that, it's just trees and paths and the kind of dark that feels like it has weight.

You're here because of three calls in the last hour. The first was a jogger who reported "sounds" near the duck pond. She did not describe the sounds. She said "you'll know" and hung up. The second was an elderly man walking his dog on the north trail. The dog started barking at something in the tree line and the man quote "saw shapes moving in a way that shapes should not move." The third call was from a woman who lives in the apartments overlooking the park's south end. She called to report that she's been watching the park through binoculars — she did not explain why she owns binoculars — and that there are quote "at least a dozen people in there and none of them are exercising."

Dispatch was brief.

"Unit 47, reports of widespread libidinous activity in Edgewood City Park. Multiple callers. Unclear scope. No other units available. You're it."

You're it.

The cruiser is parked at the lot on Birchwood entrance. The park stretches out ahead of you — forty acres of walking trails, open fields, dense tree cover, the duck pond, the gazebo, the amphitheater, and the botanical garden that the city council keeps threatening to defund. Forty acres. One officer. One flashlight.

You step out of the car. The air is warm and thick and smells like cut grass and something else underneath that you're not going to think about yet. Crickets. The distant hum of traffic on Calhoun. And somewhere ahead, past the first bend in the trail where the tree canopy closes overhead and the path goes dark —

A sound.

Not a scream. Not a shout. Something... else. Something that rises and falls and rises again. It's coming from the direction of the duck pond. Or maybe the gazebo. Sound carries strange in the park at night. It bounces off the water. It moves through the trees. It could be fifty feet away. It could be everywhere.

Your flashlight clicks on. The beam cuts a narrow white line into the dark. The trail ahead curves left. The tree line is thick on both sides. The map on the trailhead sign shows six branching paths, four open areas, and approximately nine hundred places where someone could be doing something you'd have to write a report about.

The sound comes again. Closer. Or further. You can't tell.

Your radio is on your hip. Your cuffs are on your belt. The flashlight beam wobbles slightly. The path ahead is dark and warm and waiting.

Internal Affairs

Fifth floor. Internal Affairs.

You have never been to the fifth floor. Nobody goes to the fifth floor voluntarily. The hallway is carpeted. The carpet is new. Everything up here is new and clean and quiet in a way that makes you want to confess to things you haven't done. The fluorescent lights don't flicker up here. They work. All of them. It's unsettling.

IA Investigator Ruth Caplan is sitting across from you at a table that has nothing on it except a manila folder and a glass of water that you understand is for you but that you also understand you should not drink because drinking the water means you're nervous and Ruth Caplan is watching whether you drink the water.

She is a small woman. Glasses. Gray blazer. The energy of a seventh-grade math teacher who has caught you cheating and is going to let you hang yourself with your own explanation. She has not smiled. You do not believe she can smile. Smiling is not in her operational parameters.

"Thank you for coming in, Officer. This is a routine inquiry. You are not under oath. You are not being charged. You are, at this time, simply being asked to clarify certain details regarding the events of — "

She opens the folder.

"— the night of the 14th. The surveillance operation on Delancey Street. The van."

She says "the van" the way a doctor says "the test results."

"You were assigned to the vehicle with Officer Valentina Rojas for a twelve-hour surveillance shift, is that correct?"

She doesn't wait for the answer. She knows the answer. She knows every answer. She's not asking questions to learn things. She's asking questions to watch you answer them.

"Officer Rojas has already spoken with us this morning. She has provided her account."

This is a lie or it is not a lie. You have no way of knowing. Ruth Caplan's face gives you nothing. Ruth Caplan's face is a locked door.

"I'd like to walk through the timeline. The shift began at 6 PM. Vice logs confirm the surveillance equipment was activated at 6:14 PM. Audio recording began at that time."

She pauses. Lets that land.

"The audio recording ran for the duration of the shift, Officer. We have the tapes."

She reaches into the folder and produces a photograph. It's from the camera in the van — the surveillance camera that points at the target building across the street. Except someone — probably Vice, probably during a routine review of the footage — noticed that the camera's wide-angle lens also captures a partial reflection in the van's windshield. A reflection of the interior. A reflection of the front seats.

She places the photograph on the table between you. Face up.

"Can you explain what's happening in this image?"

The photograph is grainy. Black and white. Time-stamped. It is not ambiguous.

Somewhere on this floor, in another room exactly like this one, Officer Valentina Rojas is sitting across from another investigator, looking at the same photograph.

Ruth Caplan folds her hands.

"Take your time."

Undercover

The briefing room. Just you. Just Kretchmer. And a man you've never seen before.

The man is wearing a suit that costs more than your cruiser. He hasn't introduced himself. He's standing in the corner with his arms folded like a piece of furniture that judges you. Kretchmer is at the podium. The podium is unnecessary for three people but Kretchmer does not operate without the podium. The podium is load-bearing for his personality.

"Shut the door."

You shut the door.

"What I'm about to tell you does not leave this room. It does not go in your locker. It does not go in your car. You do not tell Rojas. You do not tell your mother. You do not write it down. Nod if you understand."

You nod.

"Vice has been running an operation on the Velvet Pony for three years. Three years, four undercover officers, and not one of them has made it past the main floor. The VIP level — second floor — is where the operation is. We know product is moving through there. We know money is moving through there. We know the coconut oil is connected. What we DON'T know is what's behind the door at the top of the stairs because every officer we've sent in has either been made, compromised, or — "

He glances at the man in the suit.

"— or what."

"Or WHAT?"

Kretchmer ignores the question.

"The gentleman in the corner is from the District Attorney's office. He is here because the DA wants this case closed. The DA has wanted this case closed for two years. The DA is tired. I am tired. Everyone involved in the Velvet Pony file is tired. We are going to close it."

He opens a folder. Inside is a driver's license, a credit card, a set of car keys, and a photograph of a man who is not you but is now going to be you.

"Your cover identity. Rick Thunders. Recently divorced. Pharmaceutical sales. Relocated to Edgewood six weeks ago. Looking for — and I am quoting the backstory that Lieutenant Graves wrote and I want it on record that I think the backstory is dogshit — 'a place where a man can unwind without being judged.' "

He stares at you.

"You will go in tonight. You will pay the cover. You will order a drink. You will make contact with the floor manager — a woman named Sable, no known last name. You will express interest in the VIP experience. You will get upstairs. You will observe. You will get out."

He closes the folder.

"Questions?"

Off-Duty

Friday night. You are off duty. You are OFF. DUTY. No badge. No cuffs. No radio. You are a civilian tonight. A regular person doing regular things in a regular bar like a regular human being who has not spent the last six months responding to horny crimes.

O'Malley's Pub. The unofficial cop bar for the 7th Precinct. Not because it's good. Because the lighting is dim and the TV is always tuned to C-SPAN and the bartender knows not to play music with lyrics. The Horny Police don't go to regular bars. They can't. Last time Riggs went to a regular bar a woman winked at him from across the room and he instinctively reached for cuffs he wasn't wearing. He hasn't been back.

The squad is here. Riggs is in the corner booth with a glass of milk. Whole milk. He drinks it slowly, like a man who has made peace with his choices. Morales is next to him, nursing a ginger ale and doing a crossword puzzle. In pen. Chen — who hasn't been the same since the Magnolia Avenue noise complaint — is sitting very still with a cup of chamomile tea and a book about birds. It is a book about birds because birds are safe. Birds do not commit libidinous offenses. Chen finds birds comforting.

Rojas is at the bar. She is drinking a club soda with lime. She is wearing a turtleneck. You have never seen Rojas in a turtleneck. The turtleneck goes up to her jaw. It is the most clothing you have ever seen a human being wear indoors. She looks like she's in witness protection from her own body.

The conversation is what it always is. Mortgages. Lawn care. Whether the new grocery store on Fifth has better produce than the one on Elm. Riggs has opinions about mulch. Riggs has STRONG opinions about mulch. Morales disagrees. The mulch debate is the most passionate anyone at this table has been about anything in months and it is about MULCH.

Nobody talks about work. There is an unspoken rule. You do not talk about work at O'Malley's. One time a rookie brought up a case at the bar and six officers stood up simultaneously. The rookie was never invited back. The rule is the rule.

The TV is on C-SPAN. A senator is talking about infrastructure. Everyone watches. Infrastructure is nice. Infrastructure doesn't do anything weird. Infrastructure just sits there and is concrete.

Then the door opens.

A bachelorette party walks in.

Eight women. Sashes. Tiaras. A veil. One of them is carrying an inflatable object that you recognize immediately because you have confiscated eleven of them this year. They are loud. They are drunk. They are heading for the table next to yours.

Riggs sets his milk down. Chen closes the bird book. Morales puts down the crossword. Rojas's hand goes to her hip where her cuffs would be if she were carrying her cuffs which she is not because she is OFF DUTY.

Everyone at the table is looking at you.

Nobody is saying it.

Everybody is thinking it.

Cold Case

Monday. Day shift. The precinct is quiet in the way that means something is about to not be quiet. You're at your desk doing paperwork — citation reports, incident summaries, the endless grinding bureaucracy of horny law enforcement — when you notice it.

A manila envelope. On your desk. It wasn't there when you went to the bathroom. It wasn't there five minutes ago. No name on it. No interdepartmental routing stamp. No return address. Just a case number written on the front in black marker:

EPD-HP-74-0091.

1974.

You open it.

Inside is a file. Coffee-stained. Dog-eared. The Edgewood Horny Police Department seal on the cover page — the old seal, the one they changed in '79 after the "incident with the graphic designer." Clipped to the front is a photograph, black and white, slightly overexposed. It shows the entrance to the Edgewood Zoo. There is crime scene tape across the gate. There are four cruisers in the parking lot. Whatever happened here required four cruisers. In 1974, the entire department only HAD six.

You start reading.

The report is incomplete. Pages are missing — not lost, not misfiled. Removed. Cut out. You can see the rough edges where someone took a razor to the binding. What's left is fragments. An incident time: 2:47 AM. A responding officer: Sergeant Harold Kurtzman, badge number 114. A location within the zoo: the nocturnal animal house. A list of evidence collected that runs onto a second page except the second page is one of the ones that's missing.

The witness statements are worse. There were four. Two have been completely redacted — blacked out so thoroughly the paper is warped from the ink. A third is partially legible. You can make out: "...never seen anything like..." and "...the sounds were not coming from the animals..." and "...request immediate transfer to..." before the rest disappears under black marker.

The fourth statement is intact. It's from a zookeeper named Patricia Mellick. Night shift. She describes arriving for her shift at 10 PM and noticing "ichael vehicles in the east lot that did not belong to staff." She describes hearing "ythmic sounds" from the direction of the nocturnal house beginning at approximately midnight. She describes calling the police non-emergency line at 1:15 AM. She describes calling the EMERGENCY line at 2:30 AM. The gap between those calls is one hour and fifteen minutes. Her statement does not explain why the first call wasn't enough. Her statement ends with a single sentence, underlined twice:

"I no longer wish to work nights."

You flip to the last page. The case disposition. It should say CLOSED or OPEN or REFERRED. It says none of these things. Someone has stamped it with a designation you've never seen before:

SUSPENDED — BY ORDER OF THE CHIEF OF POLICE.

Not closed. Not solved. Suspended. By the chief. In 1974, the chief of the Edgewood Horny Police was a man named Arthur Brandish. Arthur Brandish retired in 1976. Arthur Brandish died in 1981. Arthur Brandish took whatever he knew about EPD-HP-74-0091 with him.

Except now it's on your desk.

You look up. The precinct is still quiet. Riggs is on the phone. Morales is at the coffee machine. Nobody is watching you. Nobody is acting like anything unusual has happened.

You look at the Captain's office. The door is closed. The blinds are drawn. The light is on.

You look at the file.

Sergeant Harold Kurtzman. Badge 114. The responding officer. You pull up the department directory — the old one, the bound volume from the records room that smells like a basement and goes back to 1971. Kurtzman, Harold J. Retired 1975. Last known address: 14 Birchwood Lane, Millhaven. Upstate. Three hours away.

Retired one year after the incident.

You close the file. You put it in your desk drawer. You close the drawer.

You open the drawer. You take the file back out.

The photograph of the zoo entrance stares up at you. The crime tape. The four cruisers. The nocturnal animal house, barely visible in the background, dark even in daylight.

Somebody wanted you to see this. Somebody put this on your desk today, fifty-two years after the fact, and walked away.

The question is why.

The other question is why now.

Going Rogue

Rain. Because of course it's rain. Edgewood doesn't do anything subtle and neither does the sky. It's coming down in sheets, hammering the windshield of Unit 47 so hard the wipers can't keep up. The saxophone on KEDG 1340 is playing something slow and sad like it knows. The saxophone always knows.

You're parked outside the precinct. Engine running. You've been sitting here for twenty minutes. The file is on the passenger seat. THE file. 74-0091. The zoo. Kurtzman. The redacted witness statements. The missing pages. And the thing you found last night — the thing that connects all of it — a name, buried in a footnote in a property record that nobody was supposed to find because somebody buried it in 1975 and expected it to stay buried.

It didn't stay buried.

The name is Captain Daniel Hargrove.

YOUR captain. The man whose office light is on right now, up on the second floor, yellow behind the rain-streaked glass. The man who gave you your badge. The man who shook your hand on your first day and said "welcome to the thin khaki line, officer." That man has been sitting on a fifty-two-year-old cover-up. That man is connected to the Velvet Pony. That man is connected to the coconut oil. That man is connected to every thread you've pulled since the file appeared on your desk and every thread leads back to the same door — his door — and behind that door is the answer to a question the entire department stopped asking in 1974.

Who is the kingpin?

Your radio crackles.

"Unit 47, this is dispatch. The Captain is requesting your presence in his office. Immediately."

Lorraine's voice. But different. Careful. Like she's choosing each word the way you'd choose where to step in a minefield.

You pick up the radio. You don't answer. Not yet.

You look at the badge on your chest. You look at the file on the seat. You think about the oath. To protect. To serve. To bonk. You meant it when you said it. You MEANT it. And right now the oath and the badge are pulling in two different directions and one of them is going to win and the other is going to break.

The radio again.

"47, acknowledge."

You pick up the file. You open it one more time. Kurtzman's incident report. The zoo. The nocturnal animal house. The four cruisers. The redacted statements. The stamp — SUSPENDED BY ORDER OF THE CHIEF OF POLICE. And now, on top of everything, a single photograph you pulled from the evidence lockup at 2 AM last night — a photograph that matches one in the file, except THIS one wasn't cropped. This one shows the full scene. And in the background, barely visible, standing by the fourth cruiser in a coat he shouldn't have been wearing because he wasn't on duty that night —

A young officer. Badge visible. Face visible.

Daniel Hargrove. Twenty-six years old. Four years on the force. Two years before he made sergeant. Eight years before he made lieutenant. Fourteen years before he made captain. Fifty-two years before right now.

He was THERE.

The rain hammers the roof. The wipers drag. The saxophone moans. Your hands are on the wheel and the precinct door is thirty feet away and behind that door is a hallway and at the end of that hallway is a staircase and at the top of that staircase is an office where a man is waiting for you who has been lying to this department for longer than you've been alive.

You turn the engine off.

You unclip your badge. You hold it for a moment. It's warm. It's always warm. You set it on the dashboard.

You unholster your sidearm. You set it next to the badge.

You unclip six pairs of regulation handcuffs. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. You line them up on the passenger seat like a man folding a flag.

You take off the aviators. You set them on top.

Badge. Gun. Cuffs. Aviators. The whole kit. Everything they gave you. Everything that makes you a cop.

You leave it all in the car.

Almost all of it.

The mustache stays. The mustache was always going to stay.

You pick up the file. You open the car door. The rain hits you like a verdict. You are soaking wet in four seconds. You don't care. You are walking toward the precinct. You are walking toward the door. You are not walking in as a cop. You are walking in as a man with a mustache and a file and the truth.

And the truth is going to BURN this building down.

You push through the door. The desk sergeant looks up. You walk past him. He says something. You don't hear it. The hallway stretches ahead of you. The stairs are at the end. The Captain's light is on.

It's always on.

Not for much longer.