Date: Yesterday
Time: Late afternoon
Location: My life, in decline
Status:
Tuesday. First day back since the department picnic. The air still stank of cheap burgers, false camaraderie, and a few too many sunburned egos. I walked into the squad room not looking for a warm welcome, but clocking everything like a chessboard.
Three detectives.
One decent.
One I don’t approve of.
And Harper.
The decent one greeted me. I gave a smile—not because I needed to, but because manners aren’t weakness. They’re precision. The other two? I ignored. Selective engagement is my love language.
I made it to my desk without a word from Harper. No smile. No nod. No passive-aggressive grunt. I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d been blessed with his silence.
Ten minutes later…
Cue the sneak attack.
Harper slithered over and touched my shoulder—uninvited—like we were old friends in a Hallmark movie. Then:
“How was your weekend?”
Oh, here we go.
I responded like a professional.
“It was all right. How was yours?”
Because I’m not rude. I’m tactical. I’ll let the man speak. And speak he did—rambling on about his kids and weekend errands like this was a therapy session I didn’t consent to.
What he didn’t realize?
He wasn’t buttering me up.
He was showing his hand.
Hours later.
I had left for a doctor’s appointment, did real work serving a subpoena at a body shop.
Driving back to the station. Peaceful. Digesting. Almost free.
Then the call came in. Harper
I picked up. Mistake #1.
“Hey, can you respond to Pennsylvania/124th? We need help. Perimeter. Search warrant. Come quick.”
I’m nearby. I grab gas, grab my vest, think maybe—just maybe—this is something that calls for integrity.
But something’s off.
“What’s going on?”
Pause.
Click.
Because Harper and Sloane?
They’re in the station.
Not out in the field. Not on scene. Not where the action is.
No further intel. No clarity. No actual words strung together in a way that formed reality. Just “Mendoza. Search warrant. Perimeter.” Like a human Mad Libs page threw up into a phone.
So I drove. Sirens off. Because something didn’t feel right. And because deep down, I knew Harper was lying in that theatrical, breathy way only he could. The man could stage a Broadway show with three nouns and a preposition.
Arrival at Pennsylvania/124th:
No search warrant. No suspects. Just Mendoza. Detective Mendoza was the kind of guy who’d bark like a dog if a sergeant told him to—but you couldn’t even be mad about it. He wasn’t a bootlicker; he just genuinely believed in the order of things. Somewhere between “duty” and “sure, why not,” he found a strange kind of peace.
Fourteen years younger than me, with a face that hadn’t yet learned to lie, Mendoza had the energy of a golden retriever trying to pass the bar exam. Earnest. Loyal. Always ten minutes early and convinced that authority had a soul.
His dad was a doctor back in Venezuela. Mendoza saved case files and sent polite emails. He lived alone but never seemed lonely. Maybe because he carried his decency like a passport, something that got him through doors I was already tired of knocking on.
I liked him. Not because he challenged anything—but because he didn’t pretend to. He was what he was: decent. And in a squad room full of performance artists and weaponized charm, that was something.
Anyways, Mendoza was standing at the corner of Pennsylvania and 124th Street waiting patiently for a tow truck.
He looked at me like I was there to rescue him from boredom. I looked at him like I’d been sent to the wrong universe.
I radioed back and said, “There’s no perimeter here.” What I wanted to say was, “There’s no anything here.”
Just a call sent from a clown pretending to be running a tactical op when he’s really just trying to keep someone—me—out of the station.
Because back at the station?
That’s where the real show was happening.
Back at the Barn (A.K.A. The Clown Command Center):
Harper and Sloane had returned from their “secret squirrel” mission—their own little private investigation that no one was briefed on, looped into, or consulted about.
What did they do?
They wrote a search warrant. For an RV. Not just any RV.
An RV filled with human feces.
Let me be clear: Not metaphorically full of shit. Literally. Full. Of. Shit.
At the end of the shift, the RVs were towed to the tow yard.
I saw what was coming. I smelled the intention.
Anyway, I left work early. I wasn’t feeling well and my doctor told me to go home.
Harper knew.
Which is why the next day, the moment I called in sick—an absolutely strategic and well-earned decision—he decided to execute the “search warrant.”
They were going to search the garbage truck. The human litter box. The rolling biological hazard.
And then, as expected, at 5 AM the group text started.
A screen shot of a case on TV. Not their case. Just a dramatic image to create hype.
And of course, they sent it like it was theirs.
In the group chat. Where I’m included.
As if I wouldn’t cross-reference it. As if I’m new. As if I’m stupid. As if I didn’t see this entire fecal circus coming from a mile away.
Mockery & Dialogue: The Desperation for the Attaboy
Back at the station, the desperation was thick. Like the smell of the RV they were pretending was a cartel compound.
Harper paced by the whiteboard like he was reenacting a scene from Heat.
“We’ve got to get this done early. Real early,” he said, chest puffed like a peacock with no feathers. “This RV is critical. There could be… evidence.”
Sloane chimed in: “There might be gloves. Like latex ones. Maybe a bag. Or something with like, smears.”
Harper nodded gravely, as if Sloane had just cracked the Zodiac cipher.
“Let’s execute the warrant before sunrise. We’ll catch the media cycle,” he whispered, eyes darting, as if cameras might be watching.
“You mean search the poop trailer?” a sergeant asked from across the room.
Harper blinked. “It’s an RV.”
The sergeant raised an eyebrow. “Smells like a septic tank with wheels.”
“But what if it makes the chief’s briefing?” Sloane asked, practically salivating. “Like if we send in a photo or something. We’ll get credit.”
There it was. The truth.
This wasn’t about evidence. This wasn’t about crime. This was about the attaboy. The holy grail of low-level law enforcement performance theater.
The pat on the back.
The empty praise.
The dopamine hit of approval from someone higher up who wasn’t watching anyway.
Brando would’ve walked in, slapped the clipboard out of their hands, and said, “You don’t get points for rolling around in shit and calling it strategy.”
But Brando wasn’t here.
I was.
Let them bask in their stink.
They wanted a headline.
They got a punchline.
