The seven o’clock news was turning Shauna Killian into a saint.
I watched from my couch with my gun belt still hanging off the kitchen chair and an unopened worker’s comp envelope sitting beside the television like a second remote control.
The anchor called her groundbreaking three times in under two minutes.
Southstone Division’s own.
Now Deputy Chief Killian.
Cold case solved.
Family healed.
Barriers broken.
The department loved a redemption arc almost as much as it loved a press conference.
I remembered Shauna differently.
I remembered her asking where my training officer was after I got loaned early to detectives as a police officer. She then made a snide comment, “Wow, you’re already dressing like a real detective!”
I remembered the way she smiled after saying it too. Not mean enough to get reported. Just sharp enough to land.
I remembered the two o’clock-in-the-morning text message over her boyfriend I barely even wanted.
STAY AWAY FROM HIM.
As if I’d been the one calling.
Apparently none of that disqualified you from becoming departmental royalty.
The funny thing was Shauna probably deserved half the things they were saying about her. That was the part civilians never understood about the department. The people who won the game were rarely frauds. That would’ve been easier.
Most of them were smart. Ambitious. Politically gifted. Media literate. Hardworking. Disciplined enough to survive institutions that slowly ate other people alive. But there was another layer underneath all the motivational poster language. The invisible system beneath the official one.
Who got protected after scandals.
Who got mentored.
Who quietly disappeared after complaints.
Who became “difficult.”
Who got marquee assignments.
Who understood optics better than police work.
Who knew which captain’s jokes to laugh at.
The department called it professionalism.
Detectives called it politics. I called it the game. And after enough years inside the machine, you realized talent was only part of the currency. That realization changes people.
Some became performers.
Some became ghosts.
Some became alcoholics.
Some became legends.
Most became combinations of all four.
“They love her now,” I said to the television.
Brando sat in the armchair across from me wearing the same wrinkled dock jacket from On the Waterfront. He looked exhausted by me already.
“Who?”
“The deputy chief on Channel Seven.”
He shrugged. “Then let ‘em love her.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“No,” he said. “It’s easy for you to say. You people build churches around titles.”
“You don’t think she earned it?”
“I think people earn things every day,” he said. “Doesn’t mean the audience sees the right movie.”
The television showed Shauna Killian standing beside a grieving family under newsroom lighting soft enough to make homicide look spiritual.
Brando watched quietly.
“She’s good,” I admitted.
“Probably.”
“She also used to take cheap shots at me.”
“That usually means you bothered her.”
“She won the department game.”
Brando laughed at that. Not loudly. More disappointed than amused.
“Kid, every institution’s a casting office.”
“That’s cynical.”
“That’s Hollywood.”
“This isn’t Hollywood.”
He looked around my apartment.
“You sure about that?”
The news anchor called Killian heroic again.
Brando shook his head.
“Everybody wants to be somebody,” he said. “Problem is, most people let institutions tell them who that somebody’s supposed to be.”
I stared at the television.
“What if they were right about her?”
“Maybe they are.”
“And what if they were wrong about me?”
Brando leaned back into the chair.
“That question,” he said, “is where your story starts.” “Kristin, institutions create identities, and people slowly confuse those identifies with their actual worth. Why would you let the department become the mirror that tells you who you are?”
