Bitch
by Cormac Brown

I can't understand it they say the word "bitch" like it's a bad thing.  Of course, look who we are dealing with: since Vasco went on maternity leave, I'm still the bravest officer on this shift and I'm the only one that has to squat to pee…though we all wonder about Seymour.  In most situations, they send me in first and quite frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.  They all just slow me down, anyway, so that's probably why they give me such a wide berth when the shit hits the fan.

Even my own partner, Officer Fernandez, he can be a little too emotional and clingy at times.  I hate to admit that I have to rely on him sometimes, because honestly, I find him to be a bit weak.  His heart is in the right place, but he can be overly cautious, and most of the time he is worrying about me when he should dealing with the situation at hand.  At other times, I honestly wonder if he has left his balls back in the squad car.

Take last Friday night.  Right around 23:00, we got a call to be on the lookout for a white, possibly Latin male who was an armed robbery suspect.  They described him as 5'8", about 195 lbs. with dark hair.  His eyes were brown and, he had gang tats on his neck and hands.  It wasn't even one minute after the call and I swear that I could smell the perpetrator before I saw him…yeah, I got it like that.  He was right there hiding in the woods just off the road and I told Fernandez to stop.

"Heidi calm down," Fernandez implored, and I told him two more times that the perpetrator was right there a second ago and that he was getting away.  The patrol car door wouldn't open…they never seem to give us one where my door will open, and Fernandez started again with the whining, "Heidi, maintain or you will wear yourself out."

As he opened my door, he said something weird in that foreign tongue and I wanted to say to him, "we're in America, speak English!" but I was already off.  The perpetrator thought that he could lose us in the woods, but I don't need that much light to see and I swear, I could track the bastard by the trail of fear that he was leaving.

He heard me closing in and he took off.  Of course it wasn't going to do him a bit of good, since I know I am the fastest around.  If you don't believe me, ask anyone in the department, because I've raced each and every one of them and of course, I was the winner every time.

He made it to the road on the other side of the woods and he sped up.  His fear was propelling him faster.  I could hear him huffing and puffing while I wasn't even out of breath.

I honestly can't tell you if he heard me before I was almost on him, yet I had anticipated that he was going to do something stupid, just because he was tired.  He pulled his gun out and when he turned around to fire, that's when I pounced on him.  He tumbled like a rock going down a cliff and it seemed like he actually picked up speed on his second revolution off the ground.

I had knocked the wind out of him, though I wasn't about to take any chances and I pinned him down.  Moments later, Officer Fernandez finally showed and he was telling me in that odd foreign tongue to "get off of him."  I didn't comply with Fernandez's orders until he told me in English.

Later while I was relaxing right by the squad car, Fernandez was talking to the other officers about how it all went down.

"Hey, Fernandez, who's in charge, you or her?"

Even in the dark, I swear I could see Fernandez blush as he said "I'm supposed to be, but Heidi does pretty much whatever she wants to do.  I can't understand it.  How can a German Shepherd that was raised in Germany not understand that language?"

Seymour poked his head into the conversation and said with poorly-disguised disgust, "Maybe it's your accent."

"Yeah, I guess.  I'll tell you though, Seymour, she understands English.  It's a good thing that she can't speak it or do her own paperwork, or we'd have to let go of officers like you."

I'm glad that Fernandez spoke up for me, because I'd hate to have bite Seymour again.  Though I'm not one of those dogs that eats their own shit, Seymour tastes exactly how I would imagine my own crap would taste.

The End

BIO: "Cormac Brown" is my pen name. I'm an up-and-slumming writer in the city of Saint Francis and I'm following in the footsteps of Hammett...minus the TB and working for the Pinkerton Agency.  Some of my stories have appeared here, Six Sentences and my blog Cormac Writes.  My story "Tit-For-Tat" appeared in the premiere issue of Astonishing Adventures Magazine and I have two stories coming up in the next two issues of that magazine.