bungakertas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bungakertas) wrote2018-09-25 07:33 pm
bungakertas) wrote2018-09-25 07:33 pm
Entry tags:
Bounty Cops
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): violence, major character injury, background character death, swearing
Summary: Rather than being dispatched by a dispatcher, police officers use a bounty system where officers can pick up missions from a constantly updated bounty board. The missions range from: “noise complaint, $20”, to “domestic abuse, $150”, to “bank robbery in progress, $5000.”
Author's Notes: Based on the prompt in the summary.
*~*~*
Ryan looked around the office, his first day of his brand new job, hoping he didn’t look too much like the new kid in school and knowing that he did. He was hoping to spot his desk and make a break for it and pretend like he knew exactly where everything was before anybody spotted the weakness.
It wasn’t like police officers were out-and-out cruel to each other, usually, but…well, you didn’t go into this career field to make friends.
He glanced at the bounty board on the wall. All the calls on it still carried the blue background of the graveyard shift. First shift hadn’t started yet. There would be a smaller version in the cruiser he’d be in today. Assuming his training officer bothered to pick him up, that is. Training netted you an extra compensation from the county, but it also meant you had to split your bounties from days spent training the newbie, so picking up the new kid was something a lot of officers wouldn’t do.
They couldn’t be sure he’d measure up.
“You my new kid?” asked a voice.
Ryan turned and found himself looking down at a woman who seemed so casual in this place that he immediately knew she had worked this job for a very long time. She was older, though not old. Definitely not north of 42. Her brown hair was shot through with strands of silver, and she had just-barely-there crows’ feet fanning around her eyes. She was holding one of those thermos mugs of something that he couldn’t smell, which meant it wasn’t coffee. Not that most people dared to drink coffee after that blight had wiped out most of the strains of it. Ryan had vague memories of his parents mourning the loss, so he figured it had probably happened right around when he was born, though he didn’t much care to get it straight.
And now, here he was looking even as more childish than he already had. Geez, he probably looked like a high-schooler getting picked up by his mom.
(He batted that thought away immediately.)
“Ryan Colton,” he said, offering his hand.
“Sarah McCullough,” the woman said, ignoring it. "You’re my new kid. Your desk is over here.“
She led him through the station to a desk that was near the back. Hers was apparently right next to it, which was…weird.
The bounty board updated from the bottom up. By the time something made it to the top, no one really wanted to take it. All the lame calls got kicked to the top. Noise complaints, minor traffic issues, DUIs, rowdy drunks…stuff nobody really wanted to deal with.
So, the further back you were, the harder it was to see any of the good stuff. Armed robbery at any business was usually a pretty good payout. Any violent crime, like a murder or a rape had at least a grand bounty attached to it if you could nail the perp at the scene. And the calls with stars were the highest payouts, usually, because that meant a rich victim was kicking in a tip to whoever made the collar. As soon as the requisite amount of officers acknowledged they were rolling to a call, it vanished from the board and didn’t come back unless the ones who’d taken it reported failure or called for back-up.
(Back-up meant splitting the bounty, so most people tried very hard not to.)
McCullough had clearly been here for a while, so for her desk to be so far back was strange. Usually officers worked their way forwards through a challenge system. You didn’t survive in this kind of job without some kind of a strategy. Certainly not as one of only…three women that he could spot. And most of the other officers were giving her a pretty wide berth, so obviously she had managed to scare or bore everyone away from hassling her. All while staying way back here at what was probably the same desk she’d been assigned when she was as new as him.
"So, coffee’s over there if you need it,” she said, pointing as she took at seat and shuffled through a few beginning-of-shift sheets, scribbling a note on one with her stylus and tapping “SEND” to get it to whoever’s desk it was bound for.
Ryan scowled. "I didn’t realize there was still coffee that tasted good.“ In those vague memories, his parents had ranked the remaining strains in taste from "awful” to “sewer sludge.”
McCullough snorted. "There’s not.“ He’d finally pegged what she was drinking as tea, though he could tell she drank the extra-caffinated, herbal wake-up crap that cost crazy amounts of money. At least it wasn’t one of those home-brew ‘roid cocktails that were popular among the half-way burned out cops. Pretentious as hell, sure, but not dangerous.
At McCullough’s look, Ryan sat down in his own chair and rolled it over closer to her desk. She leveled a finger down a hallway to the right of the wall with the board. "Bathrooms are that way. Beginning of the shift like this, there’s usually a pretty long line. Buncha guys faking tiny bladders as an excuse to get closer to the board. My advice is to pee before you come in.”
“Right.” Ryan was very confused about why that was her advice. Shouldn’t she be telling him who to watch out for? Which guys were the meanest? Who made the most money, and so would be the most vicious about protecting it?
“Captain’s office is over there,” McCullough told him, pointing at a windowed office on the right side of the room. "He does not want to hear about your crap. Don’t bother him unless you’ve got something good to pitch him.“
"Okay.”
“You saw all the admins on your way in. They’ve got their own bounty system. File your paperwork correctly, or they will ruin your life,” McCullough continued, “and while we’re on calls today, you do what you’re told, when you’re told, no matter how stupid or unpleasant it sounds.”
“I am not doing the Cha-Cha Slide for you,” Ryan told her.
“If I tell you to Cha-Cha Slide, you damn well better do your best to bring DJ Casper back from the dead,” she snapped back. "Now then, got any questions before we get started?“
"Who’s the best paid officer here, and who are his friends?” Ryan replied.
McCullough blinked. "Looking to take down a few of the jocks?“
Ryan opened his mouth to reply, then gave it a second thought. He had no idea what the politics in this station were like. He didn’t need to go around explaining himself when anyone could be listening. He finally settled on saying, "Not exactly.”
McCullough looked thoughtful at that answer and said, “Well, the highest paid officer here is me, and I have been since my sixth month on the force. I tend to work with Brown, Chavez, and Mickolajczak over there.” She pointed at three desks in turn. None of them were too much farther forward than she was.
“You?” Ryan blurted out in surprise.
“What? Am I too much of a chick?” she challenged.
Ryan rolled his eyes. "Nope. Just a little on the short side.“ He exaggeratedly drew himself up in his seat, working the whole I-am-six-two-and-two-hundred-pounds-of-muscle-and-in-my-twenties schtick to the point of absurdity. Because, honestly? He wasn’t that much of a sexist. He was sexist enough to notice that McCullough had probably been a dime-piece about ten years ago, and that she’d still probably turn heads if she wanted to, but he felt like he could be forgiven for having eyeballs. He hadn’t let her good looks blind him to the fact that she’d obviously carved out her own space in the department.
Her eyes narrowed, noting his dodge of the challenge, but there was a vague hint of amusement in her expression. He’d surprised her. Probably pleased her a little, too, not taking a dig at her for being a woman. Finally, she said, "The jocks all sit on the front row. Those guys are the most aggressive about the high-paying jobs.
"Detectives are towards the middle. Solving a case only pays out if the guy you finger gets convicted, but it pays out a lot. If it’s a criminal trial for a violent crime, you’re looking at a minimum of fifteen grand. If four of your guys get convicted in one year, then you just made rent. You start closing cases, and you are in groceries until retirement. But it can take years to get a guy convicted, so that one is a long slog. If you want to get into that side of things, pick up a case to start working today. Most of the detectives work regular calls, too, to keep a steady check coming.
"Past the middle of the room, if someone’s desk looks like a permanent fixture, then you’re probably safe from challenges from them. However, they’ll also defend that territory, so don’t challenge those guys unless you know you can beat 'em. Someone has a white ring around the edge of their desk? They’re off-limits. Department rule. Period.”
“And you’re the highest paid officer in the department?” he asked in surprise.
“My only real competition are the detectives and those guys I pointed out to you. Don’t spread it around, though,” she said.
“Is it a secret?” he asked.
“Nope. But most of the guys here don’t believe it, so they’ll start thinking you’re a dupe if you do,” she answered easily.
Ryan narrowed his eyes at her, trying to decide if she was lying. "Why are you training me, then? If you’re making so much money on your own?“
McCullough scowled and looked away. "Probably because I’m an idiot,” she mumbled into her tea. "Get your gear, Colton. Time for me to show you how the idiots make book around this place.“
Ryan stood up. He hadn’t ever stowed anything, so he was ready to walk out the door. McCullough pulled her combat web from the desk drawer and stood as well. She ignored the board, and the two walked out to her cruiser.
The bounty boards in the cruisers were only big enough to show half of the stuff on the station. By default, they showed the top half, meaning that once you took a call, the next high value call to make it on the board would update to where you couldn’t see it right off the bat. Ryan had heard that back when the bounty system was first instituted, so many officers had changed calls midstream that the department started issuing calls on the ones that did. A minimum $500 bounty for an officer that switched a roll, with added percentages depending on the value of the call they tried to swap to. It took exactly two days for the switching to vanish completely.
This meant people chasing the high value calls had to have some kind of a Strategy for hitting the next one after they took one from the station. Once you were out the door, the game for getting the next big call got more complicated.
(Ryan had heard about a hack that swapped the dash boards to update in reverse, with the good stuff on top, but those had to be uninstalled every time the car went back to the department lot, so there was a lot of upkeep for that.)
They got into the car and McCullough turned the car on, warming it against the chill starting to creep in. It was only September, but they were already donning jackets in the evenings.
"Okay, so you’ll know this already, but once we take a call, we’re committed. No changing mid-stream,” McCullough told him, unconsciously reinforcing his train of thought from a moment ago. "But the main rule to follow is Don’t Get Greedy. Let the jocks scramble for the big calls. What we’re gonna do, is take as many of these other ones as we can humanly hit in a shift.“
Ryan blinked. "You don’t even try for the big ones?”
“You’d be surprised how many 'nothing’ calls turn out big,” McCullough said with a shrug. "You pull a traffic stop, that collar is yours, but say the guy has a bunch of coke in his trunk. Still your collar, so you go back to his house, bust six more guys and find a meth lab in the basement. Your 'nothing’ call just busted a drug ring. I’ve had that happen more than once. Couple of times, I hauled it out from under a detective, too, ended up getting that payout when the guy got convicted at his trial.“
Ryan nodded. You could do that sometimes. Swipe a collar. If you busted a perp on a call you’d responded to, but it turned out they were also the perp on another call, you got both payouts, no matter who had originally been the responding officer.
But McCullough shook her head. "You can’t count on that for your paycheck, though. Look, some of those idiots will spend their whole shift chasing that one perfect collar for a big check and go home with nothing. If you just…work your board, even for the 'nothing’ calls, you can absolutely depend on making at least $500 bucks a day. People don’t rob banks every day, and some of those jock cops will shoot another cop if they can pull a collar from them.
"That’s rule number two: Stay Clear Of The Jocks. Learn their names and don’t fight them for collars. Stay clear of rolling for back up, too, if you can. We lost two cops a few years ago to a power play. Couple jocks faked a back-up call and killed the guys who responded over some internal political bullshit. Don’t get mixed up with those guys. Just, work your board and Don’t Get Greedy.”
Ryan gave her a disbelieving look.
“Here, I’ll show you,” she said.
The blue-background vanished from the bounty board on the dash. Now all the calls came up backed in the green of first shift.
Much to Ryan’s disgust, McCullough tapped on a speed trap for the next three hours and keyed in her badge number on it. McCullough pulled them out of the department lot and off to an out-of-the-way hiding spot and the speed trap vanished from the board. Not all of them did for only one responder. For the more dangerous ones, a call would sometimes stay up until a few badges got keyed in. Nobody knew exactly how many, of course, so that the good calls would get quick responses. But still, it was only this little nothing calls that vanished after only one badge.
Ryan was less disgusted when they’d issued about $400 worth of tickets by the end of the three hours. Split between them, that was easily enough for groceries for the week, and they shift wasn’t even half-over. He was absolutely overjoyed when saw what he’d made for the day. On his first day. By the end of the week, he and McCullough had scored four DUIs (which were a minimum of $400 per ticket, and they had some discretionary leeway to tack on extra fines if they thought it was justified), and accidentally recovered a stolen car some teens had been out joyriding in, which turned out to be a star call that they’d swiped by mistake. His check at the end of the week was enough to cover rent and groceries for the month, with a little left over for beer money. And that was just the first week.
Okay. Maybe McCullough was on to something. He’d known she had to be from the moment he laid eyes on her, so there was a part of him that wasn’t surprised. So he followed her rules. He worked his board. He didn’t get greedy. He stayed clear of the front row jocks. And as he did, he noticed a few things about the department.
The first was that the front row jocks were actually the front three rows. They were constantly challenging each other to get closer to the board, take more of the “good” calls, get more notoriety. So they were constantly caught up in their own little whirlwind of melodrama, politics, and backstabbing. All those guys—and the only other two women in the department, huh—paid next to no attention to anyone who wasn’t part of their mad little scramble.
The second was that McCullough, Brown, Chavez, and Mickolajczak (who had glared at him and said, “Just call me Mick, for fuck’s sake, if you’re gonna suck that hard about my actual name, Colton.” after Ryan’s third time mangling it)—and him, now that he had started training with McCullough—each rolled to more calls than any other three officers in the department. As a result, they picked up more about the actual tendencies of bad guys in the area than any of the jock cops did. Ryan could list off, without hesitation, where the hookers tricked, the best places to score any drug you could name, and the names of most of the habitual drunk drivers any time he was asked. He could also flawlessly navigate any road in the county and knew, by heart, where all the construction was.
Even the detectives couldn’t do that, which he thought was pretty weird. Was that why it took so long for them to close cases? Because they didn’t pay enough attention to anything but the bounties on the case to get familiar with the local crime trends?
The third thing he noticed was that there was no shortage of “nothing” calls to respond to. McCullough had not been kidding when she’d said that if you just worked the board, you’d make book. It was his third week, when they’d just reported success on a domestic and both agreed they needed to unwind, that he asked her about it. They had decided to only mostly take a break and were lounging in the cruiser with their speed gun set to go off only if someone was driving fifty miles an hour or more over the limit. That was a high value ticket, but he was already doing pretty well for the week and it was only Wednesday, so he was really just hoping the gun didn’t go off.
McCullough was actually reading a book. She’d been really shaken by that last call. Frankly, so had he, but he was trying to pretend it hadn’t hit him in that awful sore spot where his family wasn’t.
“Was there always so much?” Ryan asked.
“So much what?” McCullough replied.
“So much…petty crime. I feel like there are a lot of drunks and looters. Like, more than there…should be?”
“There shouldn’t be any, Colton,” McCullough replied.
“You know what I mean,” Ryan returned, wondering, for the thousandth time, if she’d ever stop being so prickly. What did he ever do to her anyway, except listen to her weird rules and respect that they worked?
McCullough glanced up from her book and scowled. Finally, she said, “I was born about ten years after the bounty system was instated. It’s been more-or-less like this since I can remember. But my folks used to say… Well, my mom, anyway, used to say that it was better before.”
“So, why the change?” Ryan said. "If it just means crime goes up?“
"It only goes up for certain people,” McCullough replied. “Specifically, poor ones. Anyone who’s upper-middle-class or better tends to add a tip to the bounty. So the jock cops scramble for it. Bank robberies and insurance fraud over a certain amount gets a big bounty, so the jocks scramble for it. Rich people wanting security when they’re getting stalked pay huge tips so the jocks scramble for it. See where I’m going with this?”
“Anyone with enough money is almost guaranteed protection. With no worries that the cops would be busy on another call,” Ryan said, unable to stop the depressed-sounding note from creeping into his voice.
“Any crime that doesn’t touch them won’t change the status quo, either, so they don’t really care what happens outside of that,” McCullough agreed. “When we roll for the 'nothing’ calls, we’re basically the only cops doing it. At least somebody is.”
Ryan’s eyebrows went up. "You almost sound like, with enough cops like us, you could believe in the system.“
"Nope. Just in working it,” she responded, going back to her book.
By the time his three-month training period was up, Ryan had noticed a fourth thing. McCullough’s desk wasn’t her original desk. She’d started towards the middle of the room and challenged for her desk in the corner, near two windows. Thanks to some beautification ordinance or another, an enormous willow tree stood over a little pond not far outside where, during the right parts of the year, some ducks would paddle around sometimes.
McCullough’s desk was where it was because she thought the view was pretty.
It was such an ordinary, uncomplicated, human motivation that Ryan actually wanted to laugh when he figured it out. Turned out Brown, Chavez, and Mick had similar motives for their stations. Brown actually drank coffee, so he’d challenged for a desk near the coffee-maker, the suicidal lunatic. Chavez and Mick rolled for RRT and SWAT calls, so they had desks near the doors.
So that was how these guys managed it. They kept their heads down, didn’t announce their strategy, worked their boards, and picked out desks just because they liked where the desk was located. Well, Ryan had been eyeing one near another window. He started angling for it the next day, and McCullough actually looked approving when he stopped there, only two rows off the back wall.
Yeah, yeah. He was a good padawan learner. Whatever. He tried not to let her vague, distant pride feel too good. They were not buddies.
After training, you got your own cruiser, your badge number was valid to respond to calls, you were on your own. He was happy to have a system now that meant he would be able to pay his bills, and he was on reasonably good terms with the detectives in the building. Cap knew his name, but didn’t hate his guts, and he hadn’t been sucked in to any of the jock crap.
On the whole, pretty good.
But he hadn’t really made any allies. McCullough wasn’t a buddy. She’d been a patient teacher, and answered all his newbie questions, but she wasn’t interested in knowing him that he could tell. Brown, Chavez, and Mick were her allies. Mick didn’t even like him and had said so to his face. And they didn’t interact with anyone much outside that little circle, so Ryan had no idea where to start looking to build his own set of allies.
A month later, that almost got him killed.
Ryan had pulled somebody over. Totally routine, ordinary, nothing remarkable about this traffic stop. Right up until the asshole in the truck leveled a rifle out of the driver’s window and started blasting. Ryan had to dive back into his cruiser with a hole in his shoulder that was going to net his cruiser a reupholstering, at minimum, desperately radioing to send back-up for his call. All while he put his car into gear to try and follow this douchebag while driving one armed. Because he had been shot.
Fuck.
Ryan had managed to start a tenuous alliance with two other guys in the station. Only one, Cody Sheehan, just a month out of his own training and even more disillusioned about it than Ryan was, responded. The second to respond, much to his shock, was Mick.
The three of them cornered the asshole who’d shot him. It ended up in a shoot-out, none of them able to work out which one of them had downed the suspect, but the guy had a whole mess of illegal guns in his truck. Plenty to net a good bounty, even split three ways.
Of course, right around then, Ryan’s adrenaline deserted him and he very manfully fainted. Apparently getting shot had consequences.
He was in the hospital when he woke up. And, much to his shock, Mick was in his hospital room.
“Thought you didn’t like me?” Ryan said in confusion.
“’S not personal, Colton,” Mick replied, not looking up from the news flyer he was scrolling through. "I don’t like anyone, really. People who get my name wrong are a special set, but that’s just your bad luck.“ He tapped one of the headlines on his flyer and Ryan watched the reverse side as the story expanded to fill the plastic sheet, and Mick started scrolling through it.
"So why are you here?” Because it was a little unnerving that they guy would visit him while he was unconscious.
“Delivering McCullough’s gift. She sent you a flower.” Mick pointed.
Ryan turned to look. Sure enough, on his bedside table, was a thin-necked vase with a daisy in it. Not an arrangement, one daisy. There was no note or card or other identifying marker.
“She kind of sucks at expressing herself,” Ryan said, eyeing the flower dubiously. Not that he’d had a lot of good models for that, most of his life. He remembered, though.
“Utter disaster,” Mick agreed. They were quiet for a moment until Mick said, “So…you put someone in a bag. Big payout for the illegal guns, and a dead suspect who won’t argue your bounty. How’s it feel?”
Ryan frowned. "I don’t think I trust you enough to have this conversation.“
Mick’s brows went up. "Good answer. So it’s not a clear-cut good or bad, then.”
“Automatic weapons are illegal. And the guy shot me. What do you want, do you want me to cry for him? He shouldn’t have shot me.”
“Then why aren’t you super jazzed about the collar?” Mick said.
Ryan was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “That guy wasn’t exactly rich. There aren’t a lot of guys who’d roll for him if he got in trouble. He had a wedding ring and…if he lived in the direction he was headed, most of those neighborhoods aren’t friendly. What if he was just trying to protect his family? He shouldn’t have shot me, but maybe he had good reasons to be scared, you know?”
Mick looked thoughtful. Finally, he pinched the top corner of the news flyer and the plastic sheet went dark. He said, “Chavez is having a get-together Saturday. Bring your new friend. That guy who responded. Ditch your other new friend.”
“No problem. That guy was probably gonna turn out to be an asshole anyway.”
Mick huffed out a laugh. "Somebody will text you the address. Get well soon, Colton.“ He tossed the news flyer on the bed as he headed out the door. Ryan picked it up, and pinched the corner. The flyer flashed and the last news story on it appeared on the thin screen.
HERO COP INJURED IN GUN BUST
He was a "hero cop,” huh? He didn’t feel all that heroic. He pinched the screen off and rolled up the flyer. It flew satisfyingly into the trash can by the door without him having to read whatever dumb crap was actually in that article.
Ryan was thankful for modern medicine that meant he could get out of the hospital after two days. That, plus the various tissue grafts in his shoulder would have him back on the job in two weeks. Which was good, because recovery was super boring.
Ryan and Sheehan turned up at Chavez's—actually pretty nice—house, both hoping this get-together turned out to be worth leaving their apartments on a day off in November. It was raining slush all over the roads and Ryan was more than happy to be driving a truck with some decent tires, because he knew no cops would roll for an accident on a day like today. Cops barely showed up for accidents even when the weather didn’t suck.
Everyone was nice enough, more or less. Apparently McCullough’s crew had some kind of connections with similar cops who worked for the city instead of the county, because there three people here that Ryan recognized from a few interjurisdictional squabbles. The jurisdictional administrations had their own super-version of the bounty system, where they received a certain amount of money based on how much their cops, collectively, netted for bounties. The more money the officers made, the more money the department made. And then there were two people who Ryan was pretty sure were feds, and he couldn’t imagine how competitive the fed jocks got for bounties, because he’d heard some of the VICAP collars had paid out in the millions. But these two were laid back. Didn’t have that chip on their shoulder they were daring you to knock off, like the jock cops did.
Still, it was obvious this crew was tight. Like, take-a-bullet-for-each-other tight. And Ryan got the very strong sense that this wasn’t an initiation so much as a test. He and Sheehan were being sounded out for something. Hell if he knew what, though.
They’d brought some beers as a thank-you-for-inviting-us thing, and so the two of them made a beeline for the fridge to stow their contributions. Once they’d straightened, Chavez, who was standing at the kitchen island cutting up some bread into slices that would probably end up having garlic butter, gave them a grin.
“You know, you didn’t have to bring those.”
“Dude, we weren’t entirely raised in a barn,” Sheehan replied.
That got a slight laugh. Then Chavez looked up curiously. "So, what got you boys into law enforcement?“
"The money,” they answered, in unison, without hesitation. It was a stock answer. Everyone said that when asked. If a civilian asked it to you at a scene, it was an excuse to go full-on cliché and snap on some sunglasses before walking straight into an explosion, if there happened to be an explosion handy. When people asked you this question, that was the answer you gave.
So everyone knew that it wasn’t the real answer. Which is why Chavez was rolling his eyes.
The real answer, in nearly every case was, “Because I want to kill the asshole who ruined my life.” Nobody would ever admit it, but that’s why they all did this. Because sometimes, for the people lucky enough to win the universe’s lottery, you would cross paths with whatever dirtbag had hurt you back when, and you could call them in as whatever and nobody would question it because that’s one more bounty to cross of the list. Ryan had heard it wasn’t as satisfying as you thought it would be. That everyone tried to brace themselves for being let down, but nobody ever totally did.
But he’d been told it was a little satisfying, though. Which was not nothing.
And, okay, Ryan’s life was not ruined. …Of course, it hadn’t been super great.
He’d lost his parents young. He was nine. They’d been driving home from church dinner and gotten clipped by a drunk driver. Traffic accidents were the kind of call nobody wanted to roll to. Even at the age of nine, he’d known no one was coming. His folks had died, and he’d had to wash the blood off his hands with a water bottle to get his fingers clean enough to call for a tow truck. He had been too scared and panicky and stupid and young to think to call an ambulance. His dad had coached him through the numbers.
(Or he had imagined his dad coaching him through the numbers. He never could get his memory straight as to exactly when, in the whole process, his parents had actually died. There was no rational reason for that to matter, but for some reason he felt very guilty for it.)
But whatever. Life sucks. Everyone has their sob story. His didn’t make him special. After he’d cleared his training, he’d actually looked up the drunk driver. The guy had died while Ryan was in high school. There was no vengeance to be had. Now he just needed a paycheck. Which he was making. His bills got paid on time, his lights stayed on, he wasn’t ruined.
He was fine.
“Okay, so why did you really get into law enforcement?” Chavez asked.
“Dude, why did you?” Sheehan demanded. Because, seriously, this was some pretty heavy Do Not Ask territory and the guy had opened with it, what the hell.
“Because I used to be married,” Chavez told them, holding up his left hand. Ryan had wondered about the ring, since Chavez had never mentioned a wife. “She was out with some friends for a girl’s night, some asshole pushed her off of the roof of a club. Cops didn’t even come. Who cares about a rowdy drunk, right? That's—what?—fifty bucks? Who cares about fifty bucks? And by the time EMS reported there’d been a fatality, the asshole that did it was long gone. You don’t get paid at all if there’s no collar.”
“Dude, that's…horrible,” Ryan blurted out.
There was a long silence, where nothing happened but the loaf of bread getting cut up into nice even slices.
“My girlfriend got hit by a car,” Sheehan said suddenly.
Ryan turned to stare at him in shock.
“Actually it was four cars. No one would help, or even stop. People just kept driving, hitting her. I think she died when I pulled her body from the road. She was so broken, it—”
He cut off sharply when Ryan grabbed his shoulder.
“Anyway, that was when I was in high school. But none of those cars’ drivers even ended up going up on the board. I checked. Some kind of wanted-in-connection-with bullshit that they would end up fighting out at trial so no one was gonna see a payout for ages. The city was in a money crunch and that bounty wouldn’t pay out fast enough.”
And, much to his shock, Ryan was suddenly pouring out the story of the accident. He’d never told it to anybody. But dammit. A “nothing” call. His parents had died for a “nothing call.” He was suddenly deeply ashamed of every time he’d ever called the high bounty calls the “good” ones.
Chavez nodded. "Yeah, that’s how it goes. Cops want the payouts. Gotta get those good calls quick.“ He put the same twist on the word "good” that Ryan didn’t think he’d ever be able to stop himself from saying from now on.
They were silent for a long moment.
“I hate it,” Ryan finally said.
“Hate what, Colton?” Chavez asked.
“The dumb bounty nonsense that pits us all against each other and means we can’t trust our own department and lets people die and it’s all stupid and I hate it.” Why was he saying this? Out loud? In front of damn feds, because those two agents had materialized out of somewhere, along with McCullough and all this crap just kept pouring out like some treasonous word vomit he couldn’t turn off.
But the feds didn’t instantly arrest him. One of them just said, “Without the bounties some people almost guaranteed to survive an emergency right now would die. There’s only so many people in law enforcement. And we’d all make less money.”
“It isn’t about that! Like, obviously we shouldn’t not help rich people, and obviously we should get paid, but why can’t we just…all try and help everybody? Isn’t that what cops used to do?”
Suddenly the whole gathering was silent. Ryan had been the only one speaking and everyone had heard every word. And they were all staring. Watching him say things that you can’t say. Not without stirring up some nasty political hornets’ nests that he was in no way ready to deal with. This was how guys ended up mysteriously dead on calls. This was absolutely, totally forbidden to talk about.
“Fuck.”
The other fed, a woman, gave him a weird half smile. "My best friend got tricked into hooking and eventually her pimp forced her to OD and made it look like an accidental suicide. Everybody knew who he was, but vice calls don’t pay out all that well, and he was connected to some politicians.“
"My father beat my mother to death when I was a kid,” McCullough said, and Ryan suddenly understood so many things about her that had never made sense until now. “But,” she concluded, “nobody rolls for a domestic call.”
“Got my girlfriend pregnant when I was a freshman in high school,” said one of the city cops. “Turned out to be a short-lived mistake when a drunk driver killed my kid senior year. He was three.” He told this story with a horrifyingly casual tone.
“Called in a break-in at my neighbor’s house when I was twelve,” said somebody else. "Not a huge bounty, so only one guy took the call, and he only got one bad guy. The other one figured out who called it in and beat my whole family to death. I only lived because someone called it in and the jock cops took the call in time to stop him from killing me. After all, stopping a murder pays pretty well.“
And on it went. Story after story pouring out of these cops who’d all lost someone to a "petty” crime that went bad. Everyone victimized by a different criminal, but all by the same system.
Ryan and Sheehan exchanged a look. This was the test. What did they say now?
“Why are we here?” Ryan demanded. Because there was no reason for this crew of what he was rapidly realizing were very dangerous people to reach out to him.
“We vetted you. You’ve got every reason to help us, and the potential to be a wildcard if you’re not on our side,” Mick replied.
Which explained why McCullough had trained him in the first place.
“You, Sheehan,” Mick continued, thumbing at him, “only made it on our radar after you came to back Colton here up. Good work on that, by the way.”
“The guys who created the bounty system are dead,” Sheehan finally blurted.
Chavez shook his head. "Remember how standardizing health care shot everyone’s premiums up for crappy plans? So only rich people could afford the good stuff?“
"Yes?” Ryan said. Where was this going?
“Well, turns out the guys who created the bounty system were pretty rich,” McCullough said. "They could afford the good stuff. They’re still kicking.“
Ryan’s whole world stuttered to a stop for a moment. He was nine years old and had his parents’ blood all over his hands and was desperately trying to call someone who could fix their car wishing anyone would come and help. And he realized in a dark surge of joy that the people to blame for no one coming were still available to pay that debt. He could demand it from them.
"You just tell me what you want. Doesn’t matter what,” Ryan said.
“What he said,” Sheehan agreed.
In the ensuing silence, Ryan could see the looks of terrible approval from everyone around. They’d passed the test. And the initiation.
“I’m glad you said that,” said McCullough. "I hope you boys brought your appetites. It’ll be at least a few more get-togethers to get anything rolling. But we can use your help, when the time comes.“ And then gave Ryan the first smile he’d ever seen from her.
It was not a nice smile.
THE END
*~*~*
Author’s Notes: I actually have no idea what the challenge system to move up a desk or two is. I didn’t bother to work that out.
Warning(s): violence, major character injury, background character death, swearing
Summary: Rather than being dispatched by a dispatcher, police officers use a bounty system where officers can pick up missions from a constantly updated bounty board. The missions range from: “noise complaint, $20”, to “domestic abuse, $150”, to “bank robbery in progress, $5000.”
Author's Notes: Based on the prompt in the summary.
Ryan looked around the office, his first day of his brand new job, hoping he didn’t look too much like the new kid in school and knowing that he did. He was hoping to spot his desk and make a break for it and pretend like he knew exactly where everything was before anybody spotted the weakness.
It wasn’t like police officers were out-and-out cruel to each other, usually, but…well, you didn’t go into this career field to make friends.
He glanced at the bounty board on the wall. All the calls on it still carried the blue background of the graveyard shift. First shift hadn’t started yet. There would be a smaller version in the cruiser he’d be in today. Assuming his training officer bothered to pick him up, that is. Training netted you an extra compensation from the county, but it also meant you had to split your bounties from days spent training the newbie, so picking up the new kid was something a lot of officers wouldn’t do.
They couldn’t be sure he’d measure up.
“You my new kid?” asked a voice.
Ryan turned and found himself looking down at a woman who seemed so casual in this place that he immediately knew she had worked this job for a very long time. She was older, though not old. Definitely not north of 42. Her brown hair was shot through with strands of silver, and she had just-barely-there crows’ feet fanning around her eyes. She was holding one of those thermos mugs of something that he couldn’t smell, which meant it wasn’t coffee. Not that most people dared to drink coffee after that blight had wiped out most of the strains of it. Ryan had vague memories of his parents mourning the loss, so he figured it had probably happened right around when he was born, though he didn’t much care to get it straight.
And now, here he was looking even as more childish than he already had. Geez, he probably looked like a high-schooler getting picked up by his mom.
(He batted that thought away immediately.)
“Ryan Colton,” he said, offering his hand.
“Sarah McCullough,” the woman said, ignoring it. "You’re my new kid. Your desk is over here.“
She led him through the station to a desk that was near the back. Hers was apparently right next to it, which was…weird.
The bounty board updated from the bottom up. By the time something made it to the top, no one really wanted to take it. All the lame calls got kicked to the top. Noise complaints, minor traffic issues, DUIs, rowdy drunks…stuff nobody really wanted to deal with.
So, the further back you were, the harder it was to see any of the good stuff. Armed robbery at any business was usually a pretty good payout. Any violent crime, like a murder or a rape had at least a grand bounty attached to it if you could nail the perp at the scene. And the calls with stars were the highest payouts, usually, because that meant a rich victim was kicking in a tip to whoever made the collar. As soon as the requisite amount of officers acknowledged they were rolling to a call, it vanished from the board and didn’t come back unless the ones who’d taken it reported failure or called for back-up.
(Back-up meant splitting the bounty, so most people tried very hard not to.)
McCullough had clearly been here for a while, so for her desk to be so far back was strange. Usually officers worked their way forwards through a challenge system. You didn’t survive in this kind of job without some kind of a strategy. Certainly not as one of only…three women that he could spot. And most of the other officers were giving her a pretty wide berth, so obviously she had managed to scare or bore everyone away from hassling her. All while staying way back here at what was probably the same desk she’d been assigned when she was as new as him.
"So, coffee’s over there if you need it,” she said, pointing as she took at seat and shuffled through a few beginning-of-shift sheets, scribbling a note on one with her stylus and tapping “SEND” to get it to whoever’s desk it was bound for.
Ryan scowled. "I didn’t realize there was still coffee that tasted good.“ In those vague memories, his parents had ranked the remaining strains in taste from "awful” to “sewer sludge.”
McCullough snorted. "There’s not.“ He’d finally pegged what she was drinking as tea, though he could tell she drank the extra-caffinated, herbal wake-up crap that cost crazy amounts of money. At least it wasn’t one of those home-brew ‘roid cocktails that were popular among the half-way burned out cops. Pretentious as hell, sure, but not dangerous.
At McCullough’s look, Ryan sat down in his own chair and rolled it over closer to her desk. She leveled a finger down a hallway to the right of the wall with the board. "Bathrooms are that way. Beginning of the shift like this, there’s usually a pretty long line. Buncha guys faking tiny bladders as an excuse to get closer to the board. My advice is to pee before you come in.”
“Right.” Ryan was very confused about why that was her advice. Shouldn’t she be telling him who to watch out for? Which guys were the meanest? Who made the most money, and so would be the most vicious about protecting it?
“Captain’s office is over there,” McCullough told him, pointing at a windowed office on the right side of the room. "He does not want to hear about your crap. Don’t bother him unless you’ve got something good to pitch him.“
"Okay.”
“You saw all the admins on your way in. They’ve got their own bounty system. File your paperwork correctly, or they will ruin your life,” McCullough continued, “and while we’re on calls today, you do what you’re told, when you’re told, no matter how stupid or unpleasant it sounds.”
“I am not doing the Cha-Cha Slide for you,” Ryan told her.
“If I tell you to Cha-Cha Slide, you damn well better do your best to bring DJ Casper back from the dead,” she snapped back. "Now then, got any questions before we get started?“
"Who’s the best paid officer here, and who are his friends?” Ryan replied.
McCullough blinked. "Looking to take down a few of the jocks?“
Ryan opened his mouth to reply, then gave it a second thought. He had no idea what the politics in this station were like. He didn’t need to go around explaining himself when anyone could be listening. He finally settled on saying, "Not exactly.”
McCullough looked thoughtful at that answer and said, “Well, the highest paid officer here is me, and I have been since my sixth month on the force. I tend to work with Brown, Chavez, and Mickolajczak over there.” She pointed at three desks in turn. None of them were too much farther forward than she was.
“You?” Ryan blurted out in surprise.
“What? Am I too much of a chick?” she challenged.
Ryan rolled his eyes. "Nope. Just a little on the short side.“ He exaggeratedly drew himself up in his seat, working the whole I-am-six-two-and-two-hundred-pounds-of-muscle-and-in-my-twenties schtick to the point of absurdity. Because, honestly? He wasn’t that much of a sexist. He was sexist enough to notice that McCullough had probably been a dime-piece about ten years ago, and that she’d still probably turn heads if she wanted to, but he felt like he could be forgiven for having eyeballs. He hadn’t let her good looks blind him to the fact that she’d obviously carved out her own space in the department.
Her eyes narrowed, noting his dodge of the challenge, but there was a vague hint of amusement in her expression. He’d surprised her. Probably pleased her a little, too, not taking a dig at her for being a woman. Finally, she said, "The jocks all sit on the front row. Those guys are the most aggressive about the high-paying jobs.
"Detectives are towards the middle. Solving a case only pays out if the guy you finger gets convicted, but it pays out a lot. If it’s a criminal trial for a violent crime, you’re looking at a minimum of fifteen grand. If four of your guys get convicted in one year, then you just made rent. You start closing cases, and you are in groceries until retirement. But it can take years to get a guy convicted, so that one is a long slog. If you want to get into that side of things, pick up a case to start working today. Most of the detectives work regular calls, too, to keep a steady check coming.
"Past the middle of the room, if someone’s desk looks like a permanent fixture, then you’re probably safe from challenges from them. However, they’ll also defend that territory, so don’t challenge those guys unless you know you can beat 'em. Someone has a white ring around the edge of their desk? They’re off-limits. Department rule. Period.”
“And you’re the highest paid officer in the department?” he asked in surprise.
“My only real competition are the detectives and those guys I pointed out to you. Don’t spread it around, though,” she said.
“Is it a secret?” he asked.
“Nope. But most of the guys here don’t believe it, so they’ll start thinking you’re a dupe if you do,” she answered easily.
Ryan narrowed his eyes at her, trying to decide if she was lying. "Why are you training me, then? If you’re making so much money on your own?“
McCullough scowled and looked away. "Probably because I’m an idiot,” she mumbled into her tea. "Get your gear, Colton. Time for me to show you how the idiots make book around this place.“
Ryan stood up. He hadn’t ever stowed anything, so he was ready to walk out the door. McCullough pulled her combat web from the desk drawer and stood as well. She ignored the board, and the two walked out to her cruiser.
The bounty boards in the cruisers were only big enough to show half of the stuff on the station. By default, they showed the top half, meaning that once you took a call, the next high value call to make it on the board would update to where you couldn’t see it right off the bat. Ryan had heard that back when the bounty system was first instituted, so many officers had changed calls midstream that the department started issuing calls on the ones that did. A minimum $500 bounty for an officer that switched a roll, with added percentages depending on the value of the call they tried to swap to. It took exactly two days for the switching to vanish completely.
This meant people chasing the high value calls had to have some kind of a Strategy for hitting the next one after they took one from the station. Once you were out the door, the game for getting the next big call got more complicated.
(Ryan had heard about a hack that swapped the dash boards to update in reverse, with the good stuff on top, but those had to be uninstalled every time the car went back to the department lot, so there was a lot of upkeep for that.)
They got into the car and McCullough turned the car on, warming it against the chill starting to creep in. It was only September, but they were already donning jackets in the evenings.
"Okay, so you’ll know this already, but once we take a call, we’re committed. No changing mid-stream,” McCullough told him, unconsciously reinforcing his train of thought from a moment ago. "But the main rule to follow is Don’t Get Greedy. Let the jocks scramble for the big calls. What we’re gonna do, is take as many of these other ones as we can humanly hit in a shift.“
Ryan blinked. "You don’t even try for the big ones?”
“You’d be surprised how many 'nothing’ calls turn out big,” McCullough said with a shrug. "You pull a traffic stop, that collar is yours, but say the guy has a bunch of coke in his trunk. Still your collar, so you go back to his house, bust six more guys and find a meth lab in the basement. Your 'nothing’ call just busted a drug ring. I’ve had that happen more than once. Couple of times, I hauled it out from under a detective, too, ended up getting that payout when the guy got convicted at his trial.“
Ryan nodded. You could do that sometimes. Swipe a collar. If you busted a perp on a call you’d responded to, but it turned out they were also the perp on another call, you got both payouts, no matter who had originally been the responding officer.
But McCullough shook her head. "You can’t count on that for your paycheck, though. Look, some of those idiots will spend their whole shift chasing that one perfect collar for a big check and go home with nothing. If you just…work your board, even for the 'nothing’ calls, you can absolutely depend on making at least $500 bucks a day. People don’t rob banks every day, and some of those jock cops will shoot another cop if they can pull a collar from them.
"That’s rule number two: Stay Clear Of The Jocks. Learn their names and don’t fight them for collars. Stay clear of rolling for back up, too, if you can. We lost two cops a few years ago to a power play. Couple jocks faked a back-up call and killed the guys who responded over some internal political bullshit. Don’t get mixed up with those guys. Just, work your board and Don’t Get Greedy.”
Ryan gave her a disbelieving look.
“Here, I’ll show you,” she said.
The blue-background vanished from the bounty board on the dash. Now all the calls came up backed in the green of first shift.
Much to Ryan’s disgust, McCullough tapped on a speed trap for the next three hours and keyed in her badge number on it. McCullough pulled them out of the department lot and off to an out-of-the-way hiding spot and the speed trap vanished from the board. Not all of them did for only one responder. For the more dangerous ones, a call would sometimes stay up until a few badges got keyed in. Nobody knew exactly how many, of course, so that the good calls would get quick responses. But still, it was only this little nothing calls that vanished after only one badge.
Ryan was less disgusted when they’d issued about $400 worth of tickets by the end of the three hours. Split between them, that was easily enough for groceries for the week, and they shift wasn’t even half-over. He was absolutely overjoyed when saw what he’d made for the day. On his first day. By the end of the week, he and McCullough had scored four DUIs (which were a minimum of $400 per ticket, and they had some discretionary leeway to tack on extra fines if they thought it was justified), and accidentally recovered a stolen car some teens had been out joyriding in, which turned out to be a star call that they’d swiped by mistake. His check at the end of the week was enough to cover rent and groceries for the month, with a little left over for beer money. And that was just the first week.
Okay. Maybe McCullough was on to something. He’d known she had to be from the moment he laid eyes on her, so there was a part of him that wasn’t surprised. So he followed her rules. He worked his board. He didn’t get greedy. He stayed clear of the front row jocks. And as he did, he noticed a few things about the department.
The first was that the front row jocks were actually the front three rows. They were constantly challenging each other to get closer to the board, take more of the “good” calls, get more notoriety. So they were constantly caught up in their own little whirlwind of melodrama, politics, and backstabbing. All those guys—and the only other two women in the department, huh—paid next to no attention to anyone who wasn’t part of their mad little scramble.
The second was that McCullough, Brown, Chavez, and Mickolajczak (who had glared at him and said, “Just call me Mick, for fuck’s sake, if you’re gonna suck that hard about my actual name, Colton.” after Ryan’s third time mangling it)—and him, now that he had started training with McCullough—each rolled to more calls than any other three officers in the department. As a result, they picked up more about the actual tendencies of bad guys in the area than any of the jock cops did. Ryan could list off, without hesitation, where the hookers tricked, the best places to score any drug you could name, and the names of most of the habitual drunk drivers any time he was asked. He could also flawlessly navigate any road in the county and knew, by heart, where all the construction was.
Even the detectives couldn’t do that, which he thought was pretty weird. Was that why it took so long for them to close cases? Because they didn’t pay enough attention to anything but the bounties on the case to get familiar with the local crime trends?
The third thing he noticed was that there was no shortage of “nothing” calls to respond to. McCullough had not been kidding when she’d said that if you just worked the board, you’d make book. It was his third week, when they’d just reported success on a domestic and both agreed they needed to unwind, that he asked her about it. They had decided to only mostly take a break and were lounging in the cruiser with their speed gun set to go off only if someone was driving fifty miles an hour or more over the limit. That was a high value ticket, but he was already doing pretty well for the week and it was only Wednesday, so he was really just hoping the gun didn’t go off.
McCullough was actually reading a book. She’d been really shaken by that last call. Frankly, so had he, but he was trying to pretend it hadn’t hit him in that awful sore spot where his family wasn’t.
“Was there always so much?” Ryan asked.
“So much what?” McCullough replied.
“So much…petty crime. I feel like there are a lot of drunks and looters. Like, more than there…should be?”
“There shouldn’t be any, Colton,” McCullough replied.
“You know what I mean,” Ryan returned, wondering, for the thousandth time, if she’d ever stop being so prickly. What did he ever do to her anyway, except listen to her weird rules and respect that they worked?
McCullough glanced up from her book and scowled. Finally, she said, “I was born about ten years after the bounty system was instated. It’s been more-or-less like this since I can remember. But my folks used to say… Well, my mom, anyway, used to say that it was better before.”
“So, why the change?” Ryan said. "If it just means crime goes up?“
"It only goes up for certain people,” McCullough replied. “Specifically, poor ones. Anyone who’s upper-middle-class or better tends to add a tip to the bounty. So the jock cops scramble for it. Bank robberies and insurance fraud over a certain amount gets a big bounty, so the jocks scramble for it. Rich people wanting security when they’re getting stalked pay huge tips so the jocks scramble for it. See where I’m going with this?”
“Anyone with enough money is almost guaranteed protection. With no worries that the cops would be busy on another call,” Ryan said, unable to stop the depressed-sounding note from creeping into his voice.
“Any crime that doesn’t touch them won’t change the status quo, either, so they don’t really care what happens outside of that,” McCullough agreed. “When we roll for the 'nothing’ calls, we’re basically the only cops doing it. At least somebody is.”
Ryan’s eyebrows went up. "You almost sound like, with enough cops like us, you could believe in the system.“
"Nope. Just in working it,” she responded, going back to her book.
By the time his three-month training period was up, Ryan had noticed a fourth thing. McCullough’s desk wasn’t her original desk. She’d started towards the middle of the room and challenged for her desk in the corner, near two windows. Thanks to some beautification ordinance or another, an enormous willow tree stood over a little pond not far outside where, during the right parts of the year, some ducks would paddle around sometimes.
McCullough’s desk was where it was because she thought the view was pretty.
It was such an ordinary, uncomplicated, human motivation that Ryan actually wanted to laugh when he figured it out. Turned out Brown, Chavez, and Mick had similar motives for their stations. Brown actually drank coffee, so he’d challenged for a desk near the coffee-maker, the suicidal lunatic. Chavez and Mick rolled for RRT and SWAT calls, so they had desks near the doors.
So that was how these guys managed it. They kept their heads down, didn’t announce their strategy, worked their boards, and picked out desks just because they liked where the desk was located. Well, Ryan had been eyeing one near another window. He started angling for it the next day, and McCullough actually looked approving when he stopped there, only two rows off the back wall.
Yeah, yeah. He was a good padawan learner. Whatever. He tried not to let her vague, distant pride feel too good. They were not buddies.
After training, you got your own cruiser, your badge number was valid to respond to calls, you were on your own. He was happy to have a system now that meant he would be able to pay his bills, and he was on reasonably good terms with the detectives in the building. Cap knew his name, but didn’t hate his guts, and he hadn’t been sucked in to any of the jock crap.
On the whole, pretty good.
But he hadn’t really made any allies. McCullough wasn’t a buddy. She’d been a patient teacher, and answered all his newbie questions, but she wasn’t interested in knowing him that he could tell. Brown, Chavez, and Mick were her allies. Mick didn’t even like him and had said so to his face. And they didn’t interact with anyone much outside that little circle, so Ryan had no idea where to start looking to build his own set of allies.
A month later, that almost got him killed.
Ryan had pulled somebody over. Totally routine, ordinary, nothing remarkable about this traffic stop. Right up until the asshole in the truck leveled a rifle out of the driver’s window and started blasting. Ryan had to dive back into his cruiser with a hole in his shoulder that was going to net his cruiser a reupholstering, at minimum, desperately radioing to send back-up for his call. All while he put his car into gear to try and follow this douchebag while driving one armed. Because he had been shot.
Fuck.
Ryan had managed to start a tenuous alliance with two other guys in the station. Only one, Cody Sheehan, just a month out of his own training and even more disillusioned about it than Ryan was, responded. The second to respond, much to his shock, was Mick.
The three of them cornered the asshole who’d shot him. It ended up in a shoot-out, none of them able to work out which one of them had downed the suspect, but the guy had a whole mess of illegal guns in his truck. Plenty to net a good bounty, even split three ways.
Of course, right around then, Ryan’s adrenaline deserted him and he very manfully fainted. Apparently getting shot had consequences.
He was in the hospital when he woke up. And, much to his shock, Mick was in his hospital room.
“Thought you didn’t like me?” Ryan said in confusion.
“’S not personal, Colton,” Mick replied, not looking up from the news flyer he was scrolling through. "I don’t like anyone, really. People who get my name wrong are a special set, but that’s just your bad luck.“ He tapped one of the headlines on his flyer and Ryan watched the reverse side as the story expanded to fill the plastic sheet, and Mick started scrolling through it.
"So why are you here?” Because it was a little unnerving that they guy would visit him while he was unconscious.
“Delivering McCullough’s gift. She sent you a flower.” Mick pointed.
Ryan turned to look. Sure enough, on his bedside table, was a thin-necked vase with a daisy in it. Not an arrangement, one daisy. There was no note or card or other identifying marker.
“She kind of sucks at expressing herself,” Ryan said, eyeing the flower dubiously. Not that he’d had a lot of good models for that, most of his life. He remembered, though.
“Utter disaster,” Mick agreed. They were quiet for a moment until Mick said, “So…you put someone in a bag. Big payout for the illegal guns, and a dead suspect who won’t argue your bounty. How’s it feel?”
Ryan frowned. "I don’t think I trust you enough to have this conversation.“
Mick’s brows went up. "Good answer. So it’s not a clear-cut good or bad, then.”
“Automatic weapons are illegal. And the guy shot me. What do you want, do you want me to cry for him? He shouldn’t have shot me.”
“Then why aren’t you super jazzed about the collar?” Mick said.
Ryan was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, “That guy wasn’t exactly rich. There aren’t a lot of guys who’d roll for him if he got in trouble. He had a wedding ring and…if he lived in the direction he was headed, most of those neighborhoods aren’t friendly. What if he was just trying to protect his family? He shouldn’t have shot me, but maybe he had good reasons to be scared, you know?”
Mick looked thoughtful. Finally, he pinched the top corner of the news flyer and the plastic sheet went dark. He said, “Chavez is having a get-together Saturday. Bring your new friend. That guy who responded. Ditch your other new friend.”
“No problem. That guy was probably gonna turn out to be an asshole anyway.”
Mick huffed out a laugh. "Somebody will text you the address. Get well soon, Colton.“ He tossed the news flyer on the bed as he headed out the door. Ryan picked it up, and pinched the corner. The flyer flashed and the last news story on it appeared on the thin screen.
HERO COP INJURED IN GUN BUST
He was a "hero cop,” huh? He didn’t feel all that heroic. He pinched the screen off and rolled up the flyer. It flew satisfyingly into the trash can by the door without him having to read whatever dumb crap was actually in that article.
Ryan was thankful for modern medicine that meant he could get out of the hospital after two days. That, plus the various tissue grafts in his shoulder would have him back on the job in two weeks. Which was good, because recovery was super boring.
Ryan and Sheehan turned up at Chavez's—actually pretty nice—house, both hoping this get-together turned out to be worth leaving their apartments on a day off in November. It was raining slush all over the roads and Ryan was more than happy to be driving a truck with some decent tires, because he knew no cops would roll for an accident on a day like today. Cops barely showed up for accidents even when the weather didn’t suck.
Everyone was nice enough, more or less. Apparently McCullough’s crew had some kind of connections with similar cops who worked for the city instead of the county, because there three people here that Ryan recognized from a few interjurisdictional squabbles. The jurisdictional administrations had their own super-version of the bounty system, where they received a certain amount of money based on how much their cops, collectively, netted for bounties. The more money the officers made, the more money the department made. And then there were two people who Ryan was pretty sure were feds, and he couldn’t imagine how competitive the fed jocks got for bounties, because he’d heard some of the VICAP collars had paid out in the millions. But these two were laid back. Didn’t have that chip on their shoulder they were daring you to knock off, like the jock cops did.
Still, it was obvious this crew was tight. Like, take-a-bullet-for-each-other tight. And Ryan got the very strong sense that this wasn’t an initiation so much as a test. He and Sheehan were being sounded out for something. Hell if he knew what, though.
They’d brought some beers as a thank-you-for-inviting-us thing, and so the two of them made a beeline for the fridge to stow their contributions. Once they’d straightened, Chavez, who was standing at the kitchen island cutting up some bread into slices that would probably end up having garlic butter, gave them a grin.
“You know, you didn’t have to bring those.”
“Dude, we weren’t entirely raised in a barn,” Sheehan replied.
That got a slight laugh. Then Chavez looked up curiously. "So, what got you boys into law enforcement?“
"The money,” they answered, in unison, without hesitation. It was a stock answer. Everyone said that when asked. If a civilian asked it to you at a scene, it was an excuse to go full-on cliché and snap on some sunglasses before walking straight into an explosion, if there happened to be an explosion handy. When people asked you this question, that was the answer you gave.
So everyone knew that it wasn’t the real answer. Which is why Chavez was rolling his eyes.
The real answer, in nearly every case was, “Because I want to kill the asshole who ruined my life.” Nobody would ever admit it, but that’s why they all did this. Because sometimes, for the people lucky enough to win the universe’s lottery, you would cross paths with whatever dirtbag had hurt you back when, and you could call them in as whatever and nobody would question it because that’s one more bounty to cross of the list. Ryan had heard it wasn’t as satisfying as you thought it would be. That everyone tried to brace themselves for being let down, but nobody ever totally did.
But he’d been told it was a little satisfying, though. Which was not nothing.
And, okay, Ryan’s life was not ruined. …Of course, it hadn’t been super great.
He’d lost his parents young. He was nine. They’d been driving home from church dinner and gotten clipped by a drunk driver. Traffic accidents were the kind of call nobody wanted to roll to. Even at the age of nine, he’d known no one was coming. His folks had died, and he’d had to wash the blood off his hands with a water bottle to get his fingers clean enough to call for a tow truck. He had been too scared and panicky and stupid and young to think to call an ambulance. His dad had coached him through the numbers.
(Or he had imagined his dad coaching him through the numbers. He never could get his memory straight as to exactly when, in the whole process, his parents had actually died. There was no rational reason for that to matter, but for some reason he felt very guilty for it.)
But whatever. Life sucks. Everyone has their sob story. His didn’t make him special. After he’d cleared his training, he’d actually looked up the drunk driver. The guy had died while Ryan was in high school. There was no vengeance to be had. Now he just needed a paycheck. Which he was making. His bills got paid on time, his lights stayed on, he wasn’t ruined.
He was fine.
“Okay, so why did you really get into law enforcement?” Chavez asked.
“Dude, why did you?” Sheehan demanded. Because, seriously, this was some pretty heavy Do Not Ask territory and the guy had opened with it, what the hell.
“Because I used to be married,” Chavez told them, holding up his left hand. Ryan had wondered about the ring, since Chavez had never mentioned a wife. “She was out with some friends for a girl’s night, some asshole pushed her off of the roof of a club. Cops didn’t even come. Who cares about a rowdy drunk, right? That's—what?—fifty bucks? Who cares about fifty bucks? And by the time EMS reported there’d been a fatality, the asshole that did it was long gone. You don’t get paid at all if there’s no collar.”
“Dude, that's…horrible,” Ryan blurted out.
There was a long silence, where nothing happened but the loaf of bread getting cut up into nice even slices.
“My girlfriend got hit by a car,” Sheehan said suddenly.
Ryan turned to stare at him in shock.
“Actually it was four cars. No one would help, or even stop. People just kept driving, hitting her. I think she died when I pulled her body from the road. She was so broken, it—”
He cut off sharply when Ryan grabbed his shoulder.
“Anyway, that was when I was in high school. But none of those cars’ drivers even ended up going up on the board. I checked. Some kind of wanted-in-connection-with bullshit that they would end up fighting out at trial so no one was gonna see a payout for ages. The city was in a money crunch and that bounty wouldn’t pay out fast enough.”
And, much to his shock, Ryan was suddenly pouring out the story of the accident. He’d never told it to anybody. But dammit. A “nothing” call. His parents had died for a “nothing call.” He was suddenly deeply ashamed of every time he’d ever called the high bounty calls the “good” ones.
Chavez nodded. "Yeah, that’s how it goes. Cops want the payouts. Gotta get those good calls quick.“ He put the same twist on the word "good” that Ryan didn’t think he’d ever be able to stop himself from saying from now on.
They were silent for a long moment.
“I hate it,” Ryan finally said.
“Hate what, Colton?” Chavez asked.
“The dumb bounty nonsense that pits us all against each other and means we can’t trust our own department and lets people die and it’s all stupid and I hate it.” Why was he saying this? Out loud? In front of damn feds, because those two agents had materialized out of somewhere, along with McCullough and all this crap just kept pouring out like some treasonous word vomit he couldn’t turn off.
But the feds didn’t instantly arrest him. One of them just said, “Without the bounties some people almost guaranteed to survive an emergency right now would die. There’s only so many people in law enforcement. And we’d all make less money.”
“It isn’t about that! Like, obviously we shouldn’t not help rich people, and obviously we should get paid, but why can’t we just…all try and help everybody? Isn’t that what cops used to do?”
Suddenly the whole gathering was silent. Ryan had been the only one speaking and everyone had heard every word. And they were all staring. Watching him say things that you can’t say. Not without stirring up some nasty political hornets’ nests that he was in no way ready to deal with. This was how guys ended up mysteriously dead on calls. This was absolutely, totally forbidden to talk about.
“Fuck.”
The other fed, a woman, gave him a weird half smile. "My best friend got tricked into hooking and eventually her pimp forced her to OD and made it look like an accidental suicide. Everybody knew who he was, but vice calls don’t pay out all that well, and he was connected to some politicians.“
"My father beat my mother to death when I was a kid,” McCullough said, and Ryan suddenly understood so many things about her that had never made sense until now. “But,” she concluded, “nobody rolls for a domestic call.”
“Got my girlfriend pregnant when I was a freshman in high school,” said one of the city cops. “Turned out to be a short-lived mistake when a drunk driver killed my kid senior year. He was three.” He told this story with a horrifyingly casual tone.
“Called in a break-in at my neighbor’s house when I was twelve,” said somebody else. "Not a huge bounty, so only one guy took the call, and he only got one bad guy. The other one figured out who called it in and beat my whole family to death. I only lived because someone called it in and the jock cops took the call in time to stop him from killing me. After all, stopping a murder pays pretty well.“
And on it went. Story after story pouring out of these cops who’d all lost someone to a "petty” crime that went bad. Everyone victimized by a different criminal, but all by the same system.
Ryan and Sheehan exchanged a look. This was the test. What did they say now?
“Why are we here?” Ryan demanded. Because there was no reason for this crew of what he was rapidly realizing were very dangerous people to reach out to him.
“We vetted you. You’ve got every reason to help us, and the potential to be a wildcard if you’re not on our side,” Mick replied.
Which explained why McCullough had trained him in the first place.
“You, Sheehan,” Mick continued, thumbing at him, “only made it on our radar after you came to back Colton here up. Good work on that, by the way.”
“The guys who created the bounty system are dead,” Sheehan finally blurted.
Chavez shook his head. "Remember how standardizing health care shot everyone’s premiums up for crappy plans? So only rich people could afford the good stuff?“
"Yes?” Ryan said. Where was this going?
“Well, turns out the guys who created the bounty system were pretty rich,” McCullough said. "They could afford the good stuff. They’re still kicking.“
Ryan’s whole world stuttered to a stop for a moment. He was nine years old and had his parents’ blood all over his hands and was desperately trying to call someone who could fix their car wishing anyone would come and help. And he realized in a dark surge of joy that the people to blame for no one coming were still available to pay that debt. He could demand it from them.
"You just tell me what you want. Doesn’t matter what,” Ryan said.
“What he said,” Sheehan agreed.
In the ensuing silence, Ryan could see the looks of terrible approval from everyone around. They’d passed the test. And the initiation.
“I’m glad you said that,” said McCullough. "I hope you boys brought your appetites. It’ll be at least a few more get-togethers to get anything rolling. But we can use your help, when the time comes.“ And then gave Ryan the first smile he’d ever seen from her.
It was not a nice smile.
*~*~*
Author’s Notes: I actually have no idea what the challenge system to move up a desk or two is. I didn’t bother to work that out.