Boys in Blue

“I'm going to, Harry!” She cocked the trigger. “There's nothing you can do about it.”

Sargent Harry Wallace looked at the woman with the old fashioned snub-nosed '38 pressed to the center of her forehead. She was using both hands to hold the gun steady, but it shook none the less. Her eyes were bloodshot and hazelnut brown.

Wallace never knew of anyone ever shooting themselves dead center in the forehead before. He wrestled with correcting her procedure.

Behind him in the doorway, his partner waited and watched, his knees bent, his gun, like the one Wallace held was aimed at the woman's forehead.

“Go downstairs, Pete! Keep everyone back!” Wallace said. They could all three hear sirens approaching from outside.

“Lottie,” Wallace said to the woman, knowing his partner hadn't moved from the doorway, and knowing too, he was almost out of time, “I told you--”

“You lie!” the woman said in a calm voice.

“I explained I'm married--”

“You lie!” she whispered in barely a voice at all. Mascara ran down her cheeks.

Three weeks and four days to retirement, Wallace kept thinking.

Pete took three steps around and past Wallace and pulled the Caucasian female's gun away with a hard yank.

In moments she was handcuffed and then silent in the black and white downstairs.

Sargent Wallace saw her looking at him trough the rear view mirror as he drove. Her face was like stone.

“You lie,” she lipped at him in the mirror.

Office Wallace shook his head “No” and felt the eyes of his partner next to him, studying his face.

“Pete,” Wallace said to his partner, “It's not what you--”

“You lie,” Pete said, and turned his attention out the window.

-300 words-