Jane was smiling like the Cheshire Cat as she placed her order.
Every precinct had betting pools.
It was as traditional as wearing a particular shade of blue, drinking far too much crappy coffee and having a weakness for a certain form of rotund pastry. In fact, it had become so traditional that it was generally considered now simply as part of the Natural Laws of the Universe—standing infinitely beside Relativity, Polarity, Cause and Effect. Immutable, eternal, and definable by Science.
Commissioners who failed to grasp this apparently basic understanding of Natural Law and who tried to put a kibosh on the pools quickly learned that it didn't matter how many Uniform Code Manual Regulations they quoted or how many times they had to Disciplinary Action bust someone for participating in them, the betting pools were as statistically impossible to wipe out as cockroaches in New York. In fact, the harder they attempted to deny one of the Universal Laws, the more they actually pushed the tradition from Science into the more chaotic but far more impossibly immovable realm of the Sacred.
Most commissioners gave up eventually, having neither the ample budget, necessary man hours, or available resources to successfully take on something so battle entrenched as to have become a part of the scientific Universe itself, and instead went for the stoic Blind Eye Approach which was humanity's innate default setting when it came to dealing with what can't be changed-only bothering to play the required Hard Nose if some idiot pencil pusher with a Political Agenda or idealistic reporter With A Cause started sniffing about. Some commissioners-usually those who had actually fought up through the ranks themselves and so had already been properly educated in the Natural Laws of the Universe, as opposed to those merely appointed their position by Politic Favor who were still ignorant and so resistant to Obvious Scientific Fact-actually cheerfully gave in and joined the pools, setting off wild competitive betting with their officers. And then there were a few hardened veteran commissioners Soon To Retire who decided to hell with it entirely and actually ran the pools themselves with PTSD scarred sharp-toothed merry glee.
Yet, while every precinct had the traditional betting pools, like every other form of human tradition on this watery blue planet, every single precinct in existence differed on the details of the celebration of that tradition. And so it was that the type of pools differed wildly depending on the location of the whole precincts themselves.
One of the more prim Connecticut precincts currently had a dryly Addams Family humored pool on which one of their patrol cars would actually managed to hit the least number of Insane Suicidal Road Bolting Squirrels this week.
Another more weather weary precinct in Montana now had a self-mocking pool on which one of their battered patrol cars would actually have the outrageously crappy Karma to manage to get stuck in the next snow storm the most.
An Oregon precinct long resigned to the Neverending Story of City Road Work had a snickering pool on which one of its newbie beat cops got lost in Portland first.
And a precinct in Kansas had a wickedly amused pool flying on which one of its newbie beat cops would manage to get themselves to the tornado bunker last.
Of course, given humanity's almost innate desire to further stratify itself, the celebration of betting pool tradition divided itself even further among its faithful followers—and the pools which differed so much from precinct to precinct as a whole were now also different from the pools held inside each precinct. As each precinct department division hosted their own particular pools.
So Grim Reaper humored SWAT had a broodingly cheerful betting pool burning on which one of their snipers made the longest successful shot in an Active Shooter Incident.
Always fiercely Olympic level competitive, seriously over caffeinated and epically forever time crunched Homicide had a speed pool on which detective could close the greatest percent of cases in the shortest run.
Traffic, who counted The Punisher and Huntress as two of their most revered Patron Saints, had a maniacally joyfully hard justice dispensing betting pool on who wrote the highest number of tickets hourly.
And brazen tangled haired gang tattooed fear nothing Narcotics had a laughingly defiant betting pool on who got the most inventive death threats for the week.
But humanity wasn't renown for its almost fanatical adherence to its most beloved traditions for nothing—and as they had ever so obsessively compulsively differentiated earth's species from kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, genus and species—so their betting pools divided still further now from precinct to department division to at last individuals within the departments.
This was naturally of course where the betting pools could take on a bizarre Tim Burton sort of twist because nothing was as weird as the idiosyncrasies of individuals under high octane stress, constant sleep deprivation, and unattainable bureaucratic required work goals.
Which is how Jane Rizzoli got to spend her lunch hour happily munching on a double cheeseburger packed with enough mouth watering cholesterol inducing naughty condiments to possibly require a defibrillator in the very near future.
Because Jane had just won the betting pool between Maura and herself-and earned every delicious meaty greasy bite of goodness she now held in her scarred hands.
Maura had destroyed another pair of Jimmy Choo shoes at a crime scene.
Jane just grinned and snagged some fries, dragging them through an obscene amount of ketchup before popping them into her mouth to chew blissfully on the salty pleasure.
Maura was a brilliant woman.
But she had absolutely no concept of a sucker bet.