FYI: Tackleberry is in this chapter!

I placed my hands on the seat of the chair in an attempt to stand. I couldn't take many more blows to my ego in such a state.

"Are we going back now?" I mumbled, my voice coming out weaker than I'd wanted.

"Noooo," he replied in a kind of singsong, raising his eyebrows for emphasis as he spoke. "You've got a gigantic rip in your pants. You need a new pair. Stay here."

With that he took off in a fast walk, yanking open the door connecting his garage to his house. He promptly shut it behind him and I was left alone with my thoughts. What was the low-profile vehicle under the cover? I was morbidly curious. Within a moment or two I'd stood up and lightly limped over to the vehicle, lifting the cover off of its hood ever so slowly.

As I pulled the cover back, a perfect mirror finish was revealed; the mirror finish of a red sports car! I continued on my quest to identify the mystery vehicle, slowly peeling back the cover as my eyes got wider and wider.

The vehicle Harris was hiding in his garage was a ruby red 1993 Corvette ZR-1 coupe, waxed and polished to a mirrored finish. Oh. My. Lord. I loved this car and oftentimes walked a mile out of the way from where I held temp jobs so I could steal a glance at the Corvettes glistening on the dealer's lot. At night I used to stand on my tiptoes to glance at the specs on the seller's papers taped to the windshields of these beauties. That, in combination with the ZR-1 package, rounded out the car of my dreams. And here it was in front of me. Four hundred and five horses. Six-speed transmission. A V8 engine that made accelerating from 0 to 60 effortless. My feeling of extreme lust for such a car had been reinforced by the knowledge that I'd never achieve the kind of greatness needed to own a car like this. Instead I'd learned to covet things within my range of achievement: basically, my ex's shitty 1988 Corsica.

Though my parents had a good deal of money, they tended to spend it on lavish vacations for themselves, not on actual physical items like a fancy car. They owned an Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight, which wasn't exactly high class. In the way of cars they were tight-wads, holding on to old cars until the cars sputtered and died. Perhaps this parental stinginess made my lavish desire for a sports car even stronger.

The tires of Captain Harris's Corvette were as black as coal with not a single speck of dirt on the tread or the whitewalls. It looked as if it'd never been driven before. I was transfixed at the sight. Captain Harris certainly had good taste in cars.

I began to think about the implications of this car in Harris's garage. Here he was, a mere cop with my dream car. He probably had to save up for years to afford this, and based on the state of his house, he had no family to support, but it was possible to own such a thing on a cop's income. Maybe, just maybe, this police thing wasn't as bad a job as I first thought.

"Get away from there, Carnegie," a menacing voice growled. I turned my head to look. In Harris's hand was a pair of oversized navy blue sweatpants. The southern drawl I'd heard bits and pieces of earlier was much more apparent now.

"It's—beautiful—" I stammered as I glanced back at the car, feeling a blush coming on as I continued to hold the cover up.

"I thought you said you couldn't walk," he muttered, moving quickly towards me. Immediately I dropped the cover and it billowed back down over the perfectly polished finish of the luxury vehicle.

"Be careful with that!" he exclaimed, catching the cover just before it could settle completely down on the car. He gently lowered it onto the car and then glared at me.

With a look of utter irritation, he thrust the sweatpants into my hand.

"Now that you're walking, you'll have no trouble changing into these," he remarked. "I'll be inside the house. Knock on the door when you're done."

"When did you get this car?" I muttered in awe, as he walked towards the house, his back to me. My voice trailed off as I spoke. "Wow, a ZR-1—it can go from 0 to 60 in 5 seconds."

"Four point nine seconds, actually. I bought it as soon as it came out," he replied, intrigued enough by my knowledge of the car to turn around. "1993. It's the 40th anniversary edition. Very exclusive."

"Has it been driven?"

"Of course it has, nitwit."

"It doesn't look like it."

"That's because I take care of it," he snapped back. "I've put about a thousand miles on it in the last couple of years."

"Are the seats red leather?" I found myself asking. Red leather was the ultimate in interior luxury. I used to admire one particular white ZR-1 Corvette on the lot with said interior—until it disappeared one day, likely purchased by some stuffy old widower on his way to the bone yard.

"Yeeesss—ruby red, to be exact," he replied, a smug smile emerging on his face as he replied in a sing-song fashion.

"Oh my God…. How could you not drive it mor—"

"I only drive it when it's sunny—and only at the right temperature."

"Why don't you park it at the academy?"

"Rain, mud… birds," he replied. That was not a satisfactory excuse and I must have made some kind of face. After a moment of looking conflicted, he continued speaking. "And because my pissant co-officers blew up my last car with a grenade,*" he replied matter-of-factly.

"What? Why?" I heard myself blurt. It was truly shocking. To think that Harris's coworkers hated him enough to destroy his car…..

"They told me it was an accident," he explained, "but I know better. The idiots couldn't stop laughing."

"What happened? Why would they have done—"

"It's a long story," he said, looking almost embarrassed. "What matters is that they aren't going to get the chance to screw with this car. They've only seen it in passing and that's how it's gonna stay."

"How do you find the time to drive it, then? You work all day," I muttered. He seemed to find this a compliment, and his posture straightened another degree.

"Now and again I find the time. Weekends mostly. I don't need to drive it to love it," he explained. "Just owning it satisfies me."

"Could you uncover it so I can see it?" I asked.

"Hell no," he shot back, shaking his head with distaste. "This is my most cherished possession. You'd think I'd let a little punk like you touch it?"

"I don't have to touch it; I just want to see—"

"Stick to Corsicas," he muttered, turning back around and waving a hand dismissively. "And get changed. We have to get back. Don't you even think about touching my car, Carnegie."

It only took me a minute or so to change into the sweatpants Captain Harris had given(?) to me. I knocked on the door to the house to inform him that I had finished changing. At the sound of the knock he burst out of the door, aggressively charging past me to the car.

"I didn't touch it," I said.

"If I so much as see a fingerprint on the cover I'm taking you straight to jail, Carnegie. You can forget about the Police Academy. I'll book you so fast your head will spin."

It was comments like these that made me lose massive amounts of respect for Captain Harris in very short bursts of time. It was comments like these that made me open my mouth and say the first thing on my mind.

I watched Harris run to his precious car, narrowing his eyes at me as he held up a region of the cover with the end of his baton. Just as he was about to speak, I blurted out my retort.

"Well, you ripped my pants wide open right there on the sidewalk," I shot. "Thank goodness whoever that was came by because you would've had your way with—"

Harris's face was pure poison. He glared me down with those dark eyes of his, his teeth bared, jaw set.

"You wouldn't dare…." he growled, his voice throaty and low. I waited a couple of seconds before answering. His face visibly paled as the silence continued.

"I'm not like you," I replied.

I heard him sigh with relief, the anger immediately dissipating from his face.

The trip back to the police academy was done in tense silence, with Harris not even bothering to look over at me as I sat in the passenger's side seat, the pair of ripped sweatpants stuffed up under my sweatshirt, being as he hadn't asked for them or taken them after I'd changed into the other pair.

As we pulled onto the street housing the police academy, Harris flicked his headlights off and coasted towards the campus, halting dramatically before reaching the parking lot, where two police cars sat with lights flashing. Something was definitely going on. He pulled beside the curb and quietly turned off the car. I saw him glance over at me, his eyes more anxious than irritated. For once, he had nothing to say.

Floodlights scanned the campus, their bright lights filtering through the trees and shrubbery as they moved about. Cops in full uniform, most of whom weren't even instructors at the academy, stalked the campus. The blue and red of police car lights reflected off the windows of the campus buildings. I heard the tinny indistinct sounds of a megaphone, the occasional scream of a siren.

"You just had to drop my baton, didn't you?" he shot with a sneer, though the fear in his eyes was unmistakable.

As we sat in the dark vehicle, I noticed people—uniformed people—rapidly approaching. They ran at the car with guns drawn, a floodlight subsequently shining into the car and blinding us. Harris shielded his face as the group of police officers surrounded us.

"Let me see your hands!" a cop with a megaphone demanded. My hands shot instinctively into the air, Harris's doing the same. Needless to say, I was surprised by his speedy surrender.

"Step out of the vehicle!"

I glanced over at Harris, whose eyes were larger than I'd ever seen them. He looked over at me and could surely see that I was scared as well. What the hell was going on here?

"Get out of the goddamn car before I blow your brains out!" the guy yelled through the megaphone. In his free hand he was now aiming the biggest revolver I'd ever seen. It couldn't have been legal—I'd never seen a cop carrying anything like that.

Harris didn't skip a beat. He immediately flipped open the door handle and stepped out of the car with hands high in the air. I did the same, but it seemed that I wasn't the center of attention here; Harris was. The man with the megaphone handed the horn roughly to the officer beside him and holstered his gun, taking off at full speed at Harris.

"Tackleberry—slow down!" Harris shouted, hands up yet held in front of him protectively as he attempted to avoid the brunt of the big man's force, just before he was tackled onto the ground with a loud groan. I moved around the front of the car to watch Harris being flipped onto his stomach, Tackleberry using some kind of ju-jitsu technique to wrench his arms behind him and cuff him as Harris's hat fell off and as his sidearm was confiscated. All the while, Harris could only squirm and make sounds of pain like a wounded animal. It was a pathetic sight to watch; I couldn't look away.

The arresting officer grabbed Harris by the collar of his uniform and yanked him viciously to his feet where he stood like a deer in the headlights. I could do nothing but stare at him, then back at the crowd of officers.

"Let me go, assholes!" Harris suddenly blurted, somehow confident again even though he was handcuffed and unarmed. The officers that had been restraining him stepped away, pulling out their revolvers and aiming them at his chest from a safe distance. It was probably a strategy the gun-toting Tackleberry had taught them. At sight of the increased firepower, Harris took several steps towards me, as if attempting to use me as a kind of shield against roughly a third of the officers, who stood off to my right.

"Where are the men from my precinct?" Harris said, scanning the group suspiciously. I saw a couple of the officers glance at each other as if harboring some kind of secret but no one, not even Tackleberry, said anything. Their lack of verbal response enraged Harris. Though he was using me as a kind of protective shield, Harris spoke aggressively, his voice gruff and irritated. "They would know to positively ID a suspect before—"

"We've been looking for you, scumbag!" Tackleberry yelled back as he moved around to the front of Harris, his spit flying in Harris's face. Harris was terrified and couldn't hide it. The group of twenty or so cops remained at bay, their guns still drawn, all attention on Harris.

"Why," Harris muttered meekly, his voice much softer now.

"You're wanted under suspicion of assault—and quite possibly rape, kidnapping, and murder."

"Wh-what the hell are you talking about…" Harris sputtered, too stunned to move. I was taken aback as well. Had I really just been in the company of a rapist/murderer?

"Several recruits in the women's dorm said they heard moaning and crying—like someone was in pain. When Captain Callahan walked by the source of the noises shortly after hearing them, she found a recruit's hat—and your baton. Hooks informed us that you escorted an unhappy female recruit outside shortly after you'd rid the campus of a supposed threat. Then you left the campus in some kind of hurry. That female recruit Hooks saw you with is now missing. Where is that recruit, Harris?"

Rather than speak, I saw Harris signal at me with his eyes. All attention turned on me.

"You April Carnegie?" Tackleberry asked me, stalking quickly away from Harris.

"Yes," I replied.

"Damn it, Tackleberry!" Harris raged. "You're supposed to ask her her name first and if it matches the name of the person of interest, then you connect the dots! Didn't you get anything out of your training here?"

"I caught you, didn't I?" Tackleberry shot back, a toothy grin on his face. Within a matter of seconds, the big man's attention was again on me.

"I wasn't running!" Harris retorted after a beat, his reply completely ignored by Tackleberry, who didn't bother to look back at him.

"Do you have something under your shirt, Ma'am?" Tackleberry asked me, eyeing the large misshapen lump under my shirt. Initially I was taken aback by the strange-sounding question, but then I remembered the sweatpants I'd inadvertently stuffed up there when I had no other place to put them.

"Yes."

"What is it?"

Rather than verbally reply, I let the torn sweatpants fall out of my shirt, and watched the eyes of the officers follow the path of the pants to the ground. Tackleberry picked them up carefully, holding them by the waistband. The rip in the crotch region was huge and obvious and put on display for all to see. I heard the group loudly gasp, turning their attention to Harris, who swallowed quite loudly, remaining silent yet relatively wide-eyed as he stood beside me, his hands cuffed behind him. Tackleberry handed off the sweatpants to a blond officer standing nearby.

"Did Harris do this to you?" Tackleberry asked me, pointing accusingly at Harris, whose eyes were practically the size of saucers now. Harris was giving me a sidelong stare, clearly holding his breath. If I wanted to nail Harris for anything, now was the time.

*The grenade blowing up Harris's car took place in PA6