Sheriff Peterkin stared into the rear-view mirror of her police car, looking at the tired, dark eyes reflecting back at her. Her face was illuminated by the red shine of the stoplight overhead, casting an eerie glow across her face.
When had she started looking so old?
She lightly touched the set of wrinkles that were now faintly etched into the side of her eyes. Shadows reflected the hard lines of her face, a face to which the softness of youth had disappeared from a long time ago.
Her eyes flashed up to the worn photo pinned neatly on the corner of the sun-visor, the shadowy figures crowded together and barely distinguishable in the darkness of the car. It didn't matter, she didn't need to see the photo to know exactly what was on it. It was a picture of graduation from the police academy, a cherub-faced, 20-year old version of herself beaming into the camera and holding her certificate, crowded between her parents.
That had been almost 25 years ago.
Her parents had been gone a long time now. Sometimes she wondered if that girl in the photo was gone too. She sure didn't feel like her.
The change of the light snapped her out of her reverie and she pulled onto the dark road, her headlights illuminating the dark, squat vegetation of the outer banks. Her body tensed as the radio crackled through the silence of the car. "Dispatch to 24."
"This is 24." She responded.
"We have complaints of a 10-16 at 24 W. Galvin Avenue. Neighbors complained of some yelling and domestic disturbance."
Domestic disturbance all right. She felt annoyance flicker angrily in her chest. She knew that address; this was the third time that she'd been called out to the Maybank home that summer.
"Responding." She clipped cleanly over the radio, flicking her sirens on and stepping on the gas.
"10-4. Unit 32 will meet you there." Crackled through the radio.
…
Fifteen minutes later, she turned off the lights and sirens as she wound through the shoddy road of the backwater addition, her headlights scanning over dilapidated houses, falling into the ground as if the island were trying to swallow them whole. Being familiar with the area, she navigated through the winding streets easily. Although her work took her all around the island, this area of the cut was home to many of the frequent flyers that passed through her department. A den of crack houses, drug deals, and low lives, Luke Maybank being no exception.
Throughout the years, she'd been called up this way more than a dozen times. She remembered Luke Maybank from her years at Manteo High. He had been a couple of years older than her in school, and she remembered him dropping out halfway through his sophomore year when he'd knocked up JJ's mom. Hearsay around the cut was that JJ's mom had skipped out of town with a new man, leaving JJ behind when he was a toddler. Living in New Mexico the last Peterkin had heard.
JJ was no saint, but the kid sure got it honest. She couldn't say she wouldn't have turned out the same with a father like Luke Maybank.
Still didn't give him the right to be such a pain in her ass, though.
She slowly turned into the dirt drive of 24 W. Galvin Avenue, unkempt bushes crowding unevenly into the road and illuminating the willow tree in front of the two story, white house.
Light shined and out through the dirt streaked windows and cheap fabric of the curtains. She stepped out of the car, kicking up little clouds of dust on the dirt driveway. Immediately, she could distinguish the obnoxious thump of hard rock rattling through the old windows of the home. Movement flashed to her left and her hand drew to rest on the gun on her hip as she turned.
Lucinda Farrow.
Sheriff Peterkin groaned inwardly as the old woman stomped up to her from across the yard.
"Ms. Farrow." Sheriff Peterkin addressed her, nodding her head.
"Ya hear this?" Lucinda snarled, ignoring the greeting as she raised a gnarled arm to point at accusingly at the house. "Every night like a Goddamn rock concert. People runnin' in an out, all day long." She continued, her words difficult to hear through her gummy mouth. "Goddamn nuisance to the neighborhood. Back in my day, let kept these white trash, drug-dealing mother-fuckers locked in a 4X4 cage where they belong. I don't understand why…. "
Sheriff Peterkin cut her off, holding up a hand up placatingly and nodded. "Lucinda, I know… I'll go talk to them."
Ms. Farrow laughed shrilly. "Talk to um! Talk to um, ya say. Like ya been "talking" to um all summer? I'll believe it when I sees it."
Sheriff Peterkin cut her off authoritatively. "Ms. Farrow, I have done, and will continue to do, what I can by the extent of the law. Now do you want me to go talk to them, or not?"
Ms. Farrow's wrinkled, old face stared at her begrudgingly. Not answering, she waved Sheriff Peterkin towards the house, her face set in a grimace.
"Okay." Sheriff Peterkin returned, turning towards the house. "Now please go back to your property, and I will get this sorted out."
Mumbling under her breath, Ms. Farrow stalked away, back towards the property line of her house.
Sheriff Peterkin sighed, dragging a hand over the side of her face. "24 to dispatch." She said over her speaker, looking warily at the house. "24." Echoed back.
"24 arrived and on-scene at location."
"10-4. 32 still in route."
"Over." Sheriff Peterkin said, clipping the radio to her belt. She sighed, leaning against the car as she waited for her partner to arrive. She looked over to see Ms. Farrow's craggy old face peering at her expectantly through the bushes of her property.
Heavy metal reverberated through the yard; Sheriff Peterkin could feel it in the soles of her shoes. She leaned against her police car, feeling the warmth of the engine pressing against the back of her pants. A slight chill crept down the side of her neck.
Her head snapped towards the house as she heard a sharp sound of someone yelling interrupt the flow of the music.
Fuck this.
She wasn't going to wait around all day until someone got hurt.