Chapter 15

Annie wadded in a puddle as she waited for the train to arrive at the platform, unsure if she was too late or too early for boarding. Not that it mattered. She didn't have to worry about punching in or out of anything except the gym anymore. That's what happened when you were suspended.

Annie's body was numb. She felt nothing. Not the jostling of the train when it picked her up or the brush of passengers when they scooted by. She merely sat and watched her umbrella make a small puddle on the floor. She should feel something, but her heart couldn't figure out what. It was standing still, like Lipton in Blanchard's office. Silent. Unwilling to lean one way or another.

With no emotional clues to muddle through, Annie attempted to rationalize her feelings and pick the one that suited her best. If she wanted to, she could be angry. The people she worked with everyday thought she was a criminal, even when she was innocent.

Innocent until proven guilty.

Should she really be so surprised that this happened? Law enforcement officials by their very nature were suspicious, and the evidence was starting to show a repeating pattern of coincidences that were no longer serendipitous. Maybe, on some unconscious level, she was relieved to be taken off of the case. The Pantherian was a formidable foe. She knew how to take down a celebrity ace trainer before he had a chance to draw his pokemon. Let some other sad soul deal with the devil.

Would it kill her to take a break? Annie bled enough to earn one. She could be resentful for that same reason. Who were they to steal the purpose and meaning out of all of her sacrifice? And to top it all off, why didn't they put her on paid administrative leave instead of suspension? The more Annie thought about it, the more confused she became. The end of the track felt no different than the beginning. The train pulled away with a hiss of the air brakes, one passenger lighter.

Annie stood underneath the platform at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the rain again. She stared down the block with the nostalgia of a ghost. A few minutes later, Annie walked through the lobby of the brownstone tenements and up the creaking stairs. She stopped outside of the door to her apartment. Rainwater dripped onto the floor at her feet.

The door was left ajar. Damage to the frame kept it from closing. Caution tape lazily crisscrossed the opening. It was more of a Halloween decoration than a warning. Annie ducked under the tape and went inside. It was a reflex from work she didn't think to break. The case was still open which meant her apartment was still a crime scene, and now, she had fresh eyes and a level head to examine it.

Too bad she didn't find anything new. The window was still broken. Jagged pieces of glass clung onto the frame. They glistened in the rain that splattered onto the counter from the outside. More caution tape haphazardly spanned both sides of the broken window. The tail ends fluttered in the draft created by the open door. The radiator in the corner of the room was broken. Its coils had burned out while trying to keep up with the draft. It dropped the temperature in the room about ten degrees.

A similar exhaustion plagued the refrigerator. The lead lined door hung off of its hinges and the little yellow light was dark. Inside, several of the racks were dislodged. A crust of bread and bits of leftover meals spilled out of the base. Something had spoiled. It filled the air with the odd perfume of putrefaction. In the middle of the room, the table was still flipped on its side. White powder had settled over everything, including the broken glass that littered the floor. The sharp edges crunched like a crust of ice over snow as Annie walked over to the table, flipped it upright, and pushed it back into place.

A sharp twinge of pain forced her to reconsider the effort. She paused and leaned against the table. When the pain dulled into a hard ache, she slowly limped over to the chair and sat in it. Massaging her knee made her feel better, because, at least now, she was feeling something. Annie looked around at the destruction again, this time, with her state of body in mind. Cleaning up was going to be harder than she thought, but the challenge was exactly what she needed to reestablish purpose in her life.

She'd start with the easy stuff: sweep up the glass, clean out the fridge, wipe down the furniture. Annie glanced to the side and spotted the articles that had fallen from the dresser. Amidst a field of frosted glass, the wooden box, plastic cup, and triangle shaped case looked oddly out of place. The box was empty and laid on its side with the lid open.

The inheritance that once filled it gone, locked away in the precinct's evidence locker along with the rest of her uniform. Annie limped over and sat down next to it, ignoring the pricks in her legs. She picked up the box, brushed away the white paw print, and rubbed a thumb over the emblem engraved in the lid. The box belonged to her father as did the nearby triangular case with the flag folded inside.

Annie exchanged the box for the case. The flag inside was dislodged and out of frame. She opened the case with a squeak of the hinges. None of the powder had gotten inside. The flag remained untouched since the day it was placed in her hands during her father's funeral. She remembered the commissioner's face that day. It remained hard and unyielding even when the firing squad began and the sound of taps echoed across the cemetery. An officer killed in the line of duty deserved glory, not tears.

Annie touched the soft dark navy blue folds of the flag. White dust trailed behind her fingers. The commissioner and all of the other officers wore white gloves that day. The white powder on her hands didn't seem much different now. Annie removed the flag from the case and unwrapped it, peeling back the layers one by one. The folds opened easily as if waiting to blossom after a long hibernation.

Annie tugged away the final piece. A perfectly cleaned and polished region issued firearm was hidden in the center of the flag. It once belonged to her father and his father before that. A twin to the one still at the station. They said that her great great great grandfather used to wear the two guns holstered around his shoulders, one under each arm, so that if he was ever taken by surprise while on the beat, he'd be able to cover both sides with the right end.

The Cofield's had a long history in law enforcement so it was only natural that Annie followed in their footsteps. The stories her family told were of a bygone era filled with saloons, gun fights, and swill. Her imagination was filled with the swagger and pride of generations of dusty spurs and bullseyes. Annie looked the weapon over, reflecting on its history. She wondered what her father would say if he saw her now. Would he be proud? Ashamed? He could no longer voice his opinions, but her grandfather could.

What would he say when they finally came face to face? They hadn't seen or spoken to each other since she graduated from the academy. Even then, it was from a distance. Always at a distance. She could barely remember the time she sat upon his knee as a child. Grandfather Cofield wasn't exactly the peppermint carrying, porch rocking, corny joke type. He barked when he spoke. His words snapped with wit and criticism fast enough to make you flinch. His expectations and personal evaluations quickened family gatherings to remote courtesies and tasteless small talk during the holidays.

Annie had yet to find a harder head than his, and after his son passed, the stubbornness thickened into callousness. Annie felt its chill from time to time, but she also knew that her grandfather loved her in his own way.

He pushed her to exceed any limit. He supported her rise through the academy. To meet his expectations was to soar above others and the last time they met, his eyes had thawed just a little. The fear of disappointing Grandfather Cofield was real, but he was also the one who told her that it took guts to do this job and anyone that picked procedure over instinct wasn't worth the badge. Annie placed the firearm in the wooden box and folded the flag back into place. She set both on the dresser, followed by her favorite picture of her father in uniform.

The day she could wear hers again couldn't come fast enough.

A cold wind blew in from the window, fluttering the caution tape fast enough to make it snap. Rain flung father into the room. Annie turned around. It was about time she got to work. To stop the outside from coming in, she scrounged around the apartment for ideas. The shower curtain made a great waterproof cover for the window. Her sandals wedged nicely under the door and a metal hanger bent into a wire around the handle made a decent lock. By the time she finished securing the apartment, she managed to change out the linens, shake out the mattress, and set it all up again, before it was time to go to bed.

Bundled in an extra pair of pants, a jacket, gloves, and a hat, Annie crawled under the covers. It was supposed to get cold tonight and the dampness would only make it worse. She tugged the blanket over her head and used a flashlight to make one final list of supplies she would need to fix everything before she forgot. The estimated cost made her feint, and when she woke up again in the morning, she shivered over to the stove and turned it on to warm herself by its coils.

When she felt her fingers again, she used them to wipe up the small splattering of blood on the cabinets where she had smashed her face into the wood. Thus, another round of cleaning began. By the third day of nonstop scrubbing, Annie managed to reconstruct the room into some semblance of what it once was.

That's when the reality of it all sunk in.

There were no more statements to give. No more research to dive into. No more life and death battles. There was nothing left to distract her from the fact that her own precinct thought she was a traitor. Her so called friends stopped texting her. Sergeant Lipton was still radio silent. Every day she checked her mailbox and everyday it was empty. Even the landlord failed to realize she had returned. Otherwise, she would've come shrieking down the hall about the damages.

It was like she was shunned, banished, taboo. In reality, she was suspended. And the lieutenant didn't specify when she would be coming back. The weight of the silence weighed heavily on Annie's aching knee. She felt like a paper boat gliding along the fast flowing swell of a downpour, unaware of the dark drain mouth up ahead. She needed to find a light at the end of the tunnel. Do something to lighten the mood. There was nothing she could do about the suspension but wait.

"Raise your head," Annie told herself. "Keep your chin up."

So she did. She looked up at the overhead cupboard and an idea struck her. Half of a box of cereal and a brand new unopened pouch of poketreats were inside. Little pichu danced across the front. They were cute and inviting. They weren't cheap either. Annie spent more on a single pouch than her daily allotment for dinner. She made sure to read the labels and check the reviews before settling on the brand.

One chew twice a day for two weeks was guaranteed to reduce discharge, stimulate healthy nerve function, and leave electric type pokemon with a coat as sparkly as their sparks. Annie smiled and grabbed the pouch. She put on her boots, grabbed her rain jacket, and hopped out of the door. Cheering herself up may have been impossible, but that didn't mean she couldn't spread a little cheer to others, and who better to share it with than a pair of cheering pokemon?

Luckily, she knew exactly where to find one.