Mandy Barrington read the call that had popped up on her computer screen,
her green eyes flitting back and forth between the road before her and the
screen. It was at a check-cashing establishment in the northern part of
Lemon Hill, just half a mile from where she was now. According to the text
supplied by the dispatcher, a 30’s male was attempting to cash a forged
check by using a fake driver’s license. The clerk was attempting to stall
the man in question until the arrival of the sheriff’s department. With a
small sigh-this would be her ninth call of the shift so far-Mandy turned her
green and white patrol car into a left turn lane and made an illegal U-turn,
her finger pushing the acknowledgement button on her terminal as she spun
around.
It was the official policy of the Heritage County Sheriff’s Department that
no patrol officer could be compelled to respond to a call alone. At least
one cover unit was dispatched for everything and that was the case with this
call as well. Unit 24-D-1 was also on the way but Mandy knew that in all
likelihood Trina Powers, who was assigned to that particular unit, would not
be as close as she was. Her choice was to either wait nearby until Trina
arrived, at which point they would both drive in together, or to go in alone
while Trina was still on her way. After a moment’s thought on the matter she
elected to go ahead and go in alone. To wait would be to risk having the
forger get antsy and leave. Chances were, she would be able to handle
anything the forger could throw at her. At 30 years of age she was a six
year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, four of those years spent right
here in Lemon Hill working uniformed patrol. She was a tall woman, almost
5-11, and in very good shape. She had been in scuffles many times in her
career and was not afraid of them.
“Twenty-four Delta,” she told Trina on the radio as she turned the corner
onto the avenue where the establishment was located, “I’m less than a minute
out. I’m gonna go ahead and roll in.”
“Copy that,” Trina replied. “I’m from Covington and North. Less than five
out anyway.”
She smiled a little as she heard Trina’s sexy voice coming out of the
speaker. Trina was a young deputy with only a year on patrol, but the two of
them had a lot in common. They often socialized together in their off hours,
including a few socializations that some of the male members of the
department would have been very interested to hear about.
Putting thoughts of her young friend out of her mind, she wheeled the green
and white into a strip mall parking lot on the corner of a busy
intersection. Contained in the strip mall were several sandwich shops, a
motorcycle shop, a bar, and the check cashing establishment-one of many in
California that offered high interest payday loans based on the patron’s
next payroll check. She parked in a red zone just outside of view of the
front door, marked arrival on her computer, and then shut off her engine.
Mandy stepped out into the muggy August air and pulled her wooden baton from
a holder in the car door. She slid it through the ring on her equipment
belt, made a quick, almost unconscious check of her gun and her portable
radio, and then slammed the car door behind her. Walking slowly up to the
front door, she could feel the heat soaking into her through the heavy khaki
uniform shirt and bulky bulletproof vest beneath it. Her eyes were alert but
her mind was figuring that her suspect had probably already left. You just
didn’t catch people in the act very often, not with the resources spread as
thin as they were in this particular department. But still, she had arrived
less than two minutes after dispatch, something that was a rarity in this
jurisdiction.
She opened the door and looked inside before entering. The establishment had
been designed with the thought that large amounts of cash would be available
inside-amounts that would draw armed robbers like flies to dogshit. The
clerk on duty was standing behind a wall of thick bulletproof glass capable
of stopping a high-powered rifle round. Her only means of communication with
the customers was through an intercom system built into this wall. An
electronic door was the only means of movement between the lobby and the
clerk’s position. Standing before the window, looking fidgety and impatient,
was a man of about thirty. He was dressed in tattered blue jean cut-offs and
a ragged white T-shirt with large sweat stains under the armpits. His hair
was long and greasy and his face was pockmarked with acne. One look was
enough to tell Mandy he was a methamphetamine addict and probably wired for
sound at this very moment. One look from the clerk-a pretty young Hispanic
woman of about twenty-was enough to tell her the greasy meth addict was
indeed the man she had been sent here to talk to.
“Hello,” she said, her eyes looking him up and down, searching for the
telltale bulge of a weapon. “How are you doing today?”
He swallowed nervously and tensed up even more, his eyes flitting from place
to place like a trapped animal. “I’m all right,” he mumbled.
Mandy deliberately kept herself between the door and the man. She kept her
right hand near the holstered gun on her belt, not touching it, but close
enough for a quick grab if it became necessary. She looked over at the
clerk. “I understand there might be a problem with a check and some
identification?” she asked her.
The clerk’s eyes looked nervously over at the man for a moment and then back
at Mandy. “He uh… gave me this check,” she said, sliding a piece of paper
under the access slot and back to the outside. “It doesn’t really look like
a real check.”
“What the fuck you talking about, bitch?” the man said, turning toward her.
“Did you call the fuckin’ cops on me?”
“Hey now,” Mandy said calmly. “We don’t need any of that. She’s just doing
her job. No reason to come down on anyone for that. Why don’t you go stand
over there by that wall for a second while I look into this thing.”
“This is fuckin’ bullshit,” the man said, but did as she told him and
stepped away from the window.
Mandy picked up the check he had tried to cash and looked at it. She had to
suppress a laugh as she got a gander. Made out to Steve Brown, it had
obviously been churned out by a cheap inkjet printer using ordinary printer
paper. The lines where he had cut it out with scissors were still visible in
a few places. The name of the phony employer, Steven’s Industries
Incorporated, had been put down with the word “industries” misspelled. She
shook her head a little as she took this in.
“Did you really try to cash this thing?” she asked him.
“That’s my paycheck!” he said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You should learn to spell before you try to print something like this out
on your computer. You should also use paper that looks like it’s a check.
Jeez, what’s the world coming to?”
“I didn’t print that out!” he insisted. “My boss gave it to me. He prints
them on his own computer.”
“Uh huh,” she said, setting the check back down on the counter.
“He also wouldn’t take out his ID for me,” the clerk said. “He just showed
it to me through the little window in his wallet and it doesn’t look real
either.”
“Is that a fact?” Mandy asked. She looked back at the suspect. “What’s your
name, my friend?”
He looked away from her, swallowing again. “Just like it says there. Steve
Brown.”
“Uh huh,” she said, not bothering to hide her skepticism. “Well how about we
check out that ID that you showed her, Mr. Brown? Did you print it on the
same paper as the check?”
The alleged Mr. Brown suddenly reached his breaking point. He knew he was
about to get caught and made a snap decision inside his drug-ravaged mind.
Unfortunately for him, it turned out to be a rather poor decision. Mandy saw
the way he tensed up, saw the way his eyes shifted to the door behind her,
and realized he was about to make a break for it about a half a second
before his feet began to move. That was just enough time for her to shift
position and get ready for him. He rushed at her, probably thinking that
since she was a woman she would be easy to knock down. But Mandy, at 5-11
and 170 pounds, was not quite a pushover. He slammed into her and bounced
back as she threw her weight into him. She grabbed his left wrist and
quickly twisted it upward, trying to get him in a wristlock.
“Get down on the ground, asshole!” she barked at him, her tone more of
annoyance than fear. “Right now!”
“Let go of me, you fuckin’ bitch!” he screamed back, swinging a wild right
that impacted just below her badge.
Absorbed by the bulletproof vest beneath, the blow didn’t hurt a bit, but it
was enough for Mandy to ramp things up a notch. She let go of his wrist and
pushed him away from her, toward the wall. In a flash, the can of pepper
spray on her belt was in her hands. She pointed it at him and sent a stream
of the stinging liquid directly into his face. It was enough to slow him
down but not stop him.
“You fuckin’ bitch!” he screamed, trying to run forward again.
This time she took the baton out of her belt. Using it just like she’d been
taught in the academy, she snapped it at his knee just as he reached her.
She felt the solid thump of the impact send vibration up her hands and the
man screamed again, dropping to his knees on the floor. She stepped back,
the baton ready for another swing.
“On the ground, asshole!” she ordered him. “I want your face in that fucking
tile!”
He didn’t listen. He tried to get up again. She gave him two quick hits, to
the ribs this time, dropping him back down. She quickly stepped around him,
grabbing the baton on each end as she did so. She put it against the back of
his neck and pushed, forcing his head into the floor. Her knee went into the
small of his back and she ground down with it.
“Get those hands out in front of you!” she ordered, pushing his face harder
into the tile
“Get the fuck off me!” he yelled, still struggling.
“Now, motherfucker!” she said, exerting more force against the back of his
neck.
“All right! All right!” he said, finally doing as he was told. His hands
came forward and he stopped struggling.
Mandy stood up, keeping the baton in her hands, and put her foot down
between the man’s shoulder blades, keeping him on the floor. “Don’t you move
an inch,” she warned him. “If you do, I’m gonna hit you again.”
He didn’t try to move. The fight was all out of him as the pepper spray
finally soaked all the way in and did its work on his pain receptors. “My
eyes!” he screamed. “You didn’t have to spray that shit in my eyes.”
“Fuckin’ pussy,” she said contemptuously. She keyed up her portable radio
and quickly called for her cover unit to come with lights and sirens on.
Trina came screeching into the parking lot less than a minute later, her
patrol car jerking to a halt just outside the door. She ran inside, her own
baton in her hand, her blonde ponytail flapping with each step. Together
they wrenched the man’s arms behind his back and securely handcuffed him.
“Decided to go the hard way, huh?” Trina asked as they lifted him to his
feet. Blood and snot were now running from his nose and tears were streaming
out of his eyes.
“My fuckin’ face!” he screamed. “This shit burns. I can’t fuckin’ breathe!”
“Yep, he didn’t want to play nice,” Mandy told her. She looked at her
suspect again. “How stupid are you?” she asked him. “Now you’re going in for
assaulting a police officer too. That’s a felony, you dumbshit. Do you have
any idea how much more paperwork this gives me?”
“My leg hurts too!” he cried, oblivious. “You didn’t have to hit me with
that thing!”
“You’re the one who wanted to go the hard way,” she told him.
“How’s it feel to get your ass kicked by a chick?” Trina asked him.
“Fuck you too, bitch!” he yelled. “I’m gonna sue you for recessive force!”
“You mean excessive force,” Mandy said, feeling the adrenaline starting to
wear off now. She tugged on her suspect. “Come on, let’s get you outside.
I’ll call an ambulance to come look at you.”
+++++
While they were waiting for the ambulance, Mandy had her suspect sit on the
curb outside. She patted him down and found a small baggie of meth in his
pocket (he claimed he’d found it and didn’t know what it was). She then
searched through his wallet and found the fake identification he’d tried to
pass off. It had indeed been printed on cheap printer paper and even through
the plastic window of the wallet it was so obviously a fake that she was
forced to make a few more derisive remarks about his stupidity. She also
found his real identification tucked into the back of the wallet. It was a
suspended California driver’s license that was three years out of date but
it did at least have his real name and date of birth on it. She ran a
records check on him and found that he had an extensive history of
methamphetamine possession, burglary, forgery, assault, resisting arrest,
and drunk driving.
“Five previous resisting arrest charges?” she asked him. “You’ve had your
ass kicked by half the cops in the county, haven’t you?”
“Fuck you!” he told her, utilizing his razor sharp wit yet again. “I’ll have
your fuckin’ job for spraying that shit on me. And where’s that fuckin’
ambulance? I’m dying here!”
“They’re coming,” she told him, tossing his wallet onto the hood of Trina’s
patrol car. She then looked up at her friend. “Can you watch him for a sec?
I’m gonna get my camera and snap a shot of him for my book.”
“You got it,” she said, leaning back against the hood.
Mandy gave her a smile that was just a bit more than friendly and walked
over to her own car. She used her key to open the trunk and then dug around
inside of her briefcase for a moment until she found her digital camera.
Like many patrol cops she carried it so she could snap pictures of people
with whom she came in contact. She would print them out on her computer at
home and put them in an album she carried with her. Below each picture she
would list the person’s name, last known address, any aliases he or she
might use, and what crimes they were known to commit. She could then show
those pictures to victims or witnesses when similar crimes took place to see
if they recognized anyone.
“Smile pretty for me,” she told him as she walked back over. He looked up
just as she snapped.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” he asked. “You can’t be takin’ my
picture.”
“Sure I can,” she told him. “The Supreme Court says so. Now I’ll be able to
look at you whenever I want. Isn’t that nice?”
“Fuck you,” he said again. “My fuckin’ eyes hurt!”
“Should’ve thought of that before you tried to run,” Trina said absently.
Mandy carried the camera back to her car and put it back in the trunk. As
she was walking back to where Trina and the suspect were she saw a brand new
green and white pull into the strip mall. A familiar looking silhouette was
behind the wheel. She groaned a little, letting a frown come to her face.
“Oh, this is just great,” she grumbled.
Trina looked up and saw the car approaching. “Is that who I think it is?”
she asked.
“That’s her,” Mandy confirmed with a sigh. “Good old Sergeant Adolph
herself.”
Sergeant Adolph was one of many names Sergeant Jo Ann Boxworth was called
behind her back. She was also known as Sergeant Hussein, Sergeant Bin Laden,
or Sergeant Jihad. None of these monikers were exactly meant as terms of
endearment. Boxworth had been the supervisor for the Lemon Hill day watch
for a little over two years, since her promotion to sergeant. Before that
she had been assigned to the identification division. Before that she had
been in courtroom security. Before that, she had been assigned to the county
jail. She had never, not even for a single day, worked as a patrol officer
before. So the department, in its infinite wisdom, had promoted her and
assigned her to supervise a patrol shift. To say she had absolutely no idea
what she was doing was somewhat of an understatement. It was generally
agreed that she had no business even being a cop, let alone supervising
them.
The manner in which she had been hired, assigned, and promoted was certainly
no mystery to the rank and file who had served with her and beneath her in
her seven years with the department. She was the wife of Captain John
Boxworth, commander of the north patrol division and a very influential man
within the department. Captain Boxworth was a close friend of the Sheriff
himself. He was a golfing buddy to several judges and county supervisors. It
was said he was slated to be the next undersheriff and then, in six years or
so, the next big sheriff. And Captain Boxworth, who not the most attractive
male in the department and who was rumored to be about as pussy-whipped as a
man could be, had absolutely no compunctions about using his influence to
get his wife whatever it was she wanted.
When she had decided seven years earlier (while Boxworth was still a lowly
lieutenant in charge of the internal affairs division) that she wanted to
join her husband’s department, she was hired three months later despite
having failed the physical agility test. Though her psychological profile
had indicated that she had a strong inferiority complex and would tend to be
a bullying troublemaker, this was disregarded and she had entered the next
academy. Though her test taking, report writing, and physical conditioning
were considered substandard, she had been passed through the academy with
flying colors. And throughout her career, despite numerous documented errors
in officer safety issues, public relations issues, harassment issues, and
many other things that would have resulted in any one else’s instant
dismissal, she still hung in there, occasionally lightly disciplined but
never suspended or even officially reprimanded. The department brass were
all afraid of offending Captain Boxworth, who would one day be the sheriff,
so they handled her with kid gloves and tried their best to put her
somewhere where she could inflict the least amount of damage on them. The
place that had eventually been settled on was the north patrol division,
where she worked under her own husband and where she could have a few lowly
patrol cops to boss around.
And boss them around she did. Had she just been merely incompetent, it might
have been tolerable to Mandy and those she worked with. But Jo Ann seemed to
derive a great deal of pleasure out of ordering her cops around and
demeaning them at every opportunity. She lived for catching them in
violation of some minor rule so she could generate paperwork that would end
up in their files. She absolutely loved talking to them in a condescending
manner whenever the opportunity presented itself. She was also a vicious
gossip, repeating and expanding on any piece of damaging information that
happened to float into her ear. And for Mandy it was particularly bad. Jo
Ann Boxworth had a particularly large hard-on for Mandy Barrington.
“Why the hell did she have to show up?” asked Trina as Jo Ann’s car came to
a halt behind hers.
“We called in an ambulance,” Mandy sighed. “A sergeant has to evaluate the
use of force when that happens. It’s standard.”
“I know,” Trina said. “But why her? There are three sergeants on right now.
Why couldn’t we have gotten Stinson?”
“Because she’s hoping for an opportunity to tweak my balls a bit. I told you
she hates my ass.”
“How come? What did you ever do to her?”
“I’ll tell you later,” she whispered as Jo Ann opened her car door and
stepped out.
Jo Ann had once been a very attractive woman, which was what had helped her
secure her successful husband in the first place. Tall and aristocratically
slim, she had been blessed with long legs, a pretty face, and perky boobs
that had somehow managed to look good even through the bulletproof vest that
covered them. Those days however, were no more. Forty years old now, Jo
Ann’s metabolism had seemingly closed up shop and moved to the Yukon over
the past two years. Since being promoted to sergeant she had put on more
than sixty pounds. And the distribution of this weight had not been very
kind to her either. It had settled moderately in her face and legs,
thickening both up just enough to sap the allure from them. It had settled
very heavily however, in her breasts, stomach, and butt, expanding those
attributes exponentially. What was worse was the fact that Jo Ann didn’t
want to acknowledge she was no longer 160 pounds. She wore her old uniforms
until it was physically impossible for her to fit in them anymore and then
she simply got the next size up. She had never replaced the old bulletproof
vest or equipment belt. As a result, she looked perfectly ridiculous. As she
stepped out of her car to talk to Mandy and Trina, her forest green uniform
pants were so tight across her butt that it was difficult to believe she
could even sit down without ripping the seat out of them. They were so tight
around the waist it looked like her stomach would explode outward at any
second. Her large breasts pushed so much at the vest beneath her shirt that
the bottom of it had ridden up above her stomach. The breast area was
actually pushed upward by the pressure, which made her badge and nametag
face up at a forty-five degree angle.
“Hey, Jo Ann,” Mandy greeted listlessly as she walked over. “What’s up?”
Jo Ann looked her and Trina up and down for a minute, scrutinizing them as
if they were already guilty of something. She never once looked at the
handcuffed suspect on the curb who was still coughing and snorting blood
from his nose. She chomped a few times on the wad of gum she habitually
chewed and then shifted it to some other corner of her mouth. “I hear you
have a suspect that was injured,” she said.
“Yes,” Mandy told her. “That would be this gentleman here.” She nodded to
the suspect. “He wanted to go the hard way.”
“Is that a fact?” she said with a poor attempt at being shrewd. “Where is he
injured?”
“Pepper spray to the face, baton strikes to the right knee and the chest,”
she reported. “It looks like he hurt his nose when I pushed him down too.”
“You didn’t have to spray me with that shit!” the man yelled, as if on cue.
“Now now,” Jo Ann said soothingly to him. “There’s no need for that kind of
language.”
Mandy and Trina shared a look with each other. No need for that kind of
language? Where in the hell did she think she was working? An office
building?
“So tell me what happened,” Jo Ann directed, fishing in her shirt pocket for
a notepad. Her shirt was so tight she had to tug rather hard to get it to
come out.
Mandy took her out of earshot of the suspect and told her what had happened,
narrating the events in the same tone of voice and with the same monotone
inflection she used when testifying in court. Halfway through the telling a
red fire engine from the Heritage County Fire Department and a blue and
white ambulance from Western Life Support pulled into the parking lot. The
firefighters and the paramedics went over to Trina, who began telling them
the same story. After a moment the firefighters got back in their engine and
left while the paramedic and his partner dragged the suspect over to a water
hose on the corner of the building and began flushing his eyes out.
“So you pepper sprayed him and hit him with your baton?” Jo Ann asked Mandy
when the story was told.
“That’s right,” Mandy affirmed.
“And you hit him how many times?”
“Two or three, I don’t really remember.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “And then you pushed his face down into the tile?”
“Well… yeah, that was the only way to get him to stay still.”
She chomped her gum a few times, her eyes looking at her subordinate. “Mandy
dear,” she said. “It sounds like you used an awful lot of force just taking
that one man into custody. Do you really think it was necessary to hit him
with your baton after spraying him in the face with pepper spray?”
“Necessary?” Mandy said, feeling her face turn red with anger. “Do you think
I was doing it for fun? He was still fighting.”
“The pepper spray is quite incapacitating you know,” Jo Ann said. “I hardly
think he had enough fight in him after that to require being struck with a
baton and slammed down onto the ground.”
“Oh really?” Mandy asked. “And just how many times have you used pepper
spray on someone?”
Jo Ann became stern at these words. She didn’t like having her lack of
patrol experience thrown in her face. “We are not talking about me here,”
she barked. “We’re talking about you. There are those who would say you were
beating on that young man. You know how that sort of thing looks to the
media and the public.”
“Beating on him?” she asked incredulously.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to write this one up and send it over to IA,”
she said.
“You’re sending this to internal affairs?” Mandy asked, her fists clenching.
“You’ve got to be kidding. This kind of shit happens out here every day.”
“Look, I’m just doing my job as a supervisor,” she told her. “If I didn’t
write this up and this gentleman complained about you beating him…”
“I did not beat him!” Mandy interrupted.
“…then I would be in a lot of trouble,” she continued. “If IA finds you
acted within department guidelines, then everything is okay. If you didn’t
do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Right,” she grumbled, not fond of having the headhunters going over one of
her arrests.
“So anyway, let’s go over your story one more time and then I’ll go talk to
that young man over there before he goes to the hospital.”
They went over the story once again, Jo Ann picking at each little detail
and asking questions like a hostile defense attorney instead of a law
enforcement supervisor. In between the questions she always made a point to
insert at least one snide comment, always in a cloyingly sweet voice, that
implied Mandy didn’t know how to do her job.
“I certainly hope you’ve learned your lesson about entering hostile scenes
before your cover unit arrives,” was one such comment. “You realize that the
escalation of force protocol for the department requires that you attempt to
talk a subject into surrendering before you resort to using force, right?”
was another.
Mandy just continued to tell her story in her monotone voice through it all,
resisting the urge to clench her hands into fists and send them flying
through the air to connect with that ass-kissing bitch’s fat face.
Finally, after filling nearly three pages of her notebook with scrawled
marks, Jo Ann declared the interrogation at an end. “Now that the paramedics
seem to be done with him, I’ll go have a little talk with the suspect and
get his version of the story.”
“His version of the story?” Mandy asked. “Jo Ann, you’re not an investigator
and there hasn’t been a complaint made against me. Why do you need to get
his version of the event?”
“I’m just being thorough to the best of my abilities,” she said.
“You’ll be talking someone into making a complaint that otherwise might not
have,” she hissed at her.
“Don’t you get impertinent with me, little missy,” Jo Ann warned, giving an
extra-hard chomp on her gum. “When you get to be a sergeant you can do
things your way. Until then, we do them mine.”
“Christ,” Mandy muttered under her breath, following Jo Ann’s big butt over
to where the suspect was now sitting on the ambulance gurney, his hair and
shirt soaked with water but the blood and snot now gone.
“The paramedic thinks they oughtta transport him over to VMC to get his ribs
checked out,” Trina said as they gathered around. “You might’ve cracked one
when you hit him in the side.”
“Great,” Mandy sighed. More good news. Now she would have to baby-sit the
tweaked-out asshole at the hospital for two or three hours before she could
haul him to jail. “Okay, let’s handcuff him to the side of the gurney then
and get it over with.”
“I’d like to get his side of the story first,” Jo Ann cut in. “You can do
that after.”
“His side of the story?” Trina said, raising her eyebrows. “What story is
that?”
“Don’t you start getting impertinent with me either,” Jo Ann barked,
pointing her finger at Trina now. “Don’t think I didn’t notice that it just
happened to be you who showed up with Mandy on this call. Quite a
coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Say what?” Trina said.
“She was my assigned cover officer,” Mandy said. “Who else would show up?”
“I just notice that you two get assigned to calls together an awful lot
lately,” she said slyly. “An awful lot. People are starting to talk about
that you know. So you two had better watch what you do.”
With that she walked over to the handcuffed suspect. After a brief argument
with the paramedic-who wanted to transport the suspect right away instead of
waiting for a debriefing to occur-she began her questioning. Even from ten
feet away the two women could hear her utilizing more leading questions than
a defense attorney could ever dream of getting away with. So did she try to
get you to give up peacefully, or did she just start attacking you? Did she
ever give you a chance to get down on the ground after she sprayed you in
the face with that spray? Do you really think it was necessary for her to
have to hit you with her baton in order to get you under control? The
suspect of course, answered every question with exactly what she wanted to
hear.
“Jesus Christ,” Mandy said, shaking her head. “This is just unbelievable.
She’s sending this to IA.”
“She writing you up to the headhunters?” Trina asked. “That is low, even for
Jo Ann.”
“No shit. And she’s twisting everything around. That bitch is trying to get
me fired.”
“Yep,” Trina said nervously. She hesitated for a second and then said
slowly, “What was that crap about us being assigned to calls together? What
was she trying to imply?”
Mandy sighed. “Well, I didn’t want to tell you this, but she has apparently
been spreading the rumor that… well… that you and I are a little more
than friends.”
Trina actually paled as she heard this. “She’s been doing what?”
“I’ve heard it from a couple of people now. Mallet said she was spouting
about it after roll call the other day. Jenkins said he heard her telling
Rogers too. I wouldn’t worry about it. Nobody believes it.”
“But Mandy,” Trina whispered. “It’s true.”
“She doesn’t know that though,” Mandy assured her. “All she’s doing is what
she normally does, spreading vicious gossip about two people who happen to
be friendly with each other. Remember when she was saying that you and
Mallet were getting it on? That wasn’t true.”
“Fuckin’ aye it wasn’t,” she said, a little hint of disgust in her voice.
“Mallet’s a goddamned venereal disease waiting to happen.”
“That’s my point. She would’ve been saying it even if we haven’t… you
know, been seeing each other that way.”
“She doesn’t have any… any facts?”
“Not a thing,” Mandy assured her. “Trust me. We’ve been very careful. Nobody
knows what we’re doing and nobody will know.”
Trina shook her head a little. “The fucking bitch,” she muttered. “Are you
sure…”
“I’m sure,” Mandy told her. “Really. I keep that side of my life very
closed.” She offered her a secret smile. “Just like I’m teaching you to do.”
This seemed to make her feel a little better. “Okay,” she finally said.
“So we’re still on for after work tonight?” she asked her. “I’ll be at the
freaking hospital and the jail and writing goddamned reports until then so I
probably won’t get a chance to talk to you before then.”
She seemed hesitant for a moment but she nodded. “You know we are,” she
said. “Drinks at the 11-99 club and then straight back to my place.”
“I’ll be looking forward to it.”
“Me too,” Mandy said with a smile. “It’ll make this whole crappy day seem
worthwhile.”
+++++
Trina lay spread-eagled on her queen-sized bed in the bedroom of her
apartment, her nude body on glorious display. Her blonde hair was now
released from its tight ponytail and spread out over the pillow beneath her
head. Her pretty face glistened with a fine sheen of perspiration, her full
lips pouting alluringly as she panted, her eyes closed tightly in pleasure.
Her C-cup breasts heaved up and down with each intake of breath, the nipples
sticking up proudly in her arousal. Her tight stomach rippled with the
spasms of approaching orgasm. Her long, sexy legs were spread widely,
hanging over each side of the bed.
Between those pretty legs was an equally naked Mandy, her brunette head
buried in their junction. Her face was smeared with the fragrant juices of
her friend’s lust, her tongue savagely attacking the swollen clit that
protruded from the hood like a sentinel.
“Oh God, Mandy,” Trina moaned. “Oh God! Do it to me! Do it to me now! I’m
about to come!”
Mandy raised her head from Trina’s crotch, looking up her body. “Do what to
you?” she asked sweetly, as if she didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You… you… know what I want,” she panted. “Do it! Please?”
“Tell me what you want,” Mandy prompted, giving another lick at her swollen
vaginal lips, just below the trimmed bush of blonde hair.
“Fuck me!” Trina yelled, giving in. “Fuck me with that thing! I want to come
while you fuck me with it! Please baby, fuck me with it!”
Mandy smiled, raising up on the bed. Her own crotch, with its neatly trimmed
bush of black hair, was obscured by the nine-inch dildo that protruded from
it, secured there by nylon straps that ran around to her ass. The dildo had
been purchased over the Internet the previous year, when Mandy had finally
decided to start fully exploring the bisexual aspects of her sexuality.
Since then it had been used on only two people, Trina being the second, but
it was quite obvious that it was a hit.
“How do you want it, baby?” Mandy asked her, her fingers sliding through the
slippery wetness of Trina’s pussy, gathering up the juices and smearing it
on the head of the latex phallus.
“From behind,” Trina said. “I want it from behind. I love it that way.”
Mandy patted her leg. “Then roll over baby. Let’s get this show on the
road.”
Trina, flushed and panting with desire, quickly rolled over and assumed the
hands and knees position. Her swollen pussy gaped out from between her legs,
the lips saturated with her juices and Mandy’s saliva.
“Mmmm,” Mandy said, stroking her hand over the left butt cheek. “You are so
beautiful, Trina. So sexy.”
“Do it to me,” Trina demanded, in no mood for compliments right now. “Fuck
me. Fuck me hard and make me come.”
Mandy put her hands on Trina’s hips and leaned forward until the end of the
dildo was just touching the swollen lips. Feeling the contact Trina
immediately began pushing backwards, trying to force the penetration. Mandy
didn’t allow this, backing neatly away with each thrust.
“Please!” Trina pleaded, seemingly near tears. “Put it in!”
Mandy teased her for another few seconds and then could take no more. Using
Trina’s hips for leverage she pulled her backwards and pushed her own pelvis
forward, slowly sliding the thick dildo into her body, inch by inch.
“Oh yes!” Trina cried as she felt the intrusion. “Oh fuck yes!”
She slid the dildo in to the hilt, until the straps themselves were pushing
against Trina’s ass. Trina sighed in contentment.
“You like that, you little lezzy?” Mandy asked her. “You like when I fuck
you with my big cock?”
“Yes, you bitch!” Trina yelled. “Now give it to me. Give it to me fucking
hard!”
She pulled it slowly out of her body, until only the tip remained in her.
The surface was now glistening with juices, hot and slippery and ready for
proper usage. She pushed it back in, harder this time, causing a grunt of
pleasure from Trina.
“You little slut,” Mandy whispered, her hands caressing her lover’s skin.
“You’re gonna get it all now. Are you ready for it?”
“I’m ready,” she panted. “Oh god, I’m ready.”
Mandy began to fuck in and out of her, slowly at first to allow Trina’s body
to get properly lubed up and ready, and then with increasing speed and
power. Within a minute she was slamming in and out of her, a distinct
slapping sound filling the air with each thrust. A stream of juices leaked
steadily down Trina’s thighs to puddle on the bed. Trina herself quickly
became incoherent, her moans coming steadily, her hands gripping the
headboard of the bed spastically. Within a minute she was coming, her
screams of sheer pleasure echoing off the walls of her apartment and causing
two of her neighbors to shake their heads in consternation as the bi-weekly
event erupted.
Mandy did not stop after the first orgasm. By now, she was far too
experienced a lover for that. She continued to pound in and out of her,
bringing her right up to the next crescendo. Her hands moved from her waist,
one going to Trina’s dangling breast to pull on a hard nipple, the other
going to her swollen clit to rub on it. The second orgasm was even more
powerful than the first. For the grand finale she flipped her over, never
moving the dildo from her body, and thrust into her in the missionary
position, her mouth fastening onto Trina’s, her tongue shooting into her
mouth and sucking it while the third orgasm exploded forth.
Slowly her thrusts came to a halt, both of them sweating freely, filling the
small bedroom with the sharp odor of female musk. They lay against one
another, breast to breast, groin to groin. They exchanged slow, sensuous
kisses as their breathing returned to normal, as the ceiling fan above them
cooled their hot skin. Finally, after several long minutes, Mandy pulled the
dildo from her friend’s body and rolled over next to her, Trina’s head
cuddled on her chest, her hand gently stroking her smooth back.
“Wow,” Trina sighed as she wiped sweat from her flushed face. “That was…
was…”
“Nice?” Mandy asked, a slight smile on her face.
“Yeah,” Trina agreed, cuddling a little closer. “Nice. The way two-carat
diamond rings and first class air travel is nice. It was very nice.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” Mandy told her. “You weren’t so terribly bad
yourself.”
“Oh fuck you,” Trina told her, slapping at her playfully. “I think you came
at least four times while I had my face in your pussy, didn’t you?”
“Five actually,” Mandy said. “You’re learning really fast, my dear. That
little trick with the finger in my… well, you know. That really sent me
over the edge. Where’d you learn that anyway?”
“Someone did that to me once,” she said shyly. “Never mind who.”
“Was it Mallet?”
That prompted a laugh from both of them. “Yeah, sure,” she said. “It was
Mallet. We’ll just keep it at that, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, slowly letting her chuckle die out.
They lay there for a few minutes, watching the ceiling fan go around before
Trina turned to her, her face now serious. “Tell me again, Mandy,” she said,
“that we’re not lesbians.”
Mandy looked back at her. She leaned in and gave her nose a little peck.
“We’re not lesbians, Trina. Really, we’re not.”
Trina sighed a little. “It’s hard to convince myself of that sometimes,” she
said. “Especially when we’re lying naked in my bed together and you have
this thing…” She slapped at the sticky dildo still sticking up in the air
from Mandy’s crotch, “pointing at me.”
Mandy straightened up in bed a little, releasing her hold on her lover a bit
but not completely. She took a deep breath, trying to think how to explain
what was on her mind, how to reassure Trina that just because they enjoyed
each other’s body once in a while-well, actually ten times now in the past
month-that it didn’t make them homosexual. Trina, unlike Mandy, was still
trying to come to grips with the fact of her bisexuality. Mandy had been her
first female lover-or at least the first since Trina’s fumbling
experimentation in her early college days. Mandy had been like her friend
not terribly long before, burning up with curiosity and wanting for her own
sex, wondering how female skin would feel against hers, imagining how a soft
set of breasts would be so pliable in her hands, how female musk would taste
in her mouth. It was something she had repressed throughout her teenage and
young adult years but never completely buried, something that had seemed to
come to a head in the last few years, compelling, even commanding her to
pursue it.
Her first female lover had been a woman named April Wilson, a nurse at Saint
Vincent’s Hospital whom she had met at a Labor Day party the previous year.
April had been there as a guest of Roger Benton, one of the day shift
deputies, and his wife. The two of them had hit it off quite nicely in a way
that Mandy could retrospectively appreciate quite well now. April had seen
something in her, something she had in herself-the bisexual bug. The two of
them had become friendly over the next few weeks, a friendship that
eventually culminated in Mandy’s seduction after a night of drinking wine
coolers in her hot tub. Since then she had enjoyed three other female
lovers, including-much to her surprise and delight-Roger Benton’s wife
Monica, who apparently had the same bug within her. Since then, through some
instinct she did not quite understand, she had learned to recognize that bug
in other women. Of course in Heritage County, California, only ninety air
miles from the San Francisco Bay area, there were a great many full-fledged
lesbians about, particularly in the law enforcement and emergency services
business. But butch lesbians Mandy was not interested in. She had no desire
to commit to a gay lifestyle. She still enjoyed the company of a man quite
enthusiastically. Bisexual women-true bisexuals-were much harder to come by.
But when young Trina Powers had been assigned to the Lemon Hill day shift
three months before and had started regularly being assigned to calls with
her, the bug within her had been as plain as the beautiful breasts beneath
her bulletproof vest. Her seduction had been slow, almost painstaking in
fact, but Mandy’s instincts had been right on the mark about her all along.
Trina was one of those, like Mandy, like Monica, like April, who liked to
walk the line. But, like every other woman who had come to grips with this
particular affinity, the realization of it was causing some societal induced
doubts that needed to be assuaged.
“Tell me something Trina,” Mandy asked her now, thinking back to what April
and Monica had explained to her in her early days.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“If Pierce Brosnan were here right now, and if he had a nice hard on and
wanted to fuck the shit out of you, would you let him?”
“James Bond?” she said, raising her eyebrows up enthusiastically. “I
wouldn’t just let him, I’d throw his ass down on the bed and rape him.”
“How about Mel Gibson?” she asked. “If he came in here naked and told you to
bend over the bed so he could slam you from behind, would you do it?”
“I’d be bent over so fast my back would probably go out.”
Mandy smiled. “Well there you have it then,” she said. “You’re not a lesbo.”
Trina didn’t seem convinced. “But…”
“No buts,” Mandy interrupted. “Its simple logic. You still want cock in you.
That means you are not homosexual. Period.”
“But I like what… what we do,” she said, blushing as the words came out of
her mouth. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re bisexual,” she said with a shrug. “Nothing more. Nothing
less. It means you enjoy having sex with me and I enjoy having sex with you
and we like it because it feels good and we don’t have enough
pre-programming or whatever else goes into it, to stop us from doing it. I
like men Trina. I like them a lot. I like the feel of a nice hard cock
sliding into my pussy. I like the feel of a man shooting his cum up inside
me. But I also like women. I like the feel of boobies dangling in my face. I
like the soft feel of a woman’s skin, the way their hair smells, the way
their body tenses when they come. I like both and it’s okay to be that way.
Really, it is.”
“But we can’t tell anyone about it,” she said. “I keep thinking about what
my mother would think if she saw us this way, if she saw me lying in bed
screaming for you to fuck me harder with a strap-on dildo.”
“Well,” Mandy said simply, “I won’t tell your mother if you won’t. Nor will
I tell anyone else about it. I know it’s nothing to be ashamed of but all
the same, I really don’t want people to know about that side of me either.
It’s okay to just do it in secret and not let anyone know about it.”
Trina seemed reassured by these words, as Mandy had once been reassured by a
similar, though less graphic, lecture by April. They cuddled together again,
their hands resting on each other’s thighs, lying in silence for a few
minutes, each lost in their own thoughts.
“So are you worried about Sergeant Adolph sending that write up to IA?”
Trina finally asked, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” Mandy said after a moment. “God only knows what kind of twisted-ass
version of the facts she put in there. And you know how the headhunters are
about shit like that. All they give a rat’s ass about is busting someone’s
balls so they can make themselves look good to the brass. The only people
who work in that place are a bunch of ass-kissing slimebags who are as bad
as Adolph herself. Shit, I’m surprised they haven’t assigned her to that
place yet. She’d be perfect for it.”
“I’ve never seen her go after anyone as hard as she does you,” Trina said.
“She really seems to hate you; even worse than she hates the rest of the
world.”
“She does,” Mandy sighed. “She’s had a hard-on for me for a couple of
years.”
“How come? Is it because you used to be friends with her?”
Mandy looked over at her, surprised. “How did you know that?” she asked her.
“Word gets around,” she said simply. “People say you and Adolph used to be
pretty tight back in the day.”
Mandy shook her head a little in embarrassment. “I guess I should’ve known
they wouldn’t forget about that,” she said. “Yes, Jo Ann and I used to be
friends. That was a long time ago. Back when we both worked in the main
jail.”
“It’s hard to believe she actually had a friend,” Trina said. “Its hard to
believe you would be the one to do it. What did you do? Lose a bet or
something? Or did you draw the short straw.”
Mandy chuckled. “I don’t know what it was,” she said. “I can’t even say Jo
Ann was nice back then, because she really wasn’t. Oh, she wasn’t quite as
bad as she is now-mostly because she didn’t have any official power-but she
was still a little brown-nosing administrator’s husband. She used to love to
talk about all of the top brass she and her hubby had over to their house,
including the Sheriff himself. She’d always refer to them by first name when
she talked about them. ‘Oh Gary was over for dinner last night, he and his
lovely wife. They just raved about my chicken casserole.’ Christ, I can’t
believe I used to hang out with her. I really can’t.”
“Well, if you didn’t like her, why did you do it?”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like her,” Mandy told her. “I really thought I did
like her back then. I wasn’t doing it to get close to her because I knew she
was powerful or so she’d mention my name to her husband. I actually thought
we had a good friendship going. I liked hanging out with her. She could be a
good friend in some ways. If she likes you, she’ll do anything in the world
for you, including a few things I really would have preferred she didn’t,
like using her husband’s influence to get me an early assignment out of the
jail and onto patrol. I displaced three other people who should’ve gone
before me because of that. That didn’t exactly endear me to the other cops,
if you know what I mean.”
“Yes,” Trina agreed, thinking how she would feel if someone had escaped the
dreary jail assignment-which was universally considered the worst in the
department-when she had been the next to go on the basis of seniority. “I
don’t suppose they were too happy with that.”
“Mostly though, I just had blinders turned on to the way she really was. I
mean, I could see all of the manipulative things she did, all of the little
tricks she played, and I could especially tell how freakin incompetent she
was, but none of that seemed to soak in. It was like I was under some kind
of a spell or something.”
“Were you attracted to her?” Trina asked softly.
Mandy jumped, her face instantly turning a dark shade of red. She knew that
trying to lie would be absolutely worthless. “Yes,” she ashamedly admitted.
“I think that was probably a big part of it.”
“I heard she used to be pretty hot looking,” Trina said knowingly. “It’s
hard to believe now of course, but I’m kind of familiar with how your tastes
in women run.”
“Don’t you dare tell anyone about that,” Mandy warned her. “I swear to god,
Trina, I’d die if anyone found out about that.”
“What am I gonna tell people?” Trina asked with a laugh. “That you confessed
that to me while we were lying in my bed, naked, and you had a strap-on
dildo tied to your waist that you’d just got done fucking me with?”
Mandy laughed a little, a nervous, semi-relieved laugh. “Yes, I suppose you
have a point there, don’t you?” They looked at each other affectionately for
a moment and then Mandy went on. “She really was a piece back then. Tall,
nice perky tits that I just wanted to put my hands and mouth on, a firm ass.
She had everything I look for in a woman and that was when I was just
starting to come to grips with my longings for women, when I was just
getting up the courage to try going to bed with one. I wanted Jo Ann to be
my first.”
“But you didn’t?”
“Never even close,” Mandy said. “I might have sensed something in her or I
might not have. I’m honestly not sure now. Probably not though. I don’t
think she has any sex that doesn’t advance her career or her lifestyle in
some way, shape, or form. I don’t think the idea of sex for pleasure is even
something she knows about.”
“So what finally happened?” Trina asked. “Why is she such a bitch to you
now? Did you have a big fight or something?”
“No, nothing dramatic like that. I just stopped hanging out with her. Not
really all at once, but pretty quickly. There was no single thing that made
me do it, just a whole bunch of little things. I think maybe I just grew up
enough to realize she wasn’t a very nice person. I also got tired of
listening to her dissertations on why her family was so much better than
mine, how her house was so much better than mine, how her children were so
much smarter than mine. And then there was the way my other friends were
treating me. I could tell that people were starting to mistrust me because I
hung out with her so much. They weren’t talking to me anymore, weren’t
inviting me to parties after work, were starting to talk shit about me
behind my back. That was a big factor too. With all of that stuff added up,
I’d just had enough. By that time she had transferred to the courthouse and
I was working the morning watch in South Heritage, so we didn’t see each
other at work very often anyway. I just stopped calling her on the phone.
When she called me I would tell her I was doing something and couldn’t talk.
When she would invite me over or try to get together off-duty, I’d tell her
I had other plans. She was slow getting the hint but finally she got it.
That’s when things started to get unpleasant between us.”
“Oh?”
“Yep,” she agreed. “Most of it on her part of course. I was content to just
not hang out with her anymore. I had no desire to be her enemy, I just
didn’t want to be her friend. Jo Ann is very vindictive though. She doesn’t
like someone ending a friendship without her approval. It wasn’t long before
she started spreading gossip about me to every cop who passed through the
courthouse. And you know we all pass through there on a pretty regular
basis.”
“Yeah,” Trina said with a sigh. “I’ve got court day after tomorrow, now that
you mention it.”
“The gossip was pretty vicious too,” Mandy said. “Things about my children,
my housekeeping, some personal secrets I’d told her.”
“You never told her about your… uh… feelings for other women though?”
“No,” she said. “That’s one I never shared with her, thank God, although
that didn’t keep her from speculating on it anyway. Thankfully, no one
believes most of what she says. It was when they made her a sergeant and put
her out here on patrol that things really started to come to a head. She was
in a position of actual power over me for the first time, and she didn’t
hesitate to start abusing it.”
“I’ve heard some of the stories,” Trina said.
“They’re all true. Petty write-ups for things like unnecessary overtime,
sending back perfectly good reports and making me do them again, assigning
me to the shit details every single time someone was needed. And she
continued to spread the gossip around. This prompted me to file a harassment
complaint against her. Any other supervisor would’ve been fired for some of
the shit she pulled, but not Jo Ann.”
“Nothing was done?”
“Well, not exactly nothing,” she said. “That’s kind of how her hatred for me
grew so much. Since her husband is in charge of the patrol division, he
wasn’t allowed to be involved in the harassment investigation. It went to
Captain Zender over in Investigations. Now, of course, he and Jo Ann’s old
man are golfing buddies and all that, but he at least has a small set of
balls. Or he at least knows something needed to be done in case this ever
went further than our department. Jo Ann got two days on the beach and was
ordered to cease and desist with the harassing behavior. It was a slap on
the wrist, but it was a reprimand that went into her file. I’m here to tell
you it pissed her off big time. She’s been seriously out to get me since
then.”
“Well at least something was done,” Trina said. “Did it help?”
“A little bit,” Mandy said. “As you can see by today’s little incident, she
still blatantly harasses me whenever she gets an opportunity. She toes the
line now though, always making sure she keeps it just at the point where if
I complain about it she can justify it as standard supervisory actions.” She
shrugged. “What can you do? Someday she’ll go a little too far and I’ll nail
her again. Maybe next time she’ll get four days on the beach.”
Trina shook her head, angry for all her friend had put up with. “That’s just
a bunch of bullshit.”
“That’s what this department runs on,” Mandy replied. “Haven’t you figured
that out yet?”
“I think I’m starting to,” she said. She paused for a second, as if debating
whether or not to say something. Finally she went ahead and blurted it out.
“Are you still attracted to her?”
Mandy looked over at her and made a sour face. “No,” she said firmly. “Most
definitely not. Not only is she ugly because of the pounds she’s put on, but
she’s ugly just because of who she is.” She shook her head strongly. “No, my
attraction to her ended at about the time the friendship did. I have to like
someone to want to have sex with them. I’ve always felt that way.”
“That’s kind of what I figured,” Trina said. “Just wanted to make sure.”
Mandy gave her a predatory look, one that didn’t look exactly nice on her.
“I wouldn’t be above giving her a good old fashioned grunge fuck though,”
she said.
Trina was a bit shocked. “A grunge fuck?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Mandy said wistfully. “It’s a term that guys use. It means…”
“I know what a grunge fuck is,” Trina cut in.
“It’s a good term. Sometimes guys have the right idea about things, you
know?”