Making Waves

Chapter 3

Dick Grayson swiveled his chair side to side, as he stared blearily at the computer screen in front of him. He was writing up a police report and, in all honestly, it had been finished thirty minutes ago, but he was bored. He checked the time and mentally groaned. 5:32pm. He wasn't due to go home for another hour and a half, but there's no way he could 'work on' the report for that long. Dick leaned back in his chair, lifting its front legs, and then one of its back legs, off the ground. He balanced it easily, barely paying attention to the wobble, as he replaced the word, "handled", with "wielded", and read over the sentence.

The perpetrator wielded a knife.... Brandished? The perpetrator brandished a knife...? Nah, too dramatic. Better just leave—

"Grayson!" a voice barked at him, and Dick startled. His, chair, more off the ground than on, jerked a little before settled down to a regular position. If he had any less control over his balance, he would've no doubt toppled backwards.

"With the way you're messing around, looks like you got some free time," Officer Amy Rohrbach said slowly, her arms crossed over her chest.

Dick blanched. "Actually, I'm super busy, writing a report for last week's—"

But Office Rohrbach cut him off. "I'm aware you've been finished with that for a while now." She sounded severely unimpressed.

Dick liked the woman, he really did. She was one of Bludhaven's rare non-corrupt police officers, and she was good at her job. Plus, she was assigned to be his partner when he joined the force two years ago, so she earned some points for putting up with him for so long. She had a few years on him, in terms of age and experience on the force, so while they were technically both ranked the same, her decisions and opinions always held more weight than his. Not that that bothered him much. Except for maybe today.

"I'm still making some edits," he tried, but he knew it was a lost cause.

She didn't even dignify that with a response. Her brown hair was pulled back into a bun near the bottom of her head. The tightness of the style sharpened the lines on her face, her already stern expression appearing harsher than usual. She stared at him, unmoving and, although he wasn't intimidated, Dick knew he was in for it.

"Turn in the report and go take a car out for patrol, around Stark Avenue and the Melville Section. There's only two others out right now, in the business district and beyond," she ordered.

Dick wanted to pout but he knew she was in a no-nonsense mood, more so than usual. Maybe something was up. He knew she was starting to investigate the police chief, Delmore Redhorn, and he wondered if she had found anything new. He doubted it, though. Everyone who knew Chief Redhorn, knew he was corrupt. The issue was that practically everyone who knew the chief, save for Dick and Officer Rohrbach, were also corrupt.

Redhorn ran the precinct like a pirate ship. Everyone stole or cheated or lied, often to and from each other, and knew about it too, but no one ever breathed a word. It seemed common knowledge amongst them that selling someone out was the quickest way to get killed. That's why although Dick had been doing his own detective work into the chief, even he had yet to find anything that could be used as hard evidence.

He turned back to his computer, saved the file, and uploaded it to the system. Standing up to show his partner that he had completed said task, he grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and headed towards the exit. Office Rohrbach, satisfied, returned to her own responsibilities.

Dick turned on the squad car and backed out of the parking space, ready for an hour or so of handing out speeding tickets and accosting suspicious characters. As he drove past Melville Park, and into the area he was told to patrol, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.