After Life

High Noon

DETECTIVE CALEB DOUGLAS

Another fuckin' all-nighter.

"Dem nuh reach yet?" I'm this close to losing my shit.

It doesn't take the scorching 10 o' clock sun beaming down on St. James Street to remind me I've been on this shift for too long. When it's just Thursday and you've already capped out on overtime pay for the week, every hour beyond that feels like torture.

I'm sleep-deprived, exhausted and motherfucking tormented. I keep telling my superiors that an exhausted officer with a gun may just as well be a criminal.

"Heh, dis look like a whole day ting innuh." Detective Mitchell's high-pitched voice cannot be hidden, even amidst the buzz of an unruly crowd. "20 years in the Force and no matter how many times I see dis, I can neva get used to it." He braces his hand against the staircase where one of the three bullet-riddled bodies lay and pushes himself off his knees. With beads of sweat rolling down his forehead, Mitchell waddles past the other two bodies and towards me, gesturing that I pay closer attention to the crowd behind me that's becoming increasingly annoyed.

An energetic, round man, no more than 5'5", Mitchell is years removed from the physical prime he often boasts about, and spends more time than necessary trying to hide the fact that he's fast approaching his mid-50's. His unbuttoned, dark brown plaid shirt – a choice of fashion, he'd say, rather than one made to accommodate his protruding beer belly, flailed as he pats his pockets in search of something. The pleased look on his face suggests he found it.

"Where's the porridge man?" he asks as he walks up to me, sifting through some coins and what looked like three hundred dollars.

"What?"

"The porridge man, you didn't see him?" Mitchell fixes his eyes to the crowd. "Porridge man!" he yells repeatedly. Laughter trickles out among those who could hear his squeaky voice but he is undeterred by the quiet mockery and raises his voice even louder. Soon after, the balding detective's cries were heard. A hand, carrying a large, Styrofoam cup, shoots up above the crowd some distance away and begins slithering its way towards us.

"Who seh porridge? Who seh porridge?!" The hand finally reaches the front of the crowd and an animated, dreadlocked man emerges. As Mitchell pays him, I again turn my attention to the mass of chaos before me. Still no sign of the coroner.

"Is this man really one of our best detectives?"

The voice that comes from behind me instantly tears through my focus and threatens to demolish the anger I've been nurturing all morning.

"You should've bought the pot, Mitchy," she joked.

Mitchell peeks over my shoulder, looks, rolls his eyes, and gets back to his breakfast.

"Mrs. Walter, what are you doing here?" I ask as I turn to face her. Every inch of Vanessa Walter's being betrays the fact that she's a fierce crime-fighter. A beauty queen-turned-police officer, Walter's unblemished, dark brown skin glistens in the sunlight while Mitchell and I sweat unflatteringly. The thoughts I'm having as she approaches feel wrong as we stand among the dead.

"Officer Walter, Mr. Douglas. And I'm here to relieve you. The coroner will be here soon. We need to hold the fort for a bit until then. Once they're here, you can leave. We know you've got another pressing case to deal with," she says matter-of-factly.

"Oh, right!" Mitchell says, cooling his porridge as he motions us away from the ears of the crowd. "You're meeting with the Newman kid today, right?" His voice was almost a whisper. I nod as I take another look up the avenue and notice the traffic of people and cars slowly peeling apart. The coroners are making their way down. Vehicles are slowly beginning to climb the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians into the walls of Chinese stores that line the roadway. On the balcony of one of those stores just above us, I notice several news teams clamouring to secure the perfect shot, alternating positions to capture the triple murder that marked St. James' 200th just three months into the year.