#Wattys2015 The Ghost of James Fitzpatrick

Chapter 36

Detective Mae Flores sat alone at her pale green, Formica kitchen table. The light above the table was the only light on in the house, but the blue glow from the television nearby in the living room kept her company.

Her husband Berto had died 22 years, and became the first Hispanic police officer to die in the line of duty in Missouri. He and Mae had also been the first interracial couple on the force, and the brotherhood of their fellow officers had never failed to support them. They met while candidates at the police academy, and thankfully, had not made it around to having children by the time Berto was shot in the face during a domestic disturbance call by someone's pissed off, drunken husband. She and Berto had known the risks.

Mae had never remarried, the other officers and detectives had been family enough for her, and she had been working with Detective Sandberg for over a dozen years. Sandy, as she called him, wanted more. More action, more impact, more notoriety, more responsibility, more bad guys.

Mae was like a big sister to him, hell, more like a mother, truth be told. She was past retirement age, but working at her desk and sniffing out the bad guys with the help of modern databases and the internet, not available at the onset of her career, suited her fine. She may have been stiff in the joints these days, but the thrill of the hunt had never abandoned her. There was no shortage of assholes who needed to be put in their place. Namely prison.

She had a manila folder open in front of her on the kitchen table, and was gently flipping through the few sheets of paper inside. Her glasses were thick, black horn rimmed, her hair was rolled atop her head in curlers, and she held a cigarette between her long, brown fingers. Her cat, Chiggers, vied for her attention, but at the moment it was not easy to get from the detective.

She attempted to shoo him away.

"Get on outta here Chiggers" she mumbled to the affectionate, orange tabby. She shoved him a bit with the back of her forearm, but he persisted. She turned another page in the folder and looked at the same newspaper article on James Fitzpatrick that Sarah had been reading at the library, the same photo, the same smile, the same ending.

Detective Flores squinted to read the fine print with difficulty, and even more so as Chiggers stepped onto the folder and the paper.

"Damn you cat," she said. "You just about to get on my last nerve. You want me to pay you some attention. Is that what you want?"

Detective Flores stood up with some stiffness, closed the file in front of her, pulled the chain on the lamp above the dining table and picked up the overweight tabby with the cigarette still glowing between her fingers.

"Come here you overstuffed animal," she said as she shuffled into the living room and toward the television.

She took a comfortable seat on the couch and plopped the cat on her lap. She reached out to the end table to flick her ashes into the ashtray situated atop a lacedoily and picked up the framed photo that shared the end table. She brought the photo onto her lap and rested it on Chigger's back, who barely noticed. She smiled as she took a long look at the photo.

It was an old black and white of a very young policewoman with thick, black, horn rimmed glasses. She was shaking hands with a white man in a suit and tie who was handing her a graduation degree from the police academy. It was 1969, and the young police officer was Detective Flores, with a beautiful smile, and a life of crime solving ahead of her.

Her parents stood proudly beside their daughter, and behind her stood her grandmother and her grandfather, Wanda and Sergeant Reginald Lewis, or better known to his friends and neighbors, including James Fitzpatrick as 'Sarge', with his (as James called it) 'bad ass pirate patch' strapped to his head, and that smile captured in that moment, that's only borne of pride for his granddaughter.

Detective Flores set the picture back on the end table, scratched Chiggers behind his ears, and the big cat purred as her owner finished her cigarette.

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