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their hands because she was nearly to the point of turning him in.
    As detectives working cases together,
James and Ali’s closing rate had been incredible. They’d gotten all the shit
cases that nobody wanted and they’d somehow managed to solve most of them. In
their first year together they’d closed every case handed to them and had
received the grudging respect of the other homicide detectives. Then, when
their solve rate started to slip and cases started to go into the files
unsolved, they’d caught other detective’s looking into some of the cases they’d
solved the year before to see if they’d faked or planted evidence. No one found
anything and even though James and Ali didn’t solve every case, their solve
rate remained higher than most of the other detectives, which continued to lead
to envy and suspicion. That envy and suspicion had even spilled over into
James’ marriage.
    It was hard for a woman to accept
that her man spent most of his day with another woman. Twelve to fourteen hour
days were common and, when James came home
tired and sexually unmotivated, Lois’s suspicion had grown. In truth, James and
Ali did have a brief affair, but they’d ended it when it started to interfere
with work and when they realized that, despite the depths of their friendship,
they were not in love and what they were doing was just fucking and not worth
ruining a career over. Lois didn’t start
suspecting them of having an affair until years after it had ended. It enraged
him that when he was doing bad she was blissfully unaware but now that he was
innocent, every day was an inquisition.
    The divorce was far from peaceful.
She’d wanted the house, the car, and five hundred dollars a month in alimony.
She’d gotten the car and the alimony. Now, he could barely afford to keep the
house with all the money he was sending to her each month. Rosie felt bad that
she’d caused the breakup of his marriage, but James knew that it wasn’t her
Lois had been jealous of. It was the job. And he’d chosen the job over her. She
was a bitch, anyway. He’d loved that car. He’d loved Rosie.
    James remembered the day she died.
Her brain had turned to mush from lack of oxygen and there was no recognition in
her eyes as she stared at him from the hospital bed. He’d left the hospital
knowing that he’d just seen her for the last time.
    Before Rosie, his first partner,
back when he was a fresh-faced rookie, was a Gung Ho ex-marine named Cliff
Douglas who missed all the action in Vietnam and seemed to regret riding a desk
through the war and never seeing front line combat. He made up for it with near
suicidal recklessness on the street. For him, the streets were his second
chance at seeing combat. Where many of the old-timers avoided any calls where
there were shots fired or armed suspects of any kind, Cliff would go out of his
way to join a gunfight. Cliff regularly charged into dangerous situations with
guns blazing. He had more courage than common sense and it seemed to James he
had a death wish. There were always jokes about “Crazy Cliff” but James didn’t
think they were funny. Having a borderline psychotic on the force made for
amusing bar stories but not when you were his partner, not when his madness
could lead to you catching bullets.
    James was the only one on the force
at that time who regularly wore a vest and it already had dents in the
breastplate from what would have been fatal impacts. He was constantly teased
about it by the macho assholes who sat in pizza and donut shops half the day,
leering at and making lewd comments about every girl who passed by, only
leaving long enough to gang up on some doped-up
juvenile delinquent. They thought it was cowardly to wear a vest, but those
idiots weren’t partnered up with “Crazy Cliff.”
James quickly grew tired of the whine of bullets whizzing past his head. He
pulled his service revolver more in those first few years partnered with that
nutcase than he had in all