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Moving slowly, I gathered up Taavi and left.
We were halfway home when a whooping siren and blue lights from behind me caught my attention.
Don’t get me wrong—I don’t think I should be able to do shit like excessively speed or break traffic laws just because I’m a cop… but it is a little weird for one cop to pull over another, especially when I knew all my lights worked and I was maybe going three over the limit and I definitely hadn’t hit anyone or anything. I was on one of the side streets coming from downtown, avoiding the heavier traffic on Broad and Monument, so there weren’t a lot of other cars, and going twenty-eight down a street people regularly pulled thirty-five on wasn’t a pull-over-worthy offense.
It took about two seconds for all that to go through my head and for me to remember just how many of my so-called colleagues had participated in the MFM protest outside the precinct. I had to seriously think for a second whether pulling over or refusing to would be the worse option.
I decided on pulling over, Taavi tense and whining in the seat beside me. As I watched the silhouette of the uniform approach my door, I hit the shortcut to call Raj, turned down the volume, and slid the phone between my seat and the center console.
“Take it easy,” I told Taavi. “Lie down.”
He did, but his eyes were wide and the brown one focused on me with a definitely worried expression.
I had my window rolled down by the time the uniform sauntered up to it and held his flashlight up to my face, which was ridiculous given that the street was lit by lights. I could feel my pulse in the back of my throat and wondered if we’d reached the point where he would just shoot me point blank in the driver’s seat.
“License and registration.” He deliberately made his voice rough and gravely, something every one of us is taught as an intimidation tactic—sorry, ‘as a way to ensure respect from a suspect or perpetrator.’
“In my glove compartment,” I told him, keeping my voice smooth. “I’m going to reach for it slowly.”
“Yeah, slowly. And keep that damn dog under control.”
I heard the tell-tale snap as he thumbed open his holster.
“He’s lying down,” I replied, struggling—but managing—to keep my voice steady and calm. Pulling a gun on me was one thing, but I hadn’t figured on someone threatening Taavi—for all they knew, he was just a dog.
“He’d better stay that way.”
I heard the shush of leather as the hand not holding the flashlight pulled the gun out of its holster, slowly. Deliberately.
I kept my left hand on the wheel, forcing my fingers to stay open and relaxed despite the sweat on my palms. With my right I reached past Taavi for the glove compartment, which I pushed, then lifted my hand.
“It’s in the black folder. Do you want me to hand it to you?”Calm, Val. Calm.I couldn’t give him even the slightest excuse for thinking I was going for a weapon—which, if I had been, wasn’t in my glove box, anyway. There could be no question that I was fully compliant. If this asshole was going to shoot me, he was going to have to make the deliberate decision to commit murder.
Cuz here’s the thing.
The brain can justify pretty much anything it wants to. You see all those stories about cops shooting unarmed civilians and you think they couldn’t possibly have been afraid for their lives. And, sure, there are some genuine sociopathic bastards out there who just want to kill people who aren’t like them because they can. But I would wager that most of them are examples of the brain convincing itself of a pattern—it expects to see a gun, so it sees one, whether it actually sees a gun, a toy, a bag of M&Ms, or a cell phone. And when you add guilt and a hefty dose of racism to that, the person who pulled the trigger convinces themselves that theymusthave been in genuine danger because they can’t live with themselves or their ideology otherwise.
And so they tell and retell the story until they really do believe that they were fully justified in killing a kid, beating a man to death in front of his wife, or putting ten rounds in the back of a fleeing suspect carrying nothing more than the phone that recorded the sounds of his last breaths.
It’s bullshit of the first degree, but that’s how brains work.
Especially human brains.
I’m not saying Arcanids are some sort of higher order, mind you. We’re just as stupid and emotional and biased as humans. But humans are moreafraid, especially of us.
Which meant that there were a lot more of us who ended up dead on the other end of police shootings than there should have been.
It isn’t right. Not by the longest fucking shot in the world.
But it is true.
If I’d been an orc or a vampire or a shifter, I would have been in even more trouble. But I’m pretty, so if I was very, very careful, I might get out of this with the same number of holes in my body as when I started.
As I pulled out my registration folder, Taavi let out a small whine.
Fuck.
I didn’t think, I just moved.
