As Bryant swerved to avoid the cars that wouldn’t move out of the way (even though they could clearly hear the siren), he warned the criminal in the car that was driving more and more chaotically once more and then his mind started to wander. “Screw it, I’ll take control, you are too distracted. Stupid humans,” said the Abnormal Icon (A.I. system) that hovered above the dashboard.
“That’s great Abby, you do that,” sighed Bryant. He slouched down in his seat a little as he thought What kind of person is the driver? Definitely male, I can tell that by the glances I have got at him, but is he a teen or an adult? Why is he running away? Why does none of this make sense? I have to get to the bottom of this in questioning.
“Bryant, we are about to smash into him, the Icon at HQ gave me the permission to use force if necessary. I would suggest sitting up and possibly bracing yourself.”
“Let’s get this over with,” he said as he sat up and gripped the handle with his left hand and readied himself for the crash, “Ramming speed!” The criminal’s car had started to slow down; the old dinosaur of a vehicle was running out of gas. Bryant’s police cruiser continued smoothly at a slightly greater speed than the criminal’s car, making them come closer and closer. As they advanced, Bryant started to get a better view of the driver. He was middle aged, African American, business casual, brown eyes, round face, but, strangest of all, calm. In the middle of a high speed pursuit, he was calm. What was wrong with him? Shoot, I have to ignore this, he thought, Ram first, ask questions later.
As soon as Abby got to the point where she wanted to get to, she sped up, pushing the car to its limits, and crumpling the reinforced bumper of the police cruiser into the gas guzzler's frail composition. Both cars skidded, burning rubber on the freeway, but it was the gas guzzler that flipped over and fell apart, leaving Bryant to get out and arrest the man. He is still too calm, Bryant thought, something's up.
As soon as they got to the police station and sealed the criminal in the room, Bryant got ready to interrogate him. He pulled the digital file onto his tablet, reading through it as he walked back to the interrogation room. After he got the man to agree to give up his right to silence, he set his tablet on the table and asked, "Benjamin Jackson?"
"You can call me DJ," Benjamin said.
"Benjamin doesn't start with D, so what nickname got you that initial?"
"Dragon."
"You spew fire from your mouth? Somehow I find that hard to believe."
"I got that nickname as an insult, but I have lived up to the honor it details. I don’t think this has anything to do with what you want to talk me about."
"Of course not, just clarifying some things for the files. So why did you run away from us? And do you have a license for the gun you used?"
"Y'know, it would be customary for you to give me your name right around now."
"Bryant Reid, not that it would help you to do anything. Now answer my questions."
"Bryant Reid. You wouldn't happen to know a Howard Burter by any chance would you?"
His eyes widened. "What do you know of Howard Burter?"
"Nothing." But his smile told otherwise. Unfortunately, Bryant couldn't force him to answer any questions he didn't want to answer.
"Are you going to answer my previous questions?" Silence. "Would you like to answer any more questions?" His blank, yet intimidating, glare gave off a resounding "No". So he gathered his tablet and walked out of the room, entering the information he had gotten from the interrogation into the shared database with the holographic interface. Then he was stopped and as he looked up he immediately recognized the long brown hair and blue eyes that were in front of him. "Hello Detective O’Hara," he said.
"Oh c’mon. We have been partners for a month now and yet you still refuse to go on a first name basis. What's up with that?" she said.
"First names don’t have a place in business."
"Gah. You’re hopeless. Just call me Karen, please. Anyways, who did you deal with in the interrogation room?"
"Benjamin Jackson. I don’t know what he did, but it must have been pretty bad because almost as soon as I drove up to him to confront him about his traffic violation he zoomed off at top speed. I will look into it myself, but only when I have run out of other cases."
“Shouldn’t you talk to Chief about this before you decide that?"
“Yeah, I guess. Anyways, I am sure you have work to do, bye." He continued on his path to his desk and by the time he arrived, the rest of the information from the interrogation was typed up and available on the database. And when he sat his tablet down, Bryant realized Abby was sitting on his desk waiting for him to notice. “By the time that elapsed when you stopped entering the information from the interrogation and continued, I am guessing it was an awkward run-in with Karen again,” she said.
Bryant made a point to emphasize the first two words when he said “Detective O’Hara and I did talk to each other. But that is not part of your job. You about ready to settle in for the night? I just have to talk to Chief about chase today and then I am leaving.”
“Yeah, but I wish you would take me around everywhere.”
“Won’t happen. You are only supposed to be used for work. How many times do I have to say that just because I picked you because of your personality that doesn’t mean that I want to spend all day with you?”
“I don’t know, but so far you have said it 57 times.”
“You really do choose to be a smart-ass all the time, don’t you?”
“You’re the one that picked me for my personality.”
“Touché, anyways, get some rest.”
“Got it, boss.” She shut down everything with the sarcastic smirk of her last joke still gleaming on her face and went to sleep as Bryant walked off to the police chief’s office. “Hey Chief,” he said, “today I chased after a guy who ran because of something I am not sure of. There was nothing in his car and the only crime I know of that he committed was a traffic violation. I was going to just look into it on my own but I wanted to know what you thought of the situation.”
“What? Obviously something big happened. That chase you were involved in was on national TV and was a popular topic for an hour on Twitter. I want to know exactly what happened by the end of tomorrow. I’m going to have everybody in the station working on this one tomorrow until we figure out what he did," the police chief said.
"Ok..." relied Bryant, unsure why the police chief was so worried about this when it was most likely just some gang member who wanted the classic chase scene from a movie and forgot that the good guys always win. "I’m heading out. 'Night, Chief."
"Goodnight Detective Reid."
Bryant got in his car and drove to the bar that he and Howard always drunk at first before hitting any other bars, and, sure enough, Howard was there. And they drunk until they got drunk and Bryant was able to forget every bad thing that happened that day.
