LAPD

John Hamm hated his beat. Mexicans and Negroes everywhere, in a low rent tenement area of East LA. The car was new, a 1946 Dodge, but the department stiffed him on a partner. Hamm was forced to patrol the streets looking for crime in the middle of the night, a middle aged cop with a wife and two kids, by himself. "Fuck bureaucrats", he thought.

LA was booming, with a huge influx of money and people after the war. It seemed like the wartime engine that sprang up to pull the area out of the Depression never wound down, and folks just kept coming. Housing prices closer to the center of town were skyrocketing, so areas like John's beat were growing quickly. If you needed to live within a bus ride of downtown, but couldn't afford to live there yourself because you washed dishes for a restaurant, then you eked out a living in a rotting apartment in East LA.

Hamm turned the corner on 15th Street and put the pedal down for a few seconds to wake himself up. He had another hour until his break, when Monica was working at Sunnyside Donuts, so he'd have to battle sleep until he could get a hot cup of joe from her. When he stopped for the light at Broadway, he heard something a faint "pop pop, pop" down an alley.

"Badge 592, Dispatch."
"Go ahead 592."
"I have a possible 5150 in progress on Broadway, 400 block. Requesting assistance."
"Copy 592. 5150 in progress, sending officers your way. Dispatch out."

Hamm pulled over quickly and got out of the Dodge, closing the door quietly. He began working his way over to the corner of the alley, hoping to peer down and figure out how many bad guys had been shot. When he looked around, what he saw surprised him.

Laying in the center of the alley was a severed hand, attached to a semi-automatic Browning pistol. A note lay in the center of a streetlight's orange glow, trapped at the corner by the barrel of the pistol.

"She is no longer alive. You can stop looking Hamm. It will do you no good in the end."

The first squad car reported to the scene as John finished reading the note. He knew his beat would never be the same again.

-Grace

Thank you for visiting. Before you go, please submit a story idea for me to munch on for the next post!