Three:

Officer Penny Ashton stood with her weapon still hot from being fired. Her ears were ringing, and the gun tremored slightly as her nerves began to flood. She had used both sets of cuffs she carried to subdue the two suspects mostly unmolested of gunfire.

Off in the distance, she saw a dark visage slipping into the shadows of the alley across the street. What struck her first most was the distance which the unidentified shooter had popped the suspects. Penny’s mind was a swirling maelstrom of terror and panic, even as she manages to keep herself micromanaged and on task. Penny had fired her weapon in the range plenty over the past year-and-a-half, but she had barely even left the academy, and yet she’d already dropped a man.

There was zero doubt with the perfectly centered headshot she managed, that her suspect was down for the count. Penny had reacted with absolute force because the young woman he held was in immediate danger. Despite knowing this, and still glimpsing the life she saved form the corner of her vision, Penny felt unimaginable self-doubt about her every action.

Time seemed to skip frames, as if reality were going out of sync with her consciousness. She was wake, yet she seemed to be experiencing gaps and pauses in her memory now. Across the block mobbed up thugs prowled onto the street, lured form their watering holes by the sounds of violence. As if they had been lured with promises of women and beer, they came towards her.

Penny noticed the visible brandished weapons, and she knew as she saw dozens of men swarming the streets that she was dead. There was nothing she could do, and she may as well have a knife in this gun fight about to kick off, because a single Glock-seventeen could not out blast dozens of armed thugs.

“Stay back, police, don’t move!”

She warned them, and several of the older boys just sniggered at this as if she were telling a joke.

“Hey, Marc, you order a stripper cop?”

The fat short balding man in the lead asked one of the leaner grey-headed skells with a massive patchwork of different tattoos coating his neck, arms, and visible chest.

“Naw, but that doesn’t mean we have to return her right away.”

He said, and then his eyes connected with the bodies on the ground, and he pulled his pistol on Penny. She fired off a shot that went wide but caused the mobsters to stop their forward motion.

“Get the fuck back, now!”

“Look out will ya, kitty’s got herself a nice set of claws there.”

His accent was faintly Irish, but only so much as a token accent. If he was truly from some portion of Ireland, he had not been back in decades, by Penny’s assessment. Penny had been a great language studies student before her desire to apply to be a cop overwhelmed her. She had already mastered French, and German by the time she was a junior in High School. Instead of moving on to Italian as her mother suggested, she had studied Gaelic, which is almost a dead language now but can still be found in some portions of the UK and Ireland. However, in this case, Penny could easily apply her knowledge of Irish culture and linguistics, to ascertain that her mobster in lead was not a recent addition to this country.

Not that any of what she noted seemed to matter now and certainly, it didn’t stop him from advancing upon her location in the slightest. This Marc person appeared unfettered by either her badge or her service weapon. He smiled as if he knew something she didn’t.

Penny had taken this job in Peckford because it was the only decent city hiring straight out of the Georgia academy. Atlanta was full-up, and Penny was stuck on a waiting list. Her options were Peckford or some dusty old deputy gig in a one-horse town. Having grown up on a farm, Penny refused to go back to the countryside of Georgia. She longed for the big city life, and she longed to be free of the pretense of hetero normality that she had to hide behind in her backwater origin point. People in the deep wooded south do not take kindly to anything outside the norm. Even women being gay is not accepted and can be met with physical violence. With little other option left to her, Penny leaped at the job in Peckford, despite the cities’ reputation for brutality.

“One more step and I will end you!”

She swore, and Marc laughed at her as he raised his weapon. Penny’s finger began to squeeze on the trigger as the mobster and his goons were beginning to circle tighter on her location. Her heart hammered in her ear like a bass drum beating in a metal sound at a deafening crescendo. Life seemed to become cheap to her at this moment, as she witnessed how flagrantly the mobsters and the dead perps were tossing the rules. They seemed so privy to float the entire rulebook that she was almost left to wonder what her job truly was in this town!

More goons began to spill onto the streets, these were sipping booze in public, and taking bets on who would win the gun fight.

As Penny began to squeeze her trigger, lights and squealing tires caught all her attention, as three police cruisers suddenly filled the space between her and the mobsters. To their credit, the blue boys and girls were quick to exit their cars, all loaded for big game. Their rifles, shotguns, and pistols are all drawn and ready for action.

“Marc is that you causing all this trouble?!”

A detective in a white dress shirt and grey pants asked as he came closer to Penny. He held a shotgun on the fat man flanking Marc.

“Detective Noland Smith, I thought we had an agreement?”

Marc asked brazenly, and Smith arched a brow and shook his head.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to leave one of our own behind when you mutts start shootin’ at them. You know how it goes, now get the fuck back into your holes before I fill you full of lead.”

Noland instructed him in a mildly city-southern accent.

“This one dropped three of mine. You think I’m about to overlook that insult to my family?!”

Marc said, his tone suddenly becoming more jagged with rage. There was a primal fear rushing through Penny’s belly, as she held her pistol firmly on Marc, but the detective seemed to move closer still, and he shook his head once.

“Easy there, kid. You fire on this mongrel and the entire pack’s gonna pounce for sure. We’ve got this.”

He reassured her, and for some reason, Detective Noland Smith’s charismatic voice seemed to convince Penny she could lower her weapon. Noland was on the far end of forty, and he seemed to be just as much salt, as pepper in his black short-cropped cut. He was olive complexed, and appeared Italian if she had to guess his people’s heritage on the spot.

“They’re not complying with any directives.”

Penny told him, and Nolan snorted and eyed Marc like a cunning hawk.

“Yeah, well, he just needs to know we mean business. And we do, mean business. If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to take you on a one-way boat trip to Havana.”

Noland promised Marc, who seemed to take him at his word, almost as if Noland had before now, been known to disappear a body before tonight. Marc stared down at his police counterpart, and he finally huffed and looked at Penny one last time.

“Penny Ashton, huh? Don’t think I’ll be forgetting’ that name anytime soon sweet cheeks.”

Penny felt repulsed as if the lecher had copped a long disgusting feel on her every private body part. She was repelled at how dark and sinister his tone was, while still sounding somehow perversely civil.

“You best forget that girl’s name right the fuck now, Marc!”

Noland snarled, but Marc stared at Penny, and she knew this was far from over.

“It’s your damn fault for not teaching the kid to play by the rules of the street, Noland. She’s a goner, she doesn’t know it yet.”

Marc promised her, as he looked back to Noland, before snapping his fingers and holstering his weapon in his left-hip holster. Peckford was lousy with people carrying openly. Gun fights were a real thing here, and despite the era, no drastic measures taken seemed to limit or reduce the mob presence in the city. Peckford was like Belfast was in Northern Ireland, unstable, and ready to explode at any moment. This comparison seemed a simple leap to Penny, considering the mutts in question appeared to be Irish mob.

“Ok, pack in boys, we’ve got booze and women to knock back tonight.”

Marc said in a loud tone, his voice carried with the air of command of a true don. He was highly placed in his family. Also, he appeared to command the full respect and attention of the police department, even if only because they knew him to be incredibly dangerous.

“Come on, let’s preserve this scene for evidence.”

Detective Noland Smith said as the police presence seemed to flood the side of the street surrounding the corner-store. Several other newly arrived officers secured her prisoners and pat them down for any remaining weapons. Penny was left to shake in terror at the insanity that was her evening.

“Hey there, just breathe. And give me your weapon while you’re at it. We’re going to have to do the ballistics and all that three-ring-circus-jazz.”

Noland told Penny, as he held his left hand out to her expectantly. Penny turned her weapon and handed it to him by the handle as she gripped the barrel. Nolan plucked it gingerly and handed it off to another darkly dressed detective.

He seemed to survey the bodies, and he frowned.

“That looks more like a forty-five than a Seventeen wound.”

He observed the corpse at his feet. Penny seemed to finally understand the question put to her, and she coughed, and then sputtered out, “Yeah, someone helped me. I never saw her face.”

Penny told him, and she seemed to be dazed in shock. Noland frowned and seemed to consider something.

“You’re sure the other shooter was a woman?”

Penny nodded and said, “Yeah, I didn’t see her well, but I did see enough of her figure to deduce she was not a man.”

Penny said, not bothering to explain how female parts catch her eye much more prominently than male ones. Penny knew that whoever had helped her and provided the covering fire was a woman, and a hell of a shot. Beyond that, she could have been dressed like Batgirl for all Penny knew.

“Not too many chicks willing to prowl these streets alone at night, armed or not.”

One of the other uniformed officers commented, and Noland bobbed his head in agreement.

“Indeed, and these wounds have no muzzle burn, so the shots were from a distance.”

HE frowned, seeming to think for a moment more, and then he shook his head.

“Whatever let’s just work the scene and go home. Not like we can bother to track down every dame poppin’ off a few, especially considering she saved one of our own.”

Penny’s eyes widened in shock at his flagrant disregard for the rules. She had heard how things were handled here but witnessing the disinterest in the pursuit of justice from these senior officers and detectives caused her stomach to burn with bile.

However, it appeared like Penny was going to have to investigate this on her own if she expected any answers. None of the evening’s events sat right with her. Being a straight-shooter Penny didn’t relish the flagrant floating of law and order.