Blaze McKenzie had offered to sit in for the watch commander. Tony said he needed to leave a bit early—he had an appointment for a haircut.
Sitting at the Area Command Center or ACC, he reviewed the status of the day watch officers.
Some units showed, “Out to the Station.” In other words, the cops were waiting in the parking lot for the night watch to finish roll call and come downstairs to get their equipment.
Bender and his P-1 were at the mall with a shoplifting suspect, and Hopkins and Paloma showed they were on a traffic stop. Of course, they’d initiated the traffic stop a half hour earlier. They were hanging onto the incident they’d created so they wouldn’t get assigned a radio call at the end of watch.
Next, Blaze checked on his mid-watch units. Those were the guys and gals whose job it was to try to stay free, so if something big happened at change of shift they’d respond so the day watch could go home, while the night watch checked out their equipment and logged on for duty. He nodded to himself. Both mid-watch units were clear.
Sergeant Fox entered the watch commander’s office. “What happened to Mancuso?”
“He had to leave early and asked me to sit in. You need something?”
“Nope. I just need to put a final entry on my log, and I’ll be ready to roll.”
“Good deal.”
Amanda Fox was professionally known as Sergeant Fox. But most of the males, when talking amongst themselves, they called her Foxy.
“Hey,” he said. “I heard you talking about that 415 group at Nordhoff and Lindley that Bender and Price handled.”
She snickered. “Yeah, Bender seemed a little put out that Price had a 415 suspect, drew her Taser, and threatened to light him up.”
Blaze laughed. “Good for her.”
Amanda sobered. “I just hope it doesn’t go to her head.”
He shrugged. “Sounds like she handled it just fine, but to your point, I’ll ask her how she thought it went. If it appears she’s full of herself, I’ll have a chat with her.”
Amanda nodded, moved into the sergeant’s office, and signed on to the computer.
A chime from the ACC indicated a unit had sent him a message. It was from Bender and Price.
Hey, L.T., you want us to have a night watch unit book our shoplifting body or for us to work overtime?
Blaze grinned. He knew Bender hated working late and would try to palm off anything he could to the oncoming watch.
He tapped a return missive. Your P-1 needs to learn how to book a suspect. Go ahead and book the body, then hustle back to finish your reports.
The reply took at least a minute…time that Blaze was sure Bender was cursing him.
Roger that.