Esmerelda's apartment was a small studio apartment, two doors down from Mr. Cartmen, and boasted a beautiful view of a brick wall. It was neat, with cheap, plywood bookshelves stocked full of books and knicknacks. There was a double bed in one corner, blocked off by an old-fashioned changing screen, a kitchenette, and a small bathroom.

"That has to be the smallest bathroom in the world." Emilie gave the bathroom a disgusted look. It made no comment. She opened the cabinet under the sink and started pulling out cleaning supplies. "I've got Ajax, Comet, Scrubbing Bubbles, Bleach, Ammonia, and cheap toliet cleaner. Why would she have name brand everything but toilet cleaner?"

"I don't know." Patrick was in the kitchenette, pulling out items from under the sink in there. "I've got Cascade, Mop 'n' Glow, more Scrubbing Bubbles, some type of counter top shiner, silver polish, a mop bucket, and a bunch of rags." He stood up, wincing as his knee popped loudly.

"Was that your knee?"

"Yeah."

"You need to ice that thing." Emilie was going through the medicine cabinet. "Nothing odd in here. Toothpaste, toothbrush, deorderent, aspirin, Pamprin-"

"Does that stuff really work?"

"Pamprin?"

"Yeah."

"Not on me. Just makes me loopy. I've also got bandages, peroxide, Q-tips, cough syrup, and nail clippers."

Patrick opened the fridge. "There is exactly one half of an apple, a tupperware container full of grayish-greenish stuff, and a bottle of water in the fridge." He closed the fridge. "And a grocery list on the door." He lifted up a magnet shaped like a hotdog and read the list. "She's got half the stuff marked on here to buy it sugar free."

"Maybe she was a health nut." Emilie gingerly picked up a bottle of green goo from the edge of the tub. "Correction, she was a health nut. She has seaweed-algae face wash. And it wasn't tested on animals." Emilie put the bottle back down and checked out the rest of the shower supplies. There was shampoo and conditioner of an all-natural orgin, soap that looked like it had been made from oatmeal, and a razor that was balanced percariously on the thin edge of the tub. A towel hung on the back of the door. It was blue and dry, but obviously used. Emilie lifted the toilet lid. There was brick inside. "She was also environmentally friendly. She was trying to conserve water."

"She may have just been trying to save on her water bill." Patrick had moved from the kitchen to the bookshelves. He was browsing the titles with a bit of interest. "Looks like she's read everything. It's all organized by category. There's History, Mystery, Old Lit, Chick Lit-"

"Chick Lit?" Emilie came out of the bathroom and started checking out the books on the other end of the room. "What the hell is Chick Lit?"

"New wave in publishing. It's women writing stories about successful career women, usually in the publishing field, who are lonely and find love."

"Well, that's insulting."

Patrick grinned. That tone of voice meant Emilie was pissed. "Which part?"

"Firstly, calling it 'Chick Lit' is just demeaning. If a woman writes a book, and it goes to publication, and it deals with a woman with a career falling in love doesn't make it 'Chick Lit'. It makes it a *book*. The theme of the book is romance, but there could be something else besides the romance going on. Labeilng it something so stupid sticks it in a corner of the shelf it may not belong on and keep it from an audience who might actually like it. Giving it a stupid title is also sexist. You ever hear of 'Dude Lit'? No. You haven't. Because it was written by a man, so it doesn't get some sort of stupid label attached to it."

"And why is the other part insulting?" Patrick knew he was playing with fire. Getting Emilie worked up over something so off-topic as the way books were organized could have her going for hours. But sometimes, fire was fun to play with.

"It insinuates that a woman has to have someone in her life romatically to make her happy. If they're books about successful women, they should be about a woman's successes, not about her search for love to make her complete. Women can be complete with love." Emilie made a disgusted noise. "This is exactly why I never go *near* the romance section of the bookstore."

"Well, that, and your heart is blackened from years of going unused."

Emilie shrugged. "That too, I suppose."

Patrick turned back to his book browsing with a small smile on his face. He knew better than anyone that Emilie's heart was well-used. She was fierce and hard, but she was a good person, and you didn't even have to look deep to see it. Her bluntness, one of the things that so many complained about, was part of that. She wouln't mince words, couldn't see the point in lying if the truth was right there to be said and understood. She was totally inedept when dealing with people occasionally, but at the very least, she was always honest with them.

Emilie pulled a book from the shelf and thumbed through it absently. "How many Ed McBains does this girl have?"

"He's written about 50 of those Eighty-Seventh Preciect novels, and he's got a series of private detetive stories under Evan Hunter."

"Isn't that the guy who wrote _The Blackboard Jungle_?"

"Yeah."

"And now he writes cop mysteries?"

"Yeah."

"That's a nice drop."

Patrick chuckled. "I hear they're pretty good."

Emilie replaced the book on the shelf. "Have you read any?"

"I doubt I could get through one without bitching about protocal."

"Yeah."

Patrick hunkered down to check the books on the bottom shelf. One of them, decorated with ribbon and cheap, fake, plastic gemstones, stood out against the row of "Reader's Digest" Condensed Books. He pulled it out and was surprised to find it incredibly light. He opened it and was staring into a small box. "Found her hiding place."

Emilie turned from her persual of a group of snowglobes and walked over to him, squatting down as well. "What's that?"

"Looks like a box she dressed up to look like an oversized book." Patrick looked through the contents carefully. "Some pictures of her and another girl, a necklace that didn't look particularly expensive, and a small, blue velvet bag. Patrick picked up the bag and handed it to Emilie while he finished looking over every corner of the box.

"Ho-ly *shit*." Emilie held up a roll of cash as thick as three of Patrick's fingers, and his fingers were pretty wide. She popped off the rubber band and did a quick count. "There's two thousand dollars here. Mostly in twenties, a couple of hundreds. What is she doing with two thousand dollars?"

"She was making over two hundred dollars in tips a night. That's only about two weeks worth of money, there. Maybe this was her emergency stash?"

Emilie shook her head. "You don't keep two thousand dollars around for emergency cash, and you don't hide it. Emergency cash is the hundred dollars you stash in a coffee can on top of the fridge. You don't roll up two thousand dollars, wrap it in a rubber band, stick it in a velvet bag, and shove it in a fake book if you think you may need it for something soon."

"Does she have a savings account?"

Patrick stood up and walked across the room where a desk sat against the wall. There were papers on it, and he shuffled through them until he came up with a bank statement. "She has a thousand dollars in her savings. Fifty-six in her checking." He looked over at Emilie. "Why would she have twice as much money in her apartment than she has in her savings?"

"Maybe she had a fear of banks and put in just enough money to not look like she was some sort of bank-phobic."

"Maybe it's dirty money. She could have done something with Dennis Tyler and just lied to Leslie Dryer about it."

"You think she's capable of that kind of lie?"

Patrick shrugged. "Hard to say. She comes off as a squeaky-clean person just trying to find a way to make enough money to go to school, but that doesn't mean she was."

"You're starting to sound like me, again."

"Sound like me, occasionally. Maybe we can even it out."

Emilie snorted. "Sorry, I can't have that much faith in the human race."

*

Kendall had gotten through the reports rather quickly. Everything he read matched everything he'd been told. He made a small list of people to call on again because they hadn't answered their doors, and shoved the reports to one side. He grimaced when shoving the reports caused a stack of files he hadn't had time to refile to fall to the floor in an uneven pile. He gave a quick thank you to the file gods that none of the papers had gone flying.

If Emilie's desk was a study in organization, Kendall's was a study of controlled chaos. Files were stacked on papers which were stacked on reports which were stacked, if he was lucky, on the desk. There were a half-dozen pens grazing amongst the papers on his desk, and two old notebooks he'd had time to label but not stash away rested precariously on his computer monitor, just waiting to go tumbling to the floor. His drawers were filled with files, mostly old ones that he hadn't taken the time to go stick in the archives, and he wasn't going to start now. The amazing part was, Kendall could easily find anything on his desk. Need the Bracken file? Two levels down from last week's reports, and three papers over from the statement from Mr. Dimingo about why he shot his brother point blank in the face. It was chaos, sure, but it was at least understood by the man who had created it.

The sheaf of papers Emilie had given him was resting next to two of Kendall's pens. He picked it up with only the slightest interest. He knew from Emilie's tone that he wasn't actually supposed to check the thing for procedural errors, but he wanted to see what it was, anyway.

COPS IN QUARTERTOWN
BY britton cox

Kendall found his red pen nestled next to the computer keyboard and circled the name. Next to it, he wrote: 'Need capitalization in name. This is grammatically incorrect.'

A NOVEL

Kendall turned the papers sideways so he could get an idea of the thicknes of the "novel". He made another note: 'At this length, this is a novella. It's like a novel, but shorter.'

He opened to the first page.

It was a dark, cold night in Quartertown when the phone rang and woke up Detective Sarah Merkerson.

"There's a dead body at "Chino's"."

Detective Merkerson, a pretty woman with short brown hair and wide eyes, yawned and stretched. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

Kendall took up his pen again and circled the second sentence; 'Identify the caller. If this is not the dispatcher, then something screwy is going on here that you need to deal with.'

Chino's was an upscale restaurant near the edge of Detective Merkerson's precinict. It had soft lighting, overstuffed chairs at the tables, and boasted some of the highest prices in the city to buy a domestic beer.

The body was back near the bar. It was an older man, probably in his forties, with gray hair and sallow skin.

The red pen flourished again: 'Everyone's skin is sallow when they're dead. Find a new adjective.'

Detective Merkerson looked down at the body, and watched while the medical examiner looked over the body. "How'd he die?"

"He was stabbed." The medical examiner pointed to a dozen holes in the man's chest. "By something small. The holes look like they're about the same size as a dinner fork."

"Can you stab someone deep enough to kill them with a dinner fork?"

Kendall made a note at the end of that sentence: 'No.'

"I honestly don't know. I've never seen it before, but if someone gets mad enough, anything can be a weapon of death."

Kendall circled 'weapon of death' and put a large 'NO.' over it. He'd never heard a medical examiner utter the words 'weapon of death', and he'd put good money down that he'd never meet one that would.

He added another note: 'It is impossible to kill someone with a dinner fork. It is also impossible to mortally wound them so that they would die from injuries received from being stabbed by a dinner fork. Pick an actual weapon. When it doubt, bludegon the victim.'

Detective Merkerson turned away from the body at the sound of the front door of the restaurant opening. Her partner, Stanley Nicholson, walked towards her.

Kendall laughed. ~Stanley and Sarah? Merkerson and Nicholson? This has to be a joke. Sounds like a bad vaudeville act.~

"Hey, Stan."

"Hi, Sarah. Where's the body?"

"Over in the corner next to the door. He was stabbed to death with a dinner fork."

Stanley looked surprised. He was a good-looking man with dark brown hair that fell over his forehead and bright green eyes the same color as old soda bottles. He was lanky with long legs. "You can kill someone with a dinner fork?"

Again, Kendall wrote: 'No. You can't. And this is the wrong place for description. Put it elsewhere.'

"Apparently, you can." Sarah gestured behind her. "The medical examiner is finishing up with the body. You want to look around?"

"Yeah." Stanley removed his coat and slung it over the back of a nearby chair. "Are they bagging all the forks?"

"Yeah."

'You've made no previous mention to anyone bagging the forks for evidence,' Kendall wrote. 'Have someone say they've started bagging forks or state that Sarah is about to tell them. Don't assume your readers will figure it out. Some of them aren't that smart.'