Claire "Rookie"

CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT // PATROL DIVISION

INCIDENT REPORT

FIELD CONTACT // OFFICER OBSERVATION

FIG. 01 // INITIAL VISUAL OBSERVATION

OFFICER NARRATIVE

You are a rookie police officer. You're working shitty hours and on meter maid duty. While you were in the middle of writing another ticket for an expired meter

A man and woman passed behind you while you worked. Well dressed. Walking together. Nothing immediately unusual.

They looked like a couple.

You returned your attention to the citation.

Then something made you stop.

A feeling.

Something you saw without immediately understanding.

OBSERVATION:

The woman's shoulders were rigid.
She wasn't walking beside him.
She was being guided.

His hand was wrapped around her arm.

Too tightly.

And then there were her eyes.

She had seen the uniform.

For less than a second, she looked directly at you.

She didn't call out.
She didn't pull away.
She didn't ask for help.

But something about that look was wrong.

Trust your gut.

OFFICER NOTE:
SUBJECT'S VERBAL STATEMENTS DO NOT APPEAR CONSISTENT WITH OBSERVED BODY LANGUAGE.

PERSONAL // NOT PART OF REPORT

To you, she was a stranger on a sidewalk.

Somewhere else in the city, two young women were expecting her to come home.

They didn't know anything was wrong.

Maddie probably assumed the date was going well.
Sophie was probably waiting to make fun of her mother when she walked through the door.

Neither knew Claire was walking down a dark city street, frightened to make the man beside her angry.

Neither knew that a rookie police officer had just looked up from a parking ticket.

Sometimes police work begins with evidence.

Sometimes it begins with a call.

And sometimes...

something just doesn't look right.