"Respect and a New Hire" by Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara

 Ed Calkins, Steward of Tara, sent this piece earlier in the week. 

I'm guessing it's an excerpt from a sequel to Ruthless that he's currently writing, for the piece features Sheriff Matt from the first book.

It's got a nice O. Henry twist at the end. Enjoy!

The sheriff was polite enough but didn’t seem to think that a five-year veteran of the CPD had the right stuff to patrol the roads of Munsonville. What was his problem? Black, female, being by the book …or did he hold suspect her roommate; which of those was the real reason? He deployed her as temporary but insisted on riding with her every shift. It had been nearly a week and not one peep out of the overnight dispatcher. At the end of her last shift, Marsha heard Sheriff Matt telling someone that tonight likely would be her last.

              “Home invasion in progress,” came over the radio.

              She drove hot; Matt knew the place and person. Dome lights, police cam, action – but Sheriff Matt wasn’t about body cams. Anyway, they were at the disturbance inspecting the entrances.

              “No evidence of break in,” she told him.

              That pompous sheriff seemed awfully relaxed.

              “Break down the door?” But smartass lifted the doormat and pulled a key.

              “Go first. Show me what you got.”

              Two minutes later, they were back in the cruiser and Marsha was fuming. The perpetrator was still in the house, and Matt looked like he found the flaw he’d been looking for all along.

              “What!” she snapped.

              “Could have done worse, but you could have done better.”

              “Did you know that a brownie was washing dishes?” she fumed.

              “Yeah,” the sheriff allowed. “Ramon cleans old man Daven’s place every Saturday. Do you think we shouldn’t have responded?”

              “Of course not,” Marsha conceded. “It’s just…”

              “That a brownie was doing the cleaning? The first thing you did right, by the way, is seeing a brownie and not a dangerous burglar. You didn’t shoot him when he didn’t freeze or mix it up with him when he told you to find your own old man to clean for. Don’t worry, we’ve got plenty of mythical creatures that are dangerous. That’s why we came out this way. Could have been a ghost, werewolf, or vampire that just so happen to terrorize the old man the same night Ramon cleans…dementia, get it?”

              “You should have told me. What if I did shoot?”

              “Ramon would have fixed the bullet holes. He doesn’t believe in revolvers. You believe in brownies.”

              Marsha sighed and spilled.

              “My wife is an old world farmer,” she said. “That’s why I quit Chicago for a place we could raise food and our two baby boys.”

              “Still want the job?”

              “That depends on what I did wrong,” Marsha responded suspiciously.

              “Not too much. You could have showed more respect to Ramon. He takes care of the old man because we humans don’t. It might have helped if you’d picked up a dry cloth and started drying the dishes while you talked to him. Brownies are good friends to cops looking for bad elves and fairies.”

              She got it.

              “So what do we write in our report?” Marsha asked.

              “Nobody hears about this but our own DMC.”

              “Detroit Medical Center?”

              “Department of Mythical Creators…I’ll introduce you tomorrow.”