Ripstop

There was a policeman standing in an alleyway, waiting to make a bust. His name was Kevin Allens, and he had spent six years as a desk jockey for the department before he was finally promoted to Narcotics. Two weeks ago, the police department had received an anonymous phone call that gave details of a major shipment of drugs that was to change hands that night in this same alley. It was Allens’s first stakeout, and quite frankly, he was bored. He had been here for three hours already, hiding in the shadows created from the bright full moon above, his fingers still hovering over his sidearm. He was waiting for two men to show up, big burly bodyguards, as he understood. He was also understandably nervous—he was alone in the alley because only one officer could hide adequately in the shadows. Back-up was waiting across the street and in nearby abandoned buildings, but they would only come once the men arrived and he gave the signal.
The policeman would later blame his superiors for giving him unreliable information. They would blame the tipster who phoned in the information, who would blame the person who told him about the drug trafficking his cousin was involved in, who would in turn blame Allens for not sorting fact from fiction.
The officer heard the crunching of gravel underfoot, and anxiously licked his lips. Pressing himself to the wall, he slid along, still maintaining his cover, until he was in the mouth of the alley.
“I need to tie my shoe,” came a soft voice through the darkness, and Allens went in for the kill. “Freeze!” he snarled, levelling his weapon at the nearest suspect’s head. In slow motion, it would have looked strange; in fast motion, it was just too confusing to comprehend. The figure that currently had a gun pressed into its head was slightly stooped, as if about to bend over. Promptly, it toppled to the ground, and Allens, more out of instinct than anything else, pulled the trigger. The shot rang out, echoing in triplicate like the paperwork that he would have to file later for this little slip-up. The second figure, face washed out by the bright moonlight, clapped a hand to its shoulder and fell as well. That wasn’t quite the signal, but back-up was rushing in nonetheless. They stood in a circle, guns drawn, until one of them pulled out their penlight and checked out the two thugs Allens had just brought down. Instead of drug dealers, they found a dark, curly-haired girl who appeared to be unconscious, and a blonde woman who was on the ground, blood hissing out from between the fingers cupped over her shoulder. She opened her mouth as if she were about to say something, but no sound emerged. The ring of police quickly backed away, giving the two some room. One cop pulled out her radio. “Yeah, I’m going to need a bus down here. An officer mistook two women out for a walk for a pair of drug smugglers.” Her eye-roll was even more visible than usual as the light bounced off her sclera, pure white with fine claret streaking through, testaments to too many late nights and vasodilators. The ambulance pulled up in a matter of minutes, while the policewoman attended to the blonde woman’s shoulder, and another officer tried to bring the girl round. As the two were loaded into the ambulance, Allens remarked, “Oopsie-daisy. I thought they were drug dealers. Only except they weren’t male. Or over 250 pounds. And not carrying drugs. Probably. Sorry about that, everybody.”
The leading officer slapped him sharply on the back of the head.
“Jerk. You know how much paperwork it’s going to take to fix this? If those two serve you, I am NOT coming to bail your ass out of court!” Cuffing him on the ears once for good measure, the officer stalked off. Allens shrugged and pulled a granola bar out of the pocket of his Kevlar vest. He walked down the street to where his unmarked car was, hopped in, and drove back to the cop shop.