I needed some more characters, and this one sort of shoved her way forward. I’d object, except that before I was straining to write twenty five words and once she showed up I was pushing a thousand. And she’ll get even more!
Turned out ‘him’ was a ‘her.’ From the name, Sgt. Shauni Buchannon Quinn’s family was originally from one of the barbie clans, and she had the blonde hair and looks to match. Within a minute, I found myself wishing that I had made her acquaintance a bit earlier.
Like, say, before the bum got released. “Like, gimme a break, Shamus,” she said, her accent pure New Californian. Those ancestors of hers must have come south a couple of generations ago. But they must have also kept talking barbie among themselves: “Like, we picked that bum up for vagrancy, and he stewed in the cell overnight, but then he got bailed out in the morning.”
“Bailed out?” I said, all cleverly and stuff. “I thought the Captain said you were gonna keep him in the cells for a couple days.”
Sgt. Shauni’s shrug (heh) was perfectly New Californian, too. “Well, like, I guess the Captain figured that nobody would make bail for the guy. What was I supposed to do, say that we didn’t want the money?”
“Alright, alright,” I said. “Right, refusing bail money’s a bad habit for the cops to get into. Just tell me about the guy, then.”
“Which one?” she asked. “Like, the bum, or the guy who bailed him out?”
“Both,” I said. “Dealer’s choice which one you start with.”
“Okay.” Sgt. Shauni thought about it. “The bum was, like, you know, a bum, okay? Didn’t smell too bad; he knew what soap was, even if it wasn’t always, like, his best friend or whatever. Pretty tall, really old, didn’t talk at all. He just lay there on the couch all night. It was all, like, totally creepy.”
Somehow I want nothing more than to read this police sargeant’s dialogue all day. Preferably with bubblegum.