I kept the “not that I have any ideas” part to myself and thought of Patrice.

This was the kind of thing he would pick up on and go off on Twitter about. Just one more reason for him to not want to have anything to do with me. And that unhelpful and self-involved line of thinking needed to be cut off immediately anyway, because I was a lot of things, but I would not be fucking callous.

Ron’s silence told me that he was probably stuck too, or at least giving up for now. I gestured to the untouched files on my desk and looked up. “Sorry, man, I need to be in court in an hour, let’s talk about this later. Can you check in to ask exactly what happened and if this was the same officer who’s been getting other complaints?”

Ron looked annoyed but seemed to be on the same page as me. “I’ll see what I can find out. Not that the boss is going to let us move on any of it.”

I had a sinking feeling he was not far off. Cindy liked to keep all her ducks in a row when it came to our community and law enforcement partnerships. But this was not exactly something we could ignore. At least I wanted to believe we wouldn’t.

When I looked at Ron his expression told me he was probably onto what I was thinking. “We’ll figure it out. I’m not going to let you down on this.” Ron looked about as confident as I felt about my statement, but it seemed like for now he was letting it go.

I took a few deep breaths and tried to push away the stress of the past half hour. There was nothing more I could do with this, and I had cases to work on. Just as I was settling down to look at the docket for the day, I saw my phone buzz with a message. I smiled when I saw it was from Nesto.

Hey, man. Jude and I are having a little thing at our place on Friday, sevenish.

I’m making a Dominican Sancocho (it’s a stew thing with mad meat in it) because only for Jude would I cook on my day off. Come thru, if you’re free.

The way the heaviness from moments before seemed to lift—at least in part—when I thought about running into Patrice was pretty pathetic. Before I talked myself out of it, I picked up the phone and texted back.

I’ll be there. Should I bring anything?

He replied almost immediately.

Nah man, just yourself. See you then.

Great. Thanks for the invite.

I got a fist emoji as a response.

The prospect of seeing Patrice was exciting and unnerving. This was all new territory for me, this level of anticipation to see someone... I wasn’t sure what to do with any of it, especially since Patrice was clearly not in the same place as me, but I didn’t succeed at my job by taking things sitting down. I wasn’t going to push if Patrice didn’t want to play, but I wasn’t going to hide away either.