Hostage

Officer Vaughan turned left on Second Street, steered her cruiser into the diner’s parking lot, found a place in front near the door and killed the engine. She climbed out and walked inside and took a seat in her usual booth. It was 7:17 in the morning, and the place was busy with breakfast customers, but the staff always kept this table by the window open for cops. It was their way of thanking the department for the service they provided to the community.

Exhausted from the twelve-hour shift she’d just pulled, Vaughan looked forward to going home and getting some sleep and then being off for two days. She wanted to be in bed by nine so she could get up and enjoy the afternoon and evening. She liked her work, but she liked her time away from it as well. Work hard, play hard. That had become her philosophy over the past few years.

It had been an uneventful night for the most part, just one domestic call and one citation for reckless driving. Hope was a boring little town out in the middle of nowhere, and Vaughan liked it that way.

A waitress stepped up to the table with a menu and a glass of ice water.

“Coffee?” she said.

“Decaf. And I’m ready to order.”

“Okay.”

“Two eggs over easy. Bacon, hash browns, toast. I want the bacon extra crispy.”

“Anything else?”

“No. That’s all.”

“Okay. I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

“Thanks.”

Vaughan stared out the window, watched the teenagers walking by on their way to class. There were some couples holding hands and some groups acting silly and some studious types carrying backpacks weighted with thick textbooks. Some of the kids appeared to be stressed out for one reason or another, and some wore sad expressions, and some sauntered along with cigarettes and attitudes, trying to look tough. Vaughan wanted to grab each and every one of them by the shoulders and tell them that the choices they made now were likely to affect them for the rest of their lives, that they would only be young once, that they should make the most of their years in school. She wanted to tell the slackers to buckle down and stay in school and get their diplomas, and she wanted to tell the super-ambitious students to take a little time to enjoy their youth, to do something completely frivolous now and then.

Work hard, play hard.

She wanted to tell every one of them that one day they would wake up and be forty and wonder where the time had gone.

She wanted to tell them all those things, although she knew that most of them wouldn’t listen. No more than she would have at that age.

The waitress brought a mug to the table and filled it with decaf from a Bunn decanter with an orange spout. She told Vaughan that her food would be out shortly.

“New here?” Vaughan said.

“Actually, this is my first day. But I’ve waited tables before. I’ll be right back with your breakfast, okay?”

Vaughan nodded, and the young lady walked away. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Short brown hair and a pretty face. She wasn’t wearing a nametag. Maybe the manager hadn’t had time to make her one yet.

The high school kids had made their way past the diner, and the sidewalk outside the window was deserted now except for the occasional restaurant patron coming or going or the occasional employee or owner arriving to open one of the other businesses on Second Street. Vaughan was winding down, mentally and physically, but for most of Hope’s population-and indeed for most of the population in this part of the country-the day was just getting started.

The waitress with no nametag delivered Vaughan’s bacon and eggs and hash browns and toast. She filled Vaughan’s coffee mug and asked if there would be anything else right now.

“This is fine,” Vaughan said. “Thank you.”

The waitress smiled and walked away.

Vaughan dabbed one of the bacon strips on the edge of her plate with the corner of a napkin to soak up some of the grease, and then she picked it up and took a bite. It wasn’t quite crispy enough, not as crispy as she cooked her bacon at home, but it was okay. She picked up her fork and cut into her eggs, looked out the window and saw a guy with a can of spray paint writing something on the sidewalk.

A county employee marking the pavement for a new sign, perhaps, although he wasn’t wearing any sort of uniform-not even one of the orange safety vests they always wore when automotive traffic was a concern. Vaughan watched him for a few seconds, saw him move to the corner where he started spraying red blotches on the fire hydrant.

Vaughan dropped her fork on the plate, scooted out of the booth and walked outside. As she approached the man with the spray paint, he tossed the can aside and disappeared around the corner.

Vaughan followed, shouted to him from a few feet behind.

“Excuse me, sir.”

The man stopped and turned around.

“Can I help you, officer?”

“I was just wondering why you were painting the sidewalk and the hydrant back there.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I saw you through the window at the diner. It was definitely you.”