Life During Wartime

By Roger Penrose

What happens when a police state gets so oppressive that the police themselves become targets? Justin and Kalera are homicide detectives trying to solve a grisly crime in the not-so-distant future, but fall afoul of the notorious Department of Social Mores. Before long, they find themselves on the wrong side of the law, hunted by secret police and their own fellow officers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roger Penrose
• Release date: Oct 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311112941

Roger Penrose

Roger Penrose is a former infantryman in the US Army, and now spends his days repairing complex industrial equipment. He lives in Tucson, Arizona, a city which provides all the horror and weirdness for which any author could reasonably ask.

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Chapter 1

We won't talk about the Recent Unpleasantness.  All of you know what happened; It was a little hard to miss.  At any rate, Resumption of Normal Services was due any day now, and Kalera had other things on her mind.  Specifically, everyone at the cafe staring at her and her friends.

It wasn't a good time to stand out, after all.

She and her best friend Lori and Rose (the weird one, if anyone could be called weird anymore) were discussing Kalera's latest romance, which had ended very badly, though she had not actually been arrested.  As they talked, one of the women at the next table started muttering about calling the police. 

Kalera got up from the table, whipped out her badge, and shoved it in the lady's face.  I AM the police, you cretinous hag.  Mind your damn business.  The lady blanched, and stared at her coffee, but when Kalera turned back around, she saw Lori and Rose walking out the side door.  Neither one of them was really able to handle confrontation. 

Sighing, she sat back down and contemplated the tea in front of her.  It needed a bottle of rum poured in it, she thought.  It was a particularly bad time to be a cop, and a really bad time to be a homicide detective.

The front door to the cafe opened, and Justin - her partner - walked in.  Justin loomed over the other patrons of the cafe.  He didn't do it on purpose, he was just the sort of fellow that looms over others, and sometimes refers to them as debris.  He got himself a coffee and sat down to stare at it for a minute.

Well, he began, We still have jobs.

That's nice, Kalera responded, So they're done with the investigation?

Yes, the findings were that we acted properly.  Off the record, the internal investigations geek said we were savages, and that he'd be watching us.

I hardly see how we were to blame.

Yeah, well, water under the bridge.  We have a new assignment.

Joy abounds.  It's another weird one, right?

Obviously.  It's what we do, Kalera. All the horrible shit that nobody else can even look at.  The stuff that makes the coroner lose his lunch, yada yada.  He dropped a file on the table.  The Captain had the sergeant give me this.  He doesn't want to talk to us, and it's been hinted that we set up a 'remote office'.

What?

Yeah, we still have desks, but he doesn't want us to use them.  Says we're 'bad for morale'.  So he says we set up shop somewhere else.

Which bar do you want to use?

I haven't decided.  Anyway, the file. It's some meth dealer that got turned inside out.

Inside out?

Yeah, like with his insides on his outside.  Body's at the morgue, CSU is freaking out.

What happened to the crime scene?

Talbott and Henderson started the case, wrote it up, Justin said, tapping the file. Then they both took mental health leave.  Now it's ours.

Kalera skimmed the file.  One Ernesto Garcia, small time operator, 3 priors (none violent), known meth dealer on the West side.  Found inside out in his car.  No signs of a struggle.  Murder weapon unknown, motive unknown, cause of death, well, being inside out.

This is fucked. she said, while feeling it was unnecessary to say so.

Everything is fucked.  The whole world is fucked.

Yes, well, at least martial law has been rescinded.

For now.  Anyway, let's get in the car.  I want to at least look at the crime scene.

The car?

No, the lab monkeys have that, they'll find more than we will.  I want to look around where the car was when it was found.

They got up and headed for the door.  Everyone shrank away from them as they passed.  Kalera hated them all.

What are you staring at? she said, almost yelling.  We're the Goddamn police.  We ALWAYS look like this.  A dozen blank stares answered her.

Then they were out the door and into the car.

Chapter 2

It was getting dark as they pulled up to the intersection of 12th and Ajo.  The streets were mostly empty, as they had been ever since The Recent Unpleasantness began, and the bout of martial law that had followed.  A few people, however, were defying convention, sharing a joint on the corner.

They got out of the car and flashed their badges.  The blond-haired kid currently holding the joint blanched and tensed to run. Knowing, of course, that running would do no good.  He'd be tracked no matter where he ran; the biometer embedded in his skull would take care of that.

Relax, man, we don't give a shit about your crappy weed.  We're not Social Mores Division, we're Homicide. Kalera said.  The tension in the group went down a notch, but didn't go away.  It never went away, not anymore.

Anyone here know Ernesto Garcia, Justin asked, Twenty year old kid, got himself very messily dead right about here, last night?

The kids just stared at them.  Kalera took the joint out of the blond kid's hand, took a drag off of it, and exhaled.  Handing the joint back, she said Look, it's really simple.  Ernesto got killed in a really weird manner.  We don't know how he was killed, or who did it.  You want to be safe from whatever happened here, you talk to us.

The kid laughed.  Safe.

I did say 'safe from whatever happened here.'  I can't do shit about all the other stuff.

All I know, blondie responded, Is that Ernesto said he was onto something new, something that would make him rich enough to bust out of this town.  He was always dreaming, right?  Always had some new plan to get out.  It was always bullshit, before.  This time?  Looks like he was onto something, but it got onto him first.  The kid and his friends cut up laughing, in the manner of the terminally stoned.

What kind of thing?

Some new drug.  Called it 'black lace' or something like that.  Supposed to have the kick of meth, the trip of LSD, and gives you the strength of Margaret Thatcher's testicles.

Never heard of it.

Of course not, blondie replied, You're homicide.  I bet vice hasn't even heard about it.  Social Mores has been snooping around, so they probably caught wind of this.  They have their little ways.

Kalera shuddered.  The kid saw it, and nodded.  "Yeah, there