Day 717: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: White collar

Captain Lee of the police force in Big Loft, VA strove to get to work at 7:45 every day to avoid getting even partially involved in office politics at headquarters. He had enough to think of with the corruption at the top he had been in a pitched battle with since the late Commissioner Thomas had tipped his hand and forced Captain Lee to show the extent to which he was intolerant of said corruption.

However, on the one day he came in later owing to an interview he had to do with someone involved in a cold case his division was charged to investigate, Officer Janet Burton had created a whole mess to position herself to grab his attention (see the “A Creature” and “Cover Photo” freewrites).

Captain Lee had interviewed a Black mother whose son had been mysteriously murdered 25 years earlier – the story had broken his heart and angered him all over again about the Big Loft police force. However, it had confirmed to him that he was in the right place for just such a purpose, and he was filled with resolve to solve the case at hand and every other that had similar injustice behind it.

This was the day that all of his lieutenants – Longstreet, Lightfoot, Carter, Jackson, and Anderson – were standing in his office arguing about coffee, looking more and more like a whole Civil War reenactment confined in a small office.

Squabbling over white-collar, first-world problems … Captain Lee did not have the patience of his famous great-great-great-uncle with his subordinates, for he had never, not in 23 years in the Army, known defeat, and he was not having it on Big Loft's police force either.

“What are y'all doing?”

All five lieutenants jumped, and turned pink.

“Well, sir – they've changed the coffee, and not all of us like the new stuff,” one said.

“Gentlemen, you are in the strength of your youth, have all the white privilege in the world, are becoming first-class investigators, and have the hopes of this entire department resting upon you as the future of proper law enforcement and the upholding of a measure of real justice in Big Loft. You think you are to be spending the taxpayer dollars that pay your salary to be here and argue about coffee?”

The pinks turned into deep red on each of the lieutenant's faces.

Captain Lee took a phrase from his reading that morning in the book of Galatians.

“Who has bewitched you?”

Lieutenant Longstreet spoke up.

“Well, there's a petition going around … .”

“That wasn't what I asked you,” Captain Lee snapped.

Normally Captain Lee was soft in speech, so this from him was devastating. All five lieutenants jumped as their hearts fell into the floor, for they all but worshiped him. His disappointment in them was unbearable to them, and gave his orders more force than ever.

“Find out who is behind this foolishness – you have one hour to discover to whose folly you have been listening to, and then tell me. Dismissed!”