Excerpt of By Any Means by Chris Culver

Even eight months after the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police
Department transferred him to the community relations
“team,” Detective Sergeant Ash Rashid still re- sented his
blue polyester uniform, but even more than the uniform, he
resented the lack of a weapon. Going without it felt like
driving to work without pants; it was fun at first, but it
grew old quickly. He understood the reasoning be- hind the
prohibition—few school assemblies or neighbor- hood watch
meetings ended in gunfire—but he still would have liked to
carry one if for no other reason than to com- pare his
firearm to the ones carried by the students in some of the
rougher school districts he visited. But as he drove home
from a particularly long Q&A session at a meeting on the
city’s east side, it wasn’t a disgruntled community mem- ber
or an angry student who ruined his day; instead, it was a
careless driver who had forcefully introduced the front end
of his Mercedes to a telephone pole.

Ash pulled his gray cruiser to a stop approximately fifty
feet from the vehicle, groaning as he flicked on the light
bar hidden in his car’s grill and rear window. With the sun
still high and soft in the late afternoon sky, few people
would be able to see his lights, but regulations required
them for officer safety. They required all sorts of things
for officer safety that made little sense. He pulled out a
pad of paper from his utility belt and began jotting down
the conditions of the scene upon his arrival. The city
hadn’t received any appre- ciable rainfall in at least a
week, which meant the driver hadn’t slipped on water. He
must not have been going very fast, either, because the
vehicle’s airbags hadn’t deployed on impact. If nothing
else, that would save him a couple grand in repair bills at
the expense of some bruising. It was a mi- nor fender
bender; unless he was too drunk to stand, he’d walk away
from it without issue.

Ash slouched and closed his eyes. Having handled at least
half a dozen homicides in the surrounding blocks, he knew
the area fairly well even if he hadn’t been there for a
while. A beat cop had found a corpse stashed amid the weeds
on a lot to his left just a couple of weeks ago, and the
city’s nar- cotics unit frequently conducted buy-busts in
the area. He didn’t want to stay there any longer than he
had to, so he punched the talk button on his radio, already
dreading the response he would likely receive.

“Control, this is Charlie-thirteen. Please respond.”

Charlie designated his unit—community relations—while
thirteen indicated his rank, sergeant. The dispatcher
wouldn’t be able to individuate him by his radio call sign,
but she’d have a pretty good idea if she looked him up.

“Charlie-thirteen, this is Dispatch-seventeen. Go ahead.”

“Yeah, Seventeen. I’ve got a single-car collision on Forty-
Second near the fairgrounds. It doesn’t look serious, so I’d
be very grateful if you could send someone by to redirect
traffic. I’m on my way home.”

“Negative, Charlie-thirteen. All of our officers are tied up
right now in an emergency call. Please remain on site until
you receive further word.”

Ash closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose,
hoping to stave off a headache.

“Seventeen, please reevaluate deployment.”

“Sorry, Charlie. The swing shift is short tonight. I’ll get
someone out there as soon as I can.”

Ash shook his head and readjusted himself on the seat,
feeling his back stick to the warm vinyl.

“You want to tell that to my wife, Seventeen?”

“Negative, Charlie-thirteen. You’re on your own.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Ash hung up the microphone and turned the radio to low
before fishing his cell phone from his pocket. He called his
wife far more often than he did anyone else, so her number
occupied the first slot in his address book. It only took a
cou- ple of button presses to get her on the phone.

“Hey, honey. Guess whose favorite person is going to be late
tonight?”

Hannah paused. “I wouldn’t know. My two favorite peo- ple
are in the living room with me.”

She meant their two kids. Ash glanced at a colored-pencil
drawing of a police officer on his dashboard that his daugh-
ter, Megan, had given to him that morning before he left for
work. Now that he wore a uniform every day instead of a
detective’s suit, she told everybody—stranger or friend—
about her police officer father.

“I suppose your third-favorite person is going to be late.
Sorry.”

“How late? Your sister and Nassir are coming over for if-
tar in a few hours.”

Ash’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten
since before sunrise that morning. Iftar is the evening meal
that breaks a Muslim’s fast during Ramadan, and he had been
looking forward to it all day. He glanced out his window and
noticed a line of cars that had begun to queue on the
street, their drivers likely thinking he would open the road
and wave them through eventually. Pedestrians, meanwhile,
had begun to gather on the porches and stoops of houses
nearby.

“I’m not sure. I’ll head out as soon as another supervisory
officer gets here. Shouldn’t be too long.”

“Are you close? We’re out of dates, so I wanted to go to the
grocery store. I’d rather not lug the kids around if I can
help it. You know how Megan gets.”

Ash knew what she meant; the last time he had taken his
daughter to the grocery store, she made beeping noises when
an overweight woman backed her cart up in a crowded aisle.
Megan laughed, but the overweight woman didn’t find it quite
that funny. Ash looked around him again, confirming his
location with street signs.

“I’m about a block north of the fairgrounds. Once I get
moving, it should only take me ten or fifteen minutes to get
home.”

“Are you sure you’re not in a bar?”