Excerpt: Scapegoat

Chapter One: To The Station

Clocking in, I came to the conclusion I should not have transferred here. This morning, I woke up after only four hours of sleep. Only fours hours of sleep after I came in from an emergency thirty six hour shift. The station had a shortage of able-bodied officers to see to a robbery. The break I had before that shift was only somewhat better-a grand total of six hours of decent sleep.
It did not help matters that it was five in the morning when I was clocking in.
I do not mind this job, but I can not wait until my next day off. When that day comes, I will not leave my bed. No matter who calls on me, I will not move.
There were so many other police stations closer to my home in Sector ninety A than this one in ninety two A. The impatience to get a job closer than eighty B really stabbed me in the back. So, now I work at the Enforcer Station in ninety two A. The area we officers have to cover is too wide for the amount of officers we have. The fact that the crime rate is high, despite our desperate efforts, does not help our situation.
Rumors about this station got around fast at headquarters. Thus, less and less rookie officers were tempted to try their luck here. When I was offered the transfer, I had heard the rumors. Too bad the only thing I was thinking about was less time and cheaper commute.
I make my way to my desk, I take a look around at my coworkers running in and out. Not too much is out of the unusual. The desks vary from obsessively neat to eternally lost under a mountain of files. My own desk was in the middle of the spectrum; messy, but sooner than later, someone can find traces of the red varnished wood of my desk. Not many people sat at their desks. The few people allowed that luxury were the secretaries, who are almost as overworked as we are, and the higher ranked officers and such who were given the right to sit back and relax every couple of hours.
At one desk, I saw a familiar face handcuffed to a chair. This familiar face was a man I knew as Kerns. We all called him The Rat at the station. The nickname came from his appearance, rather than his personality. Not to say his personality wouldn't have been far from the moniker.
Kerns was an albino; white hair, almost white skin, pink eyes-the works. His eyes were always shifting from place to place and person to person. I figure he did that because he was always looking for who was the most likely to beat him up or the best way to escape. The guy wore ragged clothing, a thin corduroy jacket, a flannel shirt underneath that, an old knit scarf, frayed denim pants, and old black boots. Almost always quivering, Kerns looked nervous to anyone who so much as glanced at him. He probably lived it rough and had nowhere to live permanently, but I tried not to get involved with Kerns. It has been known that Kerns was a pickpocket since before I was transferred to this station. Whatever kind of life this guy was leading, unless I catch him myself, I did not want to know about it.
That's not to say I never brought Kerns in before. Just about every officer at ninety two A has brought The Rat in for some reason or another.