A Houndstooth Check Blood Pattern Day!

In all your years on the job, you ain't never seen anything like this.

"The assailant used a stencil," you tell the flatfoot with a notebook.

"He a fruit, Detective?"

You take in a lot of air, let out a long, low hiss of disgust. "Most definitely," you say. "I'd stake my badge on it."

"Takes one to know one!" you expect someone to shout into the silence that follows. A part of you would welcome it. The part that's still in love with the seventeen-year old Puerto Rican boy you sent to maximum security 28 years ago. The part that's doing all it can to substitute love of your work for the love you only gave once to Julio. In the backseat of your police issue, by the side of route 40, you lied and said you'd let him go if he does this one thing, just this one thing. He knew the game, he'd played it before, so many times that when it was all over and you smacked his head up against the cage behind the front seat he didn't even seem surprised. He knew he was going to jail the whole time, but he played the game anyhow.

"He loved me," you think, every night just before passing out in your chair. "Julio knows what I am."

He's the only one.

Happy A Houndstooth Check Blood Pattern Day!