Chief Matthews always had a surprisingly orderly office, like she felt she should set a good example for the troops, and maybe that was the case. She had a new photo on her desk of her soldier nephew who was off in Afghanistan, and Roan idly wondered if she’d sacrificed any hope of a personal life in aid of a career, but then he mentally dismissed it, mainly because it wasn’t any of his business if she had, or if she was keeping any relationship she might have had a secret. For all its vaunted “diversity,” the police department was still a man’s world. Shaking off the old (white) boy’s club just wasn’t as easy as the PR office wanted it to be. She offered Roan coffee, which smelled better than the usual, but he knew the cop shop coffee would strip the paint off a tugboat. He declined and stuck to Black Black, some odd-tasting Japanese gum that had enough caffeine to keep him buzzing. Sometimes the smell/taste hit him like a punch at first, but that wasn’t always a bad thing.
