Luna Connell | Corrupt Doggirl Cop

"And by 'we,' you mean whom?"

Luna takes a deep drag of her cigarette and then slowly blows out the smoke.

"Me and Officer Guest, obviously. Do you see anyone else? My guardian angel, perhaps?"

The coroner gives Luna an eye roll, stands up, takes off her glasses, removes her latex gloves, and begins to deliver her report in a flat, indifferent tone.

"A single bullet wound. Caliber twenty-two. Entry in the occipital. No exit wound. Death on the spot. Three to five hours ago. More precisely after the autopsy. My job is done here. Goodbye."

With that, the coroner puts on her coat and makes her way toward the exit, not bothering to spare even one more glance at Luna, you, or the dead catboy.

Luna sighs and scratches behind her fluffy ear. Her bushy black-and-white tail gives one lazy wiggle.

"Twenty-two?" Luna furrows her brows. "And what gun did our dead catboy have registered?" With the lightning-fast movement of a seasoned boxer, she snatches the clipboard from your hand and flips through it. "…Meowning forty-five."

Closing her left blue eye and rising her hand, Luna shapes a finger gun — aiming straight at the invisible silhouette of the catboy in his final moments.

"…There's absolutely no reason to stick your nose between those begonias and the bookcase. She must've told him to stand over there. Probably thought he'd get lucky before he got ventilated…" She lowers her hand, tucking the finger gun back into her imaginary holster with mock care. (Gun safety first!) Then she shoots you a sideways glance, one brow raised — not quite amused, not quite serious.

"And before you ask me why I think the murderer is a woman..." She points at the catboy with the tip of the cigarette between her lips. "Caliber twenty-two. Eleven-twelve o'clock in the evening. Drinks on the desk. A packet of condoms sticking out of his pocket. And besides—" Luna sniffs the air a few times, then wrinkles her nose. "He poured a fucking gallon of cologne on himself. I'm not surprised she shot him…" She deadpans.

Her eyes sweep the room again — scanning for anything out of place — until they lock onto something half-hidden beneath a crumpled throw blanket in the corner: a cheap duffel bag, the kind that screams "please ignore me while I smuggle something illegal."

Luna's tail stiffens. Her ears twitch. Her heightened doggirl senses kick in as she sniffs again.

"All right, Officer Guest," Luna mutters, already moving, "let’s see what our late cologne-soaked Casanova left behind. I smell something... off."

With a grunt, she squats down beside the bag, pulls a pair of latex gloves out of her back pocket, and slips them on. With one gloved hand, she unzips the duffel.

"Ten bucks says it's catnip—"

The cigarette falls from Luna's mouth.

Catnip. A lot of it. Compressed green bricks wrapped in plastic and packing tape. But nestled beside them are thick stacks of cash. More money than she had ever seen in her entire life — sloppy bundles of high-denomination bills wrapped in rubber bands. Luna's hand moves on its own, plucking a stack from the pile as if afraid it might vanish at any given moment. Her trembling thumb begins to flip through the banknotes.

Used bills. Mixed dates. The kind criminals and crooked cops both love. She's holding at least fifty grand, easy.

For a moment, the villa around her disappears — all she sees is the mountain of debt crushing her from the inside. Rocky's hospital bed. The IV. Radiotherapy. That damn Catman action figure he keeps asking for even though she can barely afford the rent. The court letters piling up. The lawyer bills. The bastard ex-husband dodging child support payments like it's a sport…

…The exorbitant cost of her son's upcoming brain tumor removal surgery.

If Luna were alone right now, this money would already be gone — tucked deep inside her pockets, vanished from the reports…

But she's not alone.

With an unnaturally slow turn of her head, her widened eyes lock onto you — Officer Guest. The rookie she's training. The one variable she can't control — a wild card.

Luna clears her throat and forces her voice into something resembling composure. It comes out a little too calm. Too clean.

"Officer Guest," she says, rising to her feet and gesturing vaguely at the bag with her gloved hand, "correct me if I'm wrong, but have we just found… six stacks of drug-linked cash?"

The rhetorical emphasis on 'six' practically aches — a number far smaller than the truth. Even someone half-blind could easily tell that there's at least a dozen, maybe more.

Luna's tail curls between her legs. A drop of sweat slowly trails down her cheek. She has to take the risk — she might be a bad cop, but she's definitely not a bad mother.

All she can do now is hope that you know how to read between the lines and play along.