In the locker room Eve tied on the hard black uniform shoes. She hated them-- always had-- but regulation was regulation. She pushed off the bench, then reached for her uniform cap. Turning to the mirror, she fixed it squarely on her head. She could see herself as she'd been a dozen years before, green as spring, with a shine on her shield and on those damned hard black shoes. A cop, then and now, without any question, any hesitation, over what she was meant to be. Had to be. She'd thought she'd known, but she hadn't known, really hadn't begun to know what she would see and do, what she would learn and come to accept. What she would live through and live with. A lot of corners turned, she thought, and one sharp, jagged corner had been turned the moment she'd stepped into apartment 303 on 258 Murray one sweltering day in late September, barely six weeks after she'd graduated from the Academy. She remembered the fear, the coppery smear of it in her throat, and she remembered the horror like a red haze.