Blinded

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Every cop knows the taste and the odor that assault the senses when tenderness collides with evil. It’s a baby coddled in a bassinet in a fume-filled meth shack. It’s the fractured face of someone’s grandma after a purse-snatcher has done his thing. It’s a pregnant woman bloodied and dead on the floor.

I’d been a cop a long time. I knew the aroma. And I knew the taste.

I did.

It may sound goofy, but I also believed that on good days I could smell the spark before I smelled the fire and I could taste the poison before it reached my lips. On good days I could stand firm between tenderness and evil. On good days I could make a difference.

What the heck is it about a woman sleeping? Okay, a woman who isn’t your wife of double-digit years.

A woman was sleeping right beside me, no more than half a foot away. The spice of her perfume tickled the back of my throat, and the fire from inside her radiated right through my clothes. Yeah, I was paying attention to a thousand things I should have been ignoring. The intimacy of her breathing. The edginess of her eyes darting below their lids. The pure power of the rise and fall of her chest. The vulnerability of her slightly parted legs. They were all way too distracting to me.

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