Free Hollywood Station by Joseph Wambaugh

said, "Despite the flaws in your thesis, I was impressed by the passion in it. You're part of something larger than yourself, and you feel real pain that uninformed outsiders are harming the thing you love. I don't see much of that passion in classrooms anymore. I wish you'd revealed your other life to us earlier."
    Now she was confused, fatigued and confused, and her nausea was increasing. "I wouldn't have done it today, Professor," Andi said, "except my forty-fifth birthday is coming up in two weeks and I'm into a midlife crisis so real it's like living with a big sister who just wants to dress up in thigh-highs and a miniskirt and dance the funky chicken. No telling what kind of zany thing I'll do these days. And last night I got called out on a murder-suicide that looked like O. J. Simpson was back in town, and I'm exhausted. But I'm not half as tired or stressed as two young cops who had to wallow in a bloodbath doing a job that nobody should ever have to do. And when it was all over, one of them asked me back at Hollywood Station if I had some moisturizing cream. Because he surfed so much he thought his neck and eyelids looked like they belonged on a Galapagos turtle. I felt like just hugging him."
    Then the catch in her voice made her pause again, and she said, "I'm sorry. I'm babbling. I've gotta get some sleep. Good-bye, Professor."
    As she gathered her purse and books, he held up his class folder, opened it, and pointed to her name, along with the grade he'd given her presentation when he'd sat there behind her, when she'd thought he wasn't listening. It was an A-plus.
    "Good-bye, Detective McCrea," he said. "Take care in Gotham City."
    Andi McCrea was driving back to Hollywood Division (she'd never get used to calling it Hollywood Area, as it was supposed to be called these days but which most of the street cops ignored) to assure herself that all the reports from last night's murder-suicide were complete. She was a D2 in one of the three homicide teams, but they were so shorthanded at Hollywood Station that she had nobody else around today who could help with the reports from her current cases, not even the one that had solved itself like the murder-suicide of the night before.
    She decided to send an FTD bouquet to Professor Anglund for the A-plus that guaranteed her the Dean's List. That old socialist was okay after all, she thought, scribbling a note saying "flowers" after she wheeled into the Hollywood Station south parking lot in her Volvo sedan.
    The station parking lots were more or less adequate for the time being, considering how many patrol units, plain-wrap detectives units, and private cars had to park there. If they were ever brought up to strength, they'd have to build a parking structure, but she knew that it wasn't likely that the LAPD would ever be brought up to strength. And when would the city pop for money to build a parking structure when street cops citywide were complaining about the shortage of equipment like digital cameras and batteries for rifle lights, shotgun lights, and even flashlights. They never seemed to have pry bars or hooks or rams when it was time to take down a door. They never seemed to have anything when it was needed.
    Andi McCrea was bone-weary and not just because she had not slept since yesterday morning. Hollywood Division's workload called for fifty detectives, but half that many were doing the job, or trying to do it, and these days she was always mentally tired. As she trudged toward the back door of Hollywood Station, she couldn't find her ring of keys buried in the clutter of her purse, gave up, and walked to the front door, on Wilcox Avenue.
    The building itself was a typical municipal shoe box with a brick facade the sole enhancement, obsolete by the time it was finished. Four hundred souls were crammed inside a rabbit warren of tiny spaces. Even one of the detectives' interview rooms had to be used for storage.
    By habit, she walked around the stars on the