ONE

Thursday, July 17, 12:17a.m.

Officer Christina Calcasola picked up the hand mike mounted in her patrol car. “Osceola from 181. Checking in service. ID number 3451.”

“10-4, 181,” replied the dispatcher.

Christina was now officially in service and ready for calls. Unfortunately for her, there were none to be dispatched. She wasn’t surprised by that fact, but she was disappointed. She had been a police officer for just over a year, and it definitely wasn’t what she expected. She had always wanted to be a police officer, just like her dad and her eldest sibling, Sam, but she had thought it would be different.

She had grown up listening to Carmine Calcasola’s war stories about life in the New York City Police Department. All her father’s friends were cops, and all her childhood friends were cop’s kids. She had been inundated with the police since she could remember, and it always sounded so exciting and like so much fun. Carmine was always talking about car chases, foot pursuits, and wrestling bad guys to the ground. Christina knew from a very early age that she wanted a career in law enforcement. It was just that the job wasn’t what she expected.

After Carmine had retired as a detective sergeant, he and his wife, Christina’s mother, Marie, had moved to South Florida. Christina was the youngest of five children and only 13 at the time, so she moved also. Sam and the other three Calcasola kids stayed in New York because they were all adults, and either employed, in college, or married. Sam, the eldest, was already a rookie police office on the NYPD and following in Daddy’s footsteps.