Alexandria, Virginia, February, 2078, Wednesday…

They had agreed to meet in a small bar on Route 1 in Alexandria about three miles south of the airport. Frank Suarez was the first to arrive and picked a booth in the back that had some privacy. At three in the afternoon there was only one other customer, a woman. She was nursing a martini. Unfortunately she looked like a reporter.

Frank ordered a light beer and waited. While waiting, his thoughts turned to his life as a cop. The psych always had him pegged.

"You're a natural-born killer, Frank. Your first solution to any problem is violence. I see many like you on the force. Your kind doesn't last long."

She was drop-dead-in-your-tracks pretty. A little Guatemalan wench, perky and about three years out of school. He resented her talking down to him when she could have been his kid sister.

"What do you mean, 'your kind?'" he asked. "Do you mean 'Latino ex-gang member?' I never belonged to a gang, Doc. I had no use for them."

She looked at his file again.

"But your brother did. Says here he was killed by them. Is that why you became a cop, Frank? To get back at them?"

He had just brought in three drug dealers, all dead, all gang members. Two innocent bystanders had died in the wicked cross fire. Hence the mandatory visit to the psych.