The cruiser pulled up to the house, a crumbling townhouse that looked like it was only still standing because it was propped up by its neighbors. Broken shards of glass were falling out of the splintered wooden frames, and the red bricks had turned to a dull brown under a layer of soot and filth. This place had seen better days. And from the shouting emanating from the open door, so had this relationship.

A woman passed in front of a window, and I noticed a bleeding cut across her forehead. Great. Another standard domestic dispute, my absolute favorite. I've been wearing the uniform for decades now, and these types of encounter always end the same. But with any luck, this would be my last. I'm ready to hang up my hat and retire. Maybe move down to a beach in Mexico. No more calls, no more lights and sirens, no more arrests... just solitude.

"Oh, fuck you!" the man shouted as I climbed out of my car and he caught sight of me. "Look what you did!" The woman sobbed in the background as I climbed up the steps. "Someone called the cops."

I walked through the unlocked door and into the house. First thing I noticed as a half-empty bottle on the table. The cheap stuff, the kind better used as a cleaning product than an intoxicant. The man's inability to stand in one spot without swaying told me where the other half of the amber liquid had gone.

"You're not allowed to just walk in here!" he shouted at me. "You need a warrant, man!"

"Did he hurt you?" I asked the woman, half-cowering behind the living room couch. She brushed her hair unconsciously over the wound on her forehead, and rubbed the bruises on her arm like they were smudges of dirt that could just come off. Of course he had hurt her, but I needed to ask.

"Don't you answer!" he shouted, pointing a bony finger at her across the room. "You don't have to answer anything! We want a lawyer!"

"Shut up," I told him, "Or I will shut you up." My hand strayed to my hip menacingly and I turned back to his wife.

"Ma'am, what did he do? You can tell me."

She stifled a sob and stayed silent.

"Just tell me what happened, and we can make sure he never hurts you again."

She clutched a pillow to her chest like a shield and bit her lip. "He... he did hit me," she confessed in a barely audible whisper.

"You bitch!" he yelled, pacing back and forth in the doorway and eying my gun. "Don't lie to him!"

"He does it all the time!" she shouted back.

"Good enough for me," I told her. I turned back to her husband and shot him twice in the chest.

There was a stunned silence in the room. He stared down at the red stain rippling across his already-dirty shirt. His lips quivered like he was trying to say something.

I pressed the guns into her shaking hands. "This was self defense," I coached her. "I was never here, and he came at you with this knife." From my pocket, I produced a menacing-looking hunting knife with a grim serrated edge. I crossed the room to the body slumped against the wall and arranged his fingers on the grip to ensure that his prints stuck. "It's his gun, and you don't know where he got it, right?" There was no serial number, and I had made sure it couldn't be traced.

She nodded, still in shock. "You... you're a cop?"

"No," I told her. It was true; the uniform was just an easy way to get through the door. "I'm no one."

With that, I retreated to my car and drove off just as flashing blue and red lights rounded the corner. Adrenaline was pulsing through my veins, and I couldn't contain the grin spreading across my face. Maybe I wasn't ready to retire just yet.