He was the same age as me. When I came in before dawn to work out in the gym before classes started in the police academy, there were several other officers standing quietly at the front desk. It was unusual for that hour. Usually only a desk sergeant or one of the communications crew were around that early. The looks on their faces said volumes to even this green recruit.

“We lost him,” the sergeant said. He never made it to 26 and left a huge hole in the soul of the department.

SIDE SLIP is fiction but is based on what happened to a young cop who never got to get old.