SACRIFICES by KENNETH VANCE Page A

cup that has #1 DAD printed on one side and a little league picture of his son on the other side.
     
    BRAD ARRIVES AT THE LAB TO TALK TO OFFICER DENT
                  “Where’s the little guy?” Brad asks Stacey the lab assistant as he walks past her desk.
                  “He’s in his office Mr. Jostler. He has those results you wanted all done.” Stacey smiles as she continues to enter data at her keyboard.
                  Brad walks to the office of the ‘little guy’, a reverse nickname given to the biggest officer in the precinct, maybe the whole city. Lyle Dent’s a former linebacker and college wrestler at the University of Texas. He stands 6’ 4”, and weighs in at 305 pounds of pure unadulterated muscle. He religiously works out. A six foot four muscle bound black man that tips the scales at over 300 pounds you’d expect to be doing a different job then looking through microscopes and analyzing data on a computer screen.
                  The truth is he loves it. His IQ exceeds the genius level, Valedictorian in college, National Honor Society, High School and College, National spelling bee champion every year of grade school, just to name a few accolades, and you could have a worse partner if you were ever in a bar fight. He’s known as the forces biggest teddy bear.
                  “Knock, knock.” Brad taps the door to Lyle’s office.
                  “Come in.” Lyle voices out in a deep baritone voice.
                  Brad slowly opens the door and peeks around the edge of the door. “Little man, how’s it going?” Brad walks in and closes the door. He walks over and shakes the massive hand of Lyle and sits down in the chair in front of Lyle’s desk. Lyle smiles at his old friend.
                  Brad leans back and asks as he kicks up his feet on the edge of the desk. “How’s that beautiful wife of yours doing? You know at the last picnic I could have sworn she was checking me out. I saw her looking.” Brad winks as he settles into his seat.
                  “I thought I noticed that too. I gotta watch you especially now since the media women are referring to you as the Sexy Chicago Detective. ” Lyle explains as he inter-locks his fingers behind his bald head and leans back in his oversize high back leather chair specially ordered to fit his huge body by the department.
                  Brad frowns and lowers his eyebrows. “Where on earth did you hear that?” Brad reaches for a piece of hard candy in the dish on Lyle’s desk.
              Lyle smiles as he slowly rocks. “My wife and I heard it on some tabloid show the other night; you’re sort of like a rock star these days, without the musical talent that is.” Lyle smiles and continues to rock as he and Brad chuckle. “You know, now that I take good look at you,” He tilts his head. “You really are a good-looking man.”
                  “Thank you… I appreciate that , now as much as I’d love to sit around and talk about how good looking I am…I’d really like to know what you found out for me on that letter.” Brad grins as he takes a sip of his coffee smiling from ear to ear.
                  Lyle stands up and walks over to his filling cabinet. He pulls out a piece of paper and then sits back down in his chair. “Not much. I mean no prints besides Tammy’s on the letter it self. The envelope had several sets of prints. Most were hardly readable. The few that I was able to lift and print I ran through the system. Now as you know all federal postal workers have to have there fingerprints registered with the national database.” Brad nods his head. “So I only found the other prints to be those of registered postal workers.” Lyle leans back again and mentions. “There was one other thing. It’s probably nothing but I did find it. The ink that was