She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. What she saw was a one bedroom apartment, devoid of furniture except for a mattress and a closet.

“So, yeah. That’s the place”, said the landlord.

He was a forty-something extremely bald man with features reminiscent of a beaver face stitched to a pink bowling ball. Elise didn’t particularly like that he owned the strip club (The Red Flamigo, with the “n” of Flamingo missing) above which her new flat was located, but she couldn’t pass on such a low rent.

She put the two cardboard boxes she was carrying around on the bed and opened the curtains, only to be greeted by the view of a shabby street. Across was what Elise’s late mother would have called a “meth-head motel”, with a scary looking man with face tattoos in front. He was sitting inside a Walmart shopping cart, shirtless, and was evidently on many drugs.

“It’s the loft we usually give the new cop”.

“Usually ?” asked Elise. “Do they mysteriously die ?”

The owner didn’t answer.

“Impasse is a weird town.”

Impasse. That was the town’s name, north of bumfuck nowhere and south of shithole county, Minnesota. And she was supposed to work here now, courtesy of a former commanding officer that couldn’t handle sexual rejection and bone fracture from a 23 year old woman five months fresh out of Police Academy.

So much for rising up the ranks of the Saint Paul’s police department.

“Where’s the bathroom ?”

The landlord pointed at a wooden door with a badly cleaned bloodstain near the handle. Undeterred, Elise entered the bathroom and yelped with surprise :

“What is this thing ?”

“A scarecrow” said the unfazed landlord.

“I can perfectly well see that it’s a scarecrow ! But what the fuck is a scarecrow doing inside my shower ?”

The landlord grabbed the scarecrow, opened the window and tossed it.

“It’s a local thing. You’ll get used to it. Eventually.”

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Elise didn’t sleep well that night. The music from the strip club didn’t exactly help, nor did the gunshots at 2 am.

At seven in the morning, a tired Elise ended up opening the windows to let in the september sunlight, only to see two scarecrows - that weren’t there yesterday - hanging upside down from a traffic light. Their crayon drawn eyes were looking at her.

“What the hell is happening around here” Elise wondered as she put on her police uniform. It was cold outside, but Elise didn’t mind walking to the police department. This way, she could take a good look at her surroundings.

The Red Flamigo was probably the most rundown strip club Elise had had the occasion of laying her eyes on, and that was counting the derelict romanian underground dog fighting/fucking ring in Saint-Paul. Half of the windows were boarded up, the Happy Hour sign was a sheet of paper with Happy Hour written on it stapled to a nearby tree, and there were two drunk guys vomiting in a nearby trash can full of scarecrows. She hadn’t seen all that “activity” the day before, but seven in the morning was visibly the closing time. While she took it all in, a guy with an impressive mustache exited the building and started vacuuming the pavement while wearing half a red tuxedo, with the pants part missing. When he crossed her gaze, he sheepishly waved at her. Elise waved back, and started walking. Once she had gotten out of the bad part of town, the atmosphere seemed a lot more pleasant. She didn’t waste too much time strolling. After all, she had to make a good impression on her first day.

The police department was closed. Elise tried to see if someone was there through the glass door. No one was in the entrance, except for a scarecrow sitting in a waiting chair. She knocked on the door, hoping to elicite some kind of reaction, but she didn’t expect the reaction to come from a garbage container ten feet from the door, and she certainly didn’t expect a man to jump out of it.

“Heyo” said the man. “You the new cop ?”.

“Uh… yeah ?” hesitated Elise. “Do you happen to know why it’s empty ? There’s supposed to be a night shift.”

“Well there ain’t no night shift on fridays, saturdays and sundays. Is funny, you new cops always show up early and always ask the same questions.”

Elise looked at the man. He was clearly homeless, and clearly intoxicated, too. But asking him was worth a shot.

“Do you know of a way for me to get in ?”

The homeless dude scratched his chin, then his eyes lit up.

“Of course ! Of course. What was I thinking !”

He ran back to the garbage can, and came back immediately with a bunch of keys ; he carefully picked one and opened the door of the police department, then he triumphantly motioned for Elise to come in.

“Voilà !”

She was stunned for a few second.

“Why… what… why do you have the keys ?”

“The sheriff always lost’em and I always found’em and brought’em back, so the sheriff just gav’em to me. What’s your name, new cop ?”

“Elise Jefferson. You ?”

“I’m Murder Hobo.”

Great.

“Is that… why is that your name. Some kind of an inside joke, maybe ?”

“That’s how I was nicknamed after I killed a guy after he’d given me aids.”

What a nice city. Nobody showed before nine : it was a fat man, with a beard that looked like a squirrel trapped in his mustiple chins. He was holding a coffe cup and a donut, and he was in charge of showing her around. Elise decided not to jump on conclusions and judge a book by his cover. Maybe this guy called George would surprise her, and not be a stereotypical american policeman.