Josephine Yew's Questionnaire

I live in Rochester, New York. It's a town that used to be a big spot for tech companies. Now it's mostly just, quiet. After living in New York, New York all my life it's a breath of fresh air. It's still urban enough I can get all the conveniences I'm used to, with out having to deal with the horrible smell of traffic quite as much. Plus, it has loads of cheap office space from all the geeks that moved out, so I can have a place to call my office for cheap. "Home" is a small condo, cheapest money can buy while I can stand sleeping there. Perfect for storing clothes and not getting rained on. Also, the neighbors don't mind me smoking.

I earn my keep by doing private eye work. Got my license after I left the force and did the math to figure out how little I could charge and still keep myself afloat. I do small stuff sometimes, tracking cheating spouses, figuring out who is stealing someone's garden flowers, that kind of thing. But I try to keep my schedule open for the bigger things. Families of murder victims who got buried under paper work by some asshole calling himself a detective back at the station, SA victims who don't feel safe going to the cops. Those cases are the reason I do this work.

I'm sick of cops acting like they own the cities they pretend to serve. I want them gone. I want every police station either burned to the ground or turned into a homeless shelter. Hopefully the latter, but I'll settle for the former. I want cops to be some bad memory, not the boot everyone is living under. I'd do just about anything to achieve that. I think so anyway. Still have trouble pulling the trigger on my sidearm, but I know this is bigger than me. If I need to offer up my conscience on the altar of the future, I will. I can't let anyone else get killed so some ex-quarter back who flunked out of Basic can feel important. Not again.

The moment that made me who I am is when I decided to leave the force. I had been a beat cop for years by this point, I'd heard what people said about cops, but I knew I wasn't a bad person. I was one of the good ones. There was a case, not very high profile, just some drug bust. We had tracked down someone who's apartment had been acting as a pick up and drop off point for the local dealers. The evidence we had pointed to them being forced into it, a hapless victim who got caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, we had to arrest them, they were involved one way or another, and if they just complied it would be clear they had nothing to do with all this. An arrest turned into a shoot out when we showed up the same time as the local gang was making a pick up. Long story short I ended up taking a few bullets for our suspect, cost me an arm but they would thank me when they came out the other side of this mess an innocent man. They were killed in holding. Official report says it was a suicide, but I know better. Their testimony would have hurt someone in the force, badly, so they had to go. I had never been so disgusted in my life. I resigned and never looked back.

I have an assistant in the office, his name is Rory. He's 19, and he needed some part time work to help pay for his college life. Originally he was just a secretary, but I found out the kid likes to tinker in his spare time. I saw him whip up what looked like a goddamned Rube Goldberg machine to sort through a collection of marbles he had gotten just so he could sort them. We got to talking and it turns out he's studying to be an engineer. For extra credit he made me something that let me reload easier with one hand, a belt mounted thing based off those coin dispensers, it's real handy! Plus, the kid has good taste in music, so we get along pretty swell.

My neighbor, her name is Caroline. I know her because she hired me once to find her missing daughter. Turns out the kid figured out she was a girl and panicked, ran from home thinking her mother would hate her. Luckily, Caroline has a good head on her shoulders and is just happy to see her daughter doing better than ever. She thanked me for the good work by making a simply divine casserole.

There's a bar in town I frequent when I need to take a break from work named "No Truce". It's a small place, offers all sorts of table top games to play while you eat and drink, and, it has a very nice bartender. She calls herself Jones, and she prepares the best screwdriver in the city (according to her, anyway). We often times end up chatting about board games. I never used to like them, but Jones has enlightened me to the fact that there are more board games than monopoly. She has kicked my ass at more games than I can count.

Growing up was pretty nice. I was born to a loving upper middle class family, never had to worry about money and we got to take a vacation every few years. My school life was pretty unremarkable. I was a lot more reckless back then, got into all sorts of trouble with my friends, but nothing that really stuck with us. I think my favorite memory of my high school years was when me and a couple friends filled a couple of bullies who had been bothering folks' lockers with whipped cream. It cost way too much to buy that many cans, but the look on their faces when they opened up their lockers was priceless! Now, we had been careful so the faculty couldn't really pin anything on us, so we got away with it scott free. That is except the fact we were now the targets of said bullies, they didn't need evidence to blame us. Wouldn't do anything different except for maybe cover our tracks better...

Yeah, I was in love once. Her name was Angelica, though I called her Angel. We were highschool sweethearts, though no one else really knew that. Other than with our mutual friends we were thoroughly in the closet. The years we spent together were quiet and happy, until I decided I wanted to become a cop. Worst mistake of my life, not just for the obvious reasons. Angel knew a lot more about the police than I did at the time, and she knew nothing good could come from me joining the force. She tried to convince me to drop it, maybe volunteer at a shelter some place if I wanted to help people so bad. I didn't believe her though, my head was full of stories of heroism and sacrifice. Living in post 9/11 New York will do that to a kid. I signed up anyway, and Angel tried to stick with me, but I got busy, and she really couldn't stomach what I did for a living. She left me about half a year after I got the job. I thought she was just... weak at the time. I've been trying to make up for my mistake ever since.

I'm most afraid of backsliding. I've spent so long trying to be better, but I can still feel it nagging at me. Whenever I feel the butt of my gun, when I'm deciding if I need to pull the trigger or not, my training always says yes. Shoot first, ask questions later. But that's only good for getting people killed and I need to do better than that. If I want to see a world where cops are just a bad dream, I can't be a cop. That whole 'changing the system from the inside' bullshit doesn't work, especially when you're not even in the system. It's horrible, it feels like there's just this gross intrusive thought where ever I go telling me to throw my weight around. I'm constantly seconding guessing myself because of it. I've taken to carefully measuring everything I do, when I reach for my gun I always ask myself what I'm going to do with it. Am I going to use it as a focus? Maybe shoot a lock off? Or am I using it to threaten someone, and if that is what I'm doing, why? Is there a way I can accomplish what I need without using this type of violence? It's really choked up my quick thinking, but if my instincts are telling me to hurt my fellow man, I can't rely on them anymore.

I don't hold onto too many objects, but there are a few things in my office I really love. Initially, my office as a damn mess and I didn't really care. But my assistant Rory pointed out to me that I should really try to make it a safe place for potentially nervous clients, and it was the best advice he's ever given me. I knew to make my office seem welcoming I had to put a bit of myself into it. People can tell when you're just showing them a soulless facade. So I dug up some remnants of what my personality was like before I was all "duty and honor above all" and shit, and I found a love of typewriters. Next thing I knew, I was tracking down an old man who had to part ways with his old Hermes 300. I tried to pay him more than his dirt cheap asking price, but he just told me he was happy it was going to a good home. Now it sits on a shelf in my office. I can't really use it too well with one hand because of how heavy the thing is, but I make sure it's still running properly once every couple weeks. I've named it Butterfly.

This damned smoking. If the contracts don't kill me these fucking cigarettes will. They make me smell gross and are ruining my health, but I just can't kick them. I want to get clean, but they're the only thing that is keeping me from falling off the wagon with my drinking. Used to be an alcoholic, but I've been sober for two years now. Even got the coin to show for it. People has told me that it wasn't the smoking that keeps me from drinking, but my own will. I'd really love to believe them, but my smoke breaks are one of the only things that keep me from turning to the bottle. At least it's easier to keep functioning when I'm addicted to the cancer sticks instead of drinking. Maybe one day I'll get properly clean, but that feels like a mountain I'll never be able to climb.