Previously on Questionable Authority...

Somewhere behind this badge is a man who definitely should not have one.

People kind of piss me off. Every once in a while, somebody does something that makes me think, man, it sure would be satisfying to pistol-whip an asshat. Unfortunately, society has rules about that sort of thing, so I have to settle for the next best thing: playing through the entire Police Quest series, starting with Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel.

I figured if the real world wasn't going to trust me with a badge and a loaded firearm, Sierra might.

Lytton, California. A town once appreciated for its wholesome charm, now overrun with drug dealers, car thieves and humanity's finest dirtbags.

There was only one fucker crazy enough to clean up these streets.

That fucker was me.

I strolled into the police station, wrote down some random phone number I found on a corkboard, grabbed a set of squad-car keys and shoved a walkie-talkie into my pocket. I had no clue what I was doing yet, but I was doing it with swagger. These things would probably be useful, and my inventory space was deep and wide.

Sergeant Dooley eventually put an end to my wandering around and informed me that I was supposed to get dressed and report for briefing. Right. Police work.

I headed into the locker room, where some naked dude was standing in the shower cleaning himself like a madman. I watched him for longer than I probably should have, took a shower of my own, got dressed and loaded up on all the cop shit from my locker. Gun, cuffs, ticket book. The usual.

Officer Fudley. Traffic Division. Shower Division. Mostly Shower Division.

At briefing, Sarge thwacked us with the cold, hard facts. Cocaine. Stolen cars. Teenagers running wild. Lytton was going to shit. He also gave me the call sign 83-32. I had no idea what my old call sign was, so it was nice to finally have one.

Afterward, I took the elevator and went through what I thought was the door leading outside. Instead, I walked straight into Lieutenant Joseph Morgan's office. Since I was already there, I poked around and tried taking some of his shit before eventually doing the reasonable thing and talking to him.

Morgan told me Narcotics was interested in me, which was surprising considering I hadn't done jack shit yet. Still, I wasn't going to argue with the man. He told me to fill out a transfer request, so I headed downstairs and did exactly that.

Before starting patrol, I followed the procedures in my official Police Quest handbook and walked around the cruiser checking it over. Tires. Doors. Anything suspicious underneath. Psycho ex-girlfriend hiding in the back seat. You never know. Everything looked good, so I climbed in and hit the streets.

Serving. Protecting. Doing five miles an hour on Lilly Street.

The second I pulled away from the station, a driving tutorial materialized in front of my face. I hadn't taken any hallucinogens that morning, so this was a little concerning. Once reality returned, I cruised eastbound down Lilly Street at a cool five miles per hour, with absolutely no concern for anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck behind me.

Then the radio came alive. 11-80. Fig Street.

I mashed the accelerator and was there in minutes. A white sedan had been jammed up the ass of a sign outside Deanna's Flowers, and a small crowd had gathered around to stare at it.

I radioed the accident in and talked to a witness. She said two cars had been driving side by side at a high rate of speed, then she heard what sounded like gunshots.

I checked the driver.

Dead. Bullet hole in his head.

I radioed that in too.

Cause of accident: sign. Contributing factor: bullet hole in driver.

So far, my police prowess was top-notch. With backup on the way and nothing else for me to do besides stand there looking at a dead guy, I got back in the cruiser and returned to patrol.

The next call sent me to Carol's. I blew past the entrance doing about sixty-five, went around the block and eventually managed to find the place. Steve's cruiser was already sitting outside, so we spent a little time shooting the shit before I got a phone call.

Lt. Hamilton had identified my dead dude from the flower-shop crash. His name was Lonny West, a low-level drug dealer.

The plot was like gravy.

And by gravy, I mean thick.

Before leaving, I wandered around behind Carol's and found two unsavory-looking people sucking face near Wino Willy's. I tried to have them respect my authority. They ignored me completely. Damn hoodlums.

I hadn't made it more than a few blocks before the radio sent me right back to Carol's. She was pissed about a bunch of motorcycles parked outside her place. Normally I'd file that somewhere under Not My Problem, but Carol had been giving me free coffee, so I figured I owed her one.

I found the bikers inside Wino Willy's. They weren't thrilled to see me, and their leader decided to give me some shit, so I beat him with my police baton. After that, everybody respected my authority a whole lot more. Turns out policing wasn't that difficult.

The Lytton Police Department unveils its new baton-based community outreach program.

That's where I met Marie Wilkans. Sweet Cheeks Marie. She was standing near the jukebox looking like a hooker, which was probably because she was, in fact, a hooker.

Marie knew things. One of those things involved some guy with a rose tattoo on his nipple. There was also talk about a dude called the Death Angel. I wasn't entirely sure if Rose Nipple and the Death Angel were the same guy or if Lytton had multiple nipple-related criminals running around, but whatever. I'd figure it out.

My shift was ending anyway, so I headed back to the station. Or, as we policemen say, 10-19, good buddy.

Back at HQ, I stopped by Sarge's office and found him dealing with a problem of his own.

There was a chicken in his office.

A live fucking chicken.

Somebody had put it there, and Dooley was losing his shit. I stood there and enjoyed his pain for a while before heading back to the locker room.

After another shower—and another encounter with my naked shower friend—I got changed and headed to the Blue Room. They were throwing some kind of party for my old buddy Jack Cobb.

I had no fucking idea who Jack Cobb was, but there was booze involved, so fuck it. We were friends.

Jack was sitting at the bar looking like shit. I took a seat beside him, and after some small talk I learned his daughter had a serious cocaine problem. I did my best to look like this information meant something to me. Then the party started and a stripper showed up with balloons.

Nothing helps a cocaine-related family crisis like balloons and a stripper.

Unfortunately, for some fucking reason, I had agreed to switch shifts with another cop and was due back at HQ in about ten minutes. I hurried back for another briefing.

This one involved a stolen Mercedes and a missing guy named Jose Martinez. There was some reason to believe the Mercedes might have been tied to Lonny West's murder. I was starting to lose track of who was killing who, but all of it seemed to come back to drugs.

My next call was a domestic disturbance over at First and Lilly. Probably some asshole screaming because his girlfriend threw his toaster strudel in the yard. I was on it.

Before I could get there, another call came over the radio. The stolen Mercedes had been spotted heading east on Oak Street.

Fuck the toaster strudel.

I went after the Mercedes, and a few minutes later I had it pulled over outside Sin City, Lytton's local porn theater. I radioed for backup, drew my gun and ordered the driver out. He listened. Smart man. I cuffed him, searched him and stuffed him into the back of the cruiser.

Grand theft auto, cocaine, murder, and excellent parking outside the porn theater.

A search of the Mercedes turned up cocaine and marijuana in the trunk. I drove the assmuncher to jail and booked him for possession of a controlled substance, possession of a concealed weapon, stolen vehicle and murder. There were actual penal codes attached to all of those charges, so I entered those too. This was real police shit now.

I left the jail, said some kind words to a nearby plant and headed back to the station. That's when Sarge gave me the news: I'd been promoted to Narcotics.

Fuck yeah.

All those long days working the streets had finally paid off. Or day. I don't know.

Either way, I was moving up in the world, baby. Soon I'd have that house with the white picket fence, an American flag out front and a cooler full of beer waiting for me every Sunday while I wandered around the yard half-drunk picking up dog shit.

The American dream.

Before leaving Dooley's office, I noticed a box of donuts sitting on his desk. One of them was green and fuzzy. Not a little stale. Fuzzy. Why hadn't anyone eaten it before it reached that point? Better question, why was it still sitting there?

I was starting to worry about Sarge.

One day on patrol and Narcotics was already desperate enough to promote me.

Lieutenant Morgan welcomed me to Narcotics and told me Laura Watts would be my go-to while I got settled in. I was more interested in the stack of MAD Magazines sitting on his shelf, but he eventually got me moving in the right direction.

I found Laura sitting at a computer, more than likely watching cat videos or doing whatever narcotics officers did between drug busts. She gave me the dime tour, showed me my desk and computer, then left me alone.

My first assignment was pretty simple: dig up enough evidence on the guy I'd arrested to keep his ass in jail. No problem.

Before doing that, however, I decided to go through everybody's personal files. There had to be something useful in there. Phone numbers, embarrassing personal shit, maybe a little future blackmail material.

Narcotics investigation, step one: read everybody else's personnel file.

I didn't find much in the way of dirt, but I did find everyone's phone numbers, so I called them.

All of them.

Jack's answering machine made it sound like calling him was one of the hardest things I'd done in a long time. There was something about his daughter again. I wondered if she had died and I'd somehow missed it. I still wasn't entirely sure who the fuck Jack was, so this was getting hard to follow.

Dooley's machine mentioned somebody called the Gremlin. It seemed the Gremlin was responsible for the chicken and had also maced some of Sarge's correspondence. I didn't know what that meant, but I was invested now. I hoped he caught the bastard.

Miranda was off saving the world. Oscar's machine mentioned scraping dead people off sidewalks. Sheila called herself Shelly on her answering machine, which I found suspicious.

Pick a name, woman.

Steve was busy scamming babes, so I left him a message asking if he wanted to grab some za sometime.

Important narcotics work: calling coworkers to see who wants za.

I called Keith too and invited him along. Hopefully Steve and Keith liked each other. I didn't need pizza night turning into a whole thing.

Then I called Fudley.

Fudley.

I knew that name.

The shower.

That was him. The naked man. Day after day, the same shower. The same Fudley. Scrubbing himself like a madman with a soapy rag while I stood there staring at him in all his wet, naked glory.

How many times had I done this? Why did I keep doing it?

What kind of man was I? Had I dark urges that had yet to surface?

I hung up the phone.

Paul's answering machine invited me down to the jail to hang out. No thank you, Paul.

Laura's message mentioned having to train some wet-behind-the-ears baby narc. I was slightly offended but assumed she meant somebody else. Then I prank-called Sarah because fuck that biotch.

With all that important shit out of the way, I finally got back to the actual investigation. The man I'd arrested was named Marvin Hoffman, so I dug his file out of the Narcotics cabinet and started reading.

Then I saw it.

Rose tattoo. Left nipple.

Son of a bitch.

At last, a serious criminal investigation built almost entirely around a nipple.

Now we were doing detective work.

I went downstairs to Evidence and got Hoffman's black book and gun from Russ. The black book had names, dates and all kinds of shady shit in it, but nothing blunt and easy.

The gun was more useful. A .45 Smith & Wesson, serial number 97649. I took the number upstairs and punched it into the computer. The gun came back registered to a man named Jason Taselli, FBI file number 60321.

So I pulled the file. BAM. Jason Taselli was on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

And guess what this bastard had?

A rose tattoo on his left nipple.

Marvin Hoffman was Jason Taselli.

I printed Taselli's file and had myself a nice fresh wanted poster. Between that and everything else I'd dug up, I figured I had enough to keep his ass from making bail, so I headed to the courthouse.

I parked right out front, walked in with my evidence and showed it all to the judge. A few minutes later, I had a warrant in hand.

Holy shit. I was doing actual police work.

The judicial system was now involved. God help us all.

On the way back to my car, I briefly wandered out into traffic. I survived and drove over to the county jail.

Inside, I showed off the warrant like a kid bringing a new He-Man figure to show-and-tell.

Taselli wasn't going anywhere now.

Probably.

When I left the station later, Laura was waiting for me. A drug deal was supposed to go down at Bert's Park, and Narcotics wanted us there. We climbed into my awesome '80s car and headed over. Things were about to get stupid.

Next Time on Questionable Authority...