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Peril in the Pines Ch. 01

By: HansTrimble



Author's note: This story contains crime, suspense, gunfighting, and killing, as well as love, joy, and happiness. It's really about the interplay of all of those activities and the emotions that naturally accompany them. Human relations play a big part in it, and the importance of close friendships built on respect and trust. It contains almost no sex; the seven chapters contain 55,000 words and I'd hate to have you wade through all that looking for something that's not there. The principal character is recruited into law enforcement, so if you have an aversion to police work, maybe you ought to look for something else to read.

All that being said, I invite you to read on and then tell me how you liked it, especially what I should do to improve my writing for your greater reading enjoyment. 

**********

ESCAPING TO EDEN

The only sound in the forest was the breeze swishing through the tops of the tall pines. On the forest floor, the thick mat of needles was like a soft, spongy carpet that cushioned each footstep. As we carried our picnic provisions between the tree trunks, each step was as silent as if we were tiptoeing, and the music of the wind sighing through the trees was like the background score of a suspense movie. We found a tiny clearing, just wide enough to accommodate our blanket, and set Jan's backpack down in a corner and my cooler next to it, agreeing to all these decisions in muted voices, barely above a whisper. Looking around, we were fascinated by the solemn beauty of the place. It could have been a majestic cathedral.

I lay down on the blanket and motioned for Jan to lie beside me. Our eyes darted everywhere, taking in the interplay of light and shadow, of brown trunks, light green undergrowth, and darker pine needles.

Jan rolled onto her side to face me and softly said, "Hold me, Jack." I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and gently pulled her close. I could feel her breath against my neck. "I love you, Jack. It's so still here, like being in a world of our own, without another soul to break in on our privacy. This is our own little Garden of Eden, and all the world beyond these trees doesn't exist any more."

"You're right, that's just what it feels like. Lying here, I can feel every muscle in my body relaxing. And I can feel your heart beating. It's so peaceful, and the trees sort of recede into the background so I can concentrate on you. This is the only way that I ever feel totally at peace, when I'm holding you, looking at your face, your body, and feeling you warm and soft in my arms. Comfortable? Can I do anything to make it better for you?"

"I'm all right now. My shoulders were a little tired from hunching forward carrying the backpack but they're feeling better now. Could you rub them a little?"

The invitation was unmistakable, and I had to suppress the impulse to reach over suddenly and rip her clothes off. Instead I made myself move slowly, undoing one button at a time, but I didn't stop at two or three; instead I let my fingers march steadily down to the very last one. I pushed the shirt open, and Jan raised up halfway to let me take it off and toss it over by the backpack. I pushed her blonde hair back from her shoulders and rubbed the places where the straps had pressed against her tender skin. Then I slipped the bra straps down off her shoulders and rubbed those spots, too. Finally I reached around back and unhooked the bra, which found its new home on top of the shirt. Jan smiled a little contented smile and did to my shirt what I'd done to hers, then lay down with her beautiful breasts pressed into the hairs of my chest. We lay still, just enjoying the feeling of skin on skin and the intimacy we had achieved without saying a word. "I love you, too, Jan. Loving you is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I want to hold you like this forever."

Then a bullet slapped into a tree trunk about four feet from our heads with a cracking sound, followed immediately by the distant report of the rifle that had fired it. I instinctively tightened my grip on Jan and rolled up over her to shield her from harm. I could feel little pieces of pine bark fluttering down onto my bare back. 

Jan struggled a little, and I whispered, "Stay down. We make a small target down here on the ground. That shot may have been to scare us into doing something, and if we stand up and run we may be shot down. If the message is just supposed to be for us to get out of here, somebody will warn us off. Let's just wait and see what happens. You stay where you are." I rolled off her and reached over to the backpack, lifting the flap on the side so I could pull my pistol out of it. It was a 9mm made by Daewoo, loaded with thirteen hollow point cartridges in the magazine and one in the chamber. It was an accurate shooter, a good defensive weapon at twenty yards but useless at a hundred, which I guessed was the distance from us to the rifleman. With my other hand I grabbed Jan's shirt and quickly rolled back to her side, laying the shirt over her, and spreading it out so it covered the gun on the blanket between our bodies.

"Just lie still. If they just want us to clear out, they'll tell us. If they want to kill us, the shooter will have to get closer to get a clear shot between the tree trunks. I'm hoping that he'll come right up close to say something, so I can get a shot at him. We'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"Jack, I hear somebody coming!" I laid a finger across her lips and inched away just enough to free up my right hand and arm. I picked up the pistol and shoved the safety off with my thumb, and then tried to hold it loosely so my hand wouldn't shake when I raised it up. Jan was trembling with fear. I was afraid, too, but tried not to let my body fail me when I needed to act quickly. I recall bargaining with my body, thinking that when this was over I'd allow myself the luxury of going all to pieces, if only I could maintain control when I needed it.

A man approached and stopped just beyond the blanket. He was tall and lean, wearing jeans tucked into work boots and a plaid shirt with the sleeves torn off. He had a week's growth of beard, and dark hair sticking out from under a grimy John Deere cap. In his right hand he held a 30 caliber bolt action rifle with a scope, pointing down at the ground. He looked us over and said, "Well if this ain't cozy. Listen, I'll give you two kids a chance to git outta here. You got one minute to git outta my sight 'fore I start shootin'."

Way back where the gunman had come from, a man shouted, "Put 'em down, Newt. Can't have 'em runnin' their mouths to the law. Remember, they've seen yer face."

Newt's hand holding the rifle started to move, and stopped. He was thinking, apparently something he didn't do often and couldn't do quickly. I guessed he was hesitant to murder us in cold blood, and he might be thinking of the hard work of dragging our bodies away through the woods and digging a grave. While he thought it over I lifted my pistol, still covered by Jan's shirt, and got off a quick shot in his direction. It hit him high in the left thigh. He screamed at the pain but didn't move very much, and most important, didn't drop the rifle. I pulled the pistol free of the shirt and got off an aimed shot to the middle of his chest. He staggered but still didn't drop the rifle, so I put one into the middle of his forehead and that closed the deal. The rifle finally fell free and Newt went down in a heap and didn't move.

The voice from back in the trees shouted again, "Good job, Newt. Leave 'em there for now. We can drag 'em out later. Come on, we got work to do."

ESCAPING FROM EDEN

I put the pistol's safety on, shoved it into the top right hand pocket of my cargo shorts, and slipped my shirt on without buttoning it while I whispered to Jan, "Put your shirt on and get out of here, quietly. Out where we parked the Jeep you can get your phone to work to call 911. Here are the keys, but don't start the Jeep yet because he'll hear it. I've gotta go after the other guy. Wait ten minutes and then drive out to the road to lead the deputy in. Take Styrofoam cups out of the cooler to mark your trail, so you can bring him back to the right place."

I picked up the rifle and brushed off the pine needles. There was no way of knowing whether the scope had hit the ground, but it didn't show any signs of impact so I hoped it was still zeroed. I popped the magazine free and found that it still held three cartridges. Newt was facing up and to his right, so his shirt pocket was where I could reach it easily, and I found five more, which went into my pocket. With the magazine out I cycled the bolt to clear the chamber, added the cartridge that was ejected to the ones in my pocket, and pulled the trigger to get the feel of it and to make sure I knew which way to push the cross-bolt safety to be ready to shoot. The good news was that the trigger pull was light, so it would be easy to shoot accurately. The bad news was also that the trigger pull was light, so in my nervous state I'd have to keep my finger way clear of it till the exact instant when I wanted to kill something, or I'd risk a wild shot. I shoved the magazine back in place and cycled the bolt to load the chamber. Then I pushed the safety on, popped the magazine out, topped it up from my pocket, and pushed it back up into place. Okay, that gave me six shots in the rifle and more in my pocket. I figured I might need three shots at the most for whatever was up ahead. Plus, there were still eleven in my pistol. So I'd have plenty of ammo. My problem was to find a safe place to use it and still be able to walk away.

I stood straight up and looked through the trees in the direction that Newt had come from. I could barely see a man there, bent over doing something that I couldn't make out. It didn't look like anything that had to do with shooting. I headed that way, knowing that for the first thirty yards or so I'd be so far away from him that I'd look like Newt. How would Newt walk? He was taller than I was, so he'd take long strides, and he'd probably roll as he walked, something that always drove my platoon sergeant crazy in basic training. I went slowly, trying to imitate Newt, as I picked my way around trees and sparse undergrowth and made sure I didn't trip over any exposed roots. I tried to let the repetitive motion of walking relax me and get my breathing back to normal.

The man up ahead was concentrating on his work. I hadn't seen him look in my direction so I kept walking straight toward him. Halfway there I found a good place to kneel and study him through the rifle scope. He was the opposite of Newt, short and stocky. I could see a holster on his right hip, and a handgun in it with black grips. He seemed to be picking up many small things and throwing them into a box or small cart. He lifted each of the things easily with one hand, so they couldn't be all that heavy. I could see some blurs in the scope from twigs in the way, which could deflect a bullet slightly. I moved over a few feet and found a big tree branch lying on the ground that would make a good shooting rest. When I lay down and aimed at the man, the sight picture didn't show any twigs so I figured this was as good as I could get: down low, steady as a rock, and a clear line of fire. My platoon sergeant would be proud of me. The distance favored the rifle. Unless he was the reincarnation of Ed McGivern he'd have almost no chance of hitting me with a handgun unless he got closer.

The voice of Sergeant Roberts came back to me, saying "When you are attacking, remember that the enemy is on his own turf. He knows all about the place. You don't. Use your eyes to learn all you can about your surroundings." Thanks, Sarge. I tried to imagine where the man's chest would be when he stood up straight, and I aimed at that spot. I could still see him in the scope, and watch what he was doing. He seemed to telegraph his moves, moving his shoulders before he moved his arm to throw. He never straightened all the way up, but I could see that when he came up partway he moved his head before he raised his shoulders. 

Rather abruptly, the man ran out of things to pick up and throw. He straightened up slowly. "Newt, what the hell's taking you so..." His shirt pocket came up to the crosshairs, and I touched off a shot. He staggered a little and went down. I cycled the bolt and pushed the safety on as I stood up and started walking slowly toward him. I paused before coming out of the trees, and stepped behind a thick trunk, transferring the rifle to my left hand and drawing my pistol with my right. He wasn't moving, but I couldn't see his right hand or his face, so he was still a threat. I waited for what I judged to be five minutes without moving a muscle, and he still hadn't twitched. Time to move in.

It seemed strange to look at the man on the ground and know I'd killed him without ever getting a good look at his face. He'd died wearing an angry scowl. His right hand gripped his pistol, which was out of the holster. So I'd come close to taking some incoming fire. I felt his neck for a pulse and didn't find any. There was blood on his shirt pocket where the bullet had entered, and a splatter of blood drops on the ground in back of him from the exit wound. I safetied my pistol and put it back into the top right hand pocket of my cargo shorts. Then I gently took the pistol from the hand of the dead man, pushed the safety on, and slipped it into my top left hand pocket. After a quick tour of the area and a final 360 scan from where I stood, I headed out.

I felt like Rambo with all the weapons I was carrying. I was wishing that Newt had put a sling on his rifle so I could have my hands free. The two loaded pistols, weighing about six pounds, kept dragging my shorts down on my hips and about every dozen steps I had to pause and hike them back up. I found our blanket and took a can of beer out of the cooler. It really hit the spot, and I kept sipping it as I walked along the trail that Jan had marked. As I came out of the woods the Jeep was where I had parked it but turned slightly, and a Sheriff's car was behind it with a deputy outside the open driver's door, fiddling with his lapel mike.

Jan came running to me with a shout. I cleared the rifle and set it down on the ground, and took her in my arms, lifting her right up in the air. When I set her back down the deputy had already walked over to us. He was about my age, slender, dark haired, stood about five foot ten. I handed him the rifle, magazine, and all the extra cartridges, and we walked back to his car, where I used his hand mike to give a statement of what had happened. He asked a few questions to clarify important points, ending up with the one that I had known was coming: "Why did you go on into the woods stalking the other man after Newt was dead?" I explained that I had knowledge of two men in the area, one who had a rifle and was about to murder us, and the other one who had ordered him to do it. Killing the rifleman had saved us for the moment, but the other man obviously wanted us dead, so we could not be safe until I had neutralized him one way or another. I got up close enough to observe him, and saw that he was carrying a weapon and was therefore dangerous. He had already said he wanted us dead. I was alone with no backup. I couldn't walk up to him because I couldn't tell whether there were more people nearby. So the only safe way I could neutralize him was to shoot him from a spot beyond easy pistol range. My judgment was verified when I later found that he'd died with his pistol in his hand, already out of his holster and ready for a shootout.

Then I had to apologize to the deputy for not handing him the pistols already. He put gloves on, and I held my top left pocket open so he could reach in and lift the dead man's pistol out, which he cleared and bagged. Then we did the same thing on the right side with my pistol, which had killed Newt. Relieved of my arsenal, I felt light as a feather.

"There's another deputy on his way. When he gets here, do you think you can lead us in there to see the bodies?" 

I tipped the beer can up and drained the last mouthful from it. "Now I do."

QUESTIONS AND THE RIGHT ANSWERS

Sheriff Peterson was obviously used to asking questions and evaluating the answers. He was probably in his fifties, stocky but not flabby, and had gray eyes that stared through round, metal-framed glasses without revealing any emotion whatever. He was gruff as I sat across the table from him in his interview room. It made sense that whatever his normal disposition, he would habitually act like this when he sat down to interrogate a witness or suspect, so I didn't take it personally when he fished for ways to trip me up and catch me in a lie. He wrapped up his barrage of questions with, "You should've waited for my deputies to get there instead of going on a commando raid of your own."

"Actually, I'd have preferred to do that, but it would have exposed Jan and me to too much risk. Those guys were too ready to shoot people. I dropped Newt in self defense, but it was a close thing. I'm pretty fast, but I could easily have died there without getting off a shot. And if I had, Jan would have been next. If I'd been alone I would have run to the Jeep and taken off right after killing Newt, but I had to protect Jan and the only way to do that was to establish and hold a perimeter for her. I couldn't set up a defensive position around our picnic site because it's so hard to shoot through the thick woods. If those trees had been thinned out fifty years ago it'd be a different story. I needed to expand our perimeter to where it would be defensible, and do it right away."

"You trying to tell me that you thought all that out? You didn't just panic and go on a hunt for the guy who had said to kill you?"

"Sheriff, if I'd acted out of panic I'd have run out of those woods screaming my head off and I might still be running now. When that bullet hit that tree, just a little over my head, it switched me into the combat mindset that brought me home in one piece. The principles I was taught are sound, and there are hundreds of veterans out there who would have done exactly what I did. That kind of thinking made us survivors and not white crosses in a grassy field. We were taught these things by combat veterans, we studied them hard because we knew it wasn't a game, and they kept us alive. Over there we were up against enemy combatants a lot smarter than Newt and most of them amazingly fast. 

"Face it: if I'd been one of your deputies you'd be shaking my hand and congratulating me now for two righteous kills, instead of growling at me like a bear."

"What'd you do with the young lady who was with you?"

"Calmed her down, kissed her soundly, and dropped her off at her mother's house. I'm sure she's still there if you want to have her brought in. She was so scared that she was shaking like a leaf, and I figured a little TLC from her mother was what she needed."

"All right, that's all for now, but I may want to talk with you some more so don't go too far."

"Agreed. What're you doing for lunch?"

"What? What business is it of yours what I'm doing for lunch? Why would you ask such a question?"

"Because I've got a pretty decent picnic lunch in my cooler, enough for two people, and the ice is melting fast. Shame to let it go to waste. I'd be glad to share it with you. We could eat right here. Interested?"

"So then you could go down to Pete's Bar and brag about having lunch with me, is that it?"

"Not my style. I speak when spoken to, answer civil questions accurately, and brag to nobody about anything. I'm a survivor, and survival is a matter of preparation and sound tactics, plus a lot of luck, so it's nothing to brag about. I'd enjoy eating with you because I respect you, not because you're a trophy to hang on my wall. Now again, how about lunch?"


Peril in the Pines Ch. 01



"Okay, you sold me. Sorry to be rude about it. It was the last thing in the world that I expected you to say. I guess I should thank you for your generosity."

At the table of the interview room turned dining room, we chatted a little without committing ourselves, more interested in the good food than in digging up past terrors or glories. The Sheriff did ask me what my favorite memory of my military service was.

"It was a Thursday. My squad had an armored Humvee with a machine gun on top. We went out on patrol at 0600 and we covered sixty kilometers out and back, with stops at points of interest. The weather was beautiful, temperature got up to about eighty by afternoon. We had no trouble with the vehicle, all the craters in the road were marked so we could avoid them easily, people we passed smiled and waved, nobody shot at us or tried to blow us up, we didn't find any bodies, and we returned to our base camp on schedule. My squad made a practice of praying together at the start of every patrol and again when we got back, and we were so grateful for that perfectly peaceful patrol that some of the guys were crying as we gave thanks for it. I'll never forget that day."

"Amen to that. I dream of a day here when the phone doesn't ring and there aren't any crisis calls on the radio. These boys of mine, my deputies, are like my family and I don't want anything to happen to them." He paused, looking off into space, obviously lost in thought for a moment. "What're you doing now that you're back here?"

"I've spent almost two months doing very little, just getting readjusted. Now I'm getting a little antsy, looking at the classified ads in the paper, talking to people around town, trying to find a job that fits me with an employer who won't be belly up in a year. Haven't found anything I like yet."

"I know what that's like. Been there, done that, after another war a while back. Good luck on your search." He seemed distracted, still mulling something over. "While you're here, there's some paperwork I'd like you to fill out for me. You can do it right where you're sitting. I'll go get it from Becky. Back in a minute."

The form was four pages long. The Sheriff set it down with page four facing up, so I started scanning the questions from back to front, and it wasn't making any sense until I flipped to the front page to see the official letterhead of the Sheriff's office on top and below that, "Application for Employment" in big letters. "What's the deal?" I asked.

"We've got a vacancy in the department for a senior deputy, and I haven't made any decision about hiring from outside or promoting from within. Eventually it'll turn into a chief deputy position. We don't have a chief at present, but we'll need one. The idea is to have a top man who's a permanent employee, not an elected official, to provide continuity in protecting and serving our residents. Then if I retire or lose an election, the department will go right on functioning until the new Sheriff gets his feet under the desk and puts his own stamp on things. If you apply, you could be a candidate for senior deputy, or for regular deputy if we promote one of our own into that job. The application's a pain in the butt, but it'll take less than a half hour to fill out, and it doesn't commit you to anything. You can leave it on Becky's desk when you're finished.

The Sheriff rose to leave and paused to say, "Oh, thanks again for lunch."

CHECKING ON EACH OTHER

From the Sheriff's office I went straight to Jan's house to check up on her. She met me at the door, bright and chipper. "Oh, Jack, I'm so glad to see you. Hold me please."

I was glad to oblige the lady. "You seem to have recovered pretty fast," I said. "That was an awful ordeal for you to go through."

"I'm not over it yet. Maybe I never will be. But I'm concentrating on being safe at home with Mom, and I'm not freaking out or anything like that. It was like a horror story in two chapters. First that awful man was about to kill us, and then after I got out of there I was scared that you'd get hurt or killed. I was way over by the road waiting for the deputy when you shot that other man, I guess, because I never heard the shot. If I had, I think I would have fainted."

"Just stay close by my side for a minute and you'll get calmed down. You were afraid that we'd get killed, and it's hard to get rid of a thought like that. The reality of us being together with no injuries will gradually replace that fear in your mind. But if you need to see a therapist, the Sheriff will know people you can see. What we've been through is something his deputies go through at times, and they know how to get you over it. I can ask him to take care of it if you want me to."

"Let's wait and see how it goes. How'd it go with you and him?"

"He's a wily old bird, and he kept asking me the same things in different ways to see if I was making up a story. We ended up with a truce, and I shared our picnic lunch with him. Seems like a good guy. Tough as nails but a human being underneath all that."

By this time we were in the living room, and Jan's mother came in. "Oh Jack, I'm so glad you came by. Every other word out of Janice's mouth has been your name. Jack did this and Jack did that and Jack was so brave and Jack wasn't scared a bit."

"Don't believe everything you hear, Mrs. Miller. I was scared half out of my skin, but I had to take a rain check on giving in to my fear because I had things to do to keep us safe. I couldn't be sure how it would turn out until it was over. It was a terrible ordeal for both of us. Jan was very brave, and she did everything I asked her to do, even though she was scared. She kept her head in a horrible situation. You should be very proud of her."

"Is there anything I can get you?"

"No, thanks. I've got to get home and jump in the shower. Being that scared made my mouth dry and my skin sweat, and I need to get cleaned up before I can really feel that it's behind us. But I had to see how Jan was doing before I could go take care of myself."

"How sweet of you to think of her first. Could there be anything else you want to tell me?"

"We haven't known each other for very long, so I don't want to rush things. But you and I could be having a serious talk before long. Especially if I can get a job. Let's hope things work out so we can have that conversation."

"Oh, you're so sweet. I'm beginning to think Janice is right when she tells me. . . Oh, that's none of my business." And with that, she took a step closer to me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Once I got inside my front door, I left a trail of clothes all the way to the bathroom. The hot shower felt wonderful. I got all soaped and rinsed and then let the water run over me till it turned cool. I just stood there, bent over with my hands on my knees, letting my muscles all relax and thinking about what we'd been through in the woods. I thanked God for bringing us out of it safely, and I had a feeling that it was over at last, as I toweled off. I got my clean clothes all ready and then lay down on the bed for a nap. When I woke up an hour later I felt good. The nervousness was gone, replaced with gratitude and satisfaction for the way that I'd faced a tough challenge and won. Most important of all, I had a good feeling about having protected Jan.

Jan was becoming more important in my life. For a long time she was just one of the girls I knew. We'd gone out a few times when I was home on leave, and we had fun but there was nothing special there, just a casual friendship. Then when I came home for good she was available, and we dated but it felt different. For one thing, I no longer had that uncertainty hanging over me, the unspoken question of whether I'd be coming home next time standing up or lying in a box. And she was more mature. It felt as if we'd finished drifting aimlessly in space and had landed on the same planet. 

Jan and I kept seeing each other and with each date we were getting more involved in each other's life, taking a longer view of everything. Even though we hadn't talked yet about a house with a picket fence and two and a half children, we seemed to be getting used to the idea of living a long time and needing some long term companionship. In all of our conversations, we hadn't uncovered any impediments to going down the long road together. She was a regular churchgoer, and while I hadn't been one before, I had certainly learned to pray in that Humvee. We were comfortable with each other, didn't drink ourselves into a stupor, didn't smoke, liked children, liked dogs, were both serious minded but still laughed a lot. If we were filling out one of those stupid tests that women's magazines have in every issue, right after the high calorie dessert and before the new diet craze, we would have scored right up at the top for compatibility. To top it all off, I got on well with her mother. So even before our adventure in the woods, things were looking good for us.

Facing a dangerous situation together really bonds an infantry squad. The shared memory of getting into trouble and out of it as a unit takes a bunch of guys who have very little in common and turns them into a coherent team that acts as if it has one mind. I wondered if that's how it would be with Jan and me. Too soon to know, I guess, but the clues were there. Her mother sensed that, too. That's why she'd hinted about whether we had something to talk about.

Suddenly I realized that right then I wanted to be with Jan and her mother. I jumped out of bed, grabbed the phone, and called Jan. "Have you folks got dinner ready yet? I'd like to take you and your mother out to eat. Go see what she says, please."

There was a pause in the conversation. I could hear their voices in the distance but couldn't make out the words. Than Jan came back on the phone. "Mom says why don't you come over here and have dinner with us? She's cooking up plenty for the three of us. Interested?"

"Sure am. What's the entree?"

"What, are you asking around town and picking the best offer?"

"No, silly. I'm planning to pick up a bottle of wine, and I need to know what it has to go with."

"Stuffed pork chops. Does that help you?"

"Yes and no. I don't know one wine from another but the guy in the liquor store can pick something to go well with pork. He's pretty cagey about it. I watched when a lady came in and asked him what went well with lamb, and he stroked his beard and looked down, as if he were deep in thought. But I was over by the end of the counter and I could see that he was really reading a cheat sheet that he's got posted up on the back of a counter display. So everybody wins. The proprietor comes out looking like a genius, the customer gets the right wine, and they've created a mutually beneficial business relationship."

"Well, you don't have to bring anything, but if you want to go and play mind games with that shopkeeper, knock yourself out. Dinner's at six."

ANOTHER ANSWER AND THE RIGHT QUESTION

I was on Jan's doorstep at five thirty, with a bottle of "an amusing little Merlot from a small California vineyard" in a bag under my arm. Jan let me in, wearing a pretty red dress that seemed to brighten up the whole room. Well, that's how it seemed to me, anyway. Probably wasn't the dress. We walked out to the kitchen, where Mrs. Miller had the pork chops in the oven, and when she opened the oven door to look at them the aromas of pork and stuffing filled the room. We all talked while she and Jan worked together to get the chops onto a platter and the vegetables into serving dishes. Then it was all ready, and I sneaked a look at the clock. Sure enough, we sat down to eat at exactly six o'clock. I opened the wine and poured some for each of us, and while I was pouring I commented on how accurately she had timed the dinner.

"Oh, that's no great trick when you're making a meal in the oven. It's so much more predictable than meals cooked on top of the stove. You're timing the meat so you know when the it's going to be done and you just cook the vegetables to match it. After all these years, I ought to know how to do it. But you, Jack, living all alone, who does your cooking?"

"I do it myself usually. There a few things I know how to make, and there are good recipes on the internet. The supermarket has some frozen meals that you just toss into the microwave, but they aren't very good for the most part. Some things are, like lasagna, for example. Another thing I've come to like is my crockpot. I can put together a meal in the crock in the evening, put it in the refrigerator overnight, pull it out and put it into the heater shell in the morning and turn it on, and at suppertime It's all ready to eat. Then there's meatloaf. I make enough for two or three meatloaves at once. If it comes out well, I stock up the freezer with meatloaves. If I mess it up I give meatloaves to my buddies and they act as if I'd given them something wonderful. Single guys who can't cook will eat anything."

"Are you living in your parents' old house?"

"Yes. When my mother died she left it to me. I was in the Army at the time. My uncle Jim had been living with Mom, and I let him stay there as long as he took care of the house for me, and he did a good job of that. He got married a month before I was discharged, and moved into his new wife's house."

"Oh yes. Didn't he marry Darlene Staub? She's a very nice girl, widowed. Her two kids are teenagers now. I know her house because her mother and I were friends. Well, for that matter, Jack, your mother was my very closest friend, and I know your house like the back of my hand. I don't know if she ever mentioned me. 

"Doris and I went all through school together, and when we were in high school we'd always go to the ice cream shop for a soda after school. We usually had a bunch of other girls with us, but the booth was ours. Everybody knew that we'd started going there first, and nobody sat down until Doris and I had brought our sodas over to the booth. Then everybody would pile into that booth and the one next to it, and some would pull up chairs, and we'd giggle and gossip for an hour before going home. Usually, after we got our homework done, Doris and I would get on the phone and chatter away for half an hour before bed. My father used to ask what we could possibly have to talk about for so long. But it wasn't what we said that was important to us, it was having a good friend to talk with and be close to, to share our feelings. High school is a difficult time for girls. Your body is changing, you have mood swings, easy things seem difficult, you worry about being popular as if you were running for Congress, and it's all so much better if you have a good friend who's going through it at the same time."

"It seems a little strange to hear you talk about you and my mother as teenagers. It's a time in her life that I never heard anything about."

"Some day I'll get out the old high school yearbooks and show you pictures and tell you the stories behind them. Lots of pictures of us. Whatever was going on, we were in it. You see, we didn't think there was any possibility of college for either of us, so we'd be going to work right after graduation. That meant that we had our four years of high school to be silly girls and that was it, so we didn't want to miss out on any of it."

"But I thought my mother went to college. Didn't she?"

"Yes. A year after we graduated, the community college opened up. They needed students to get it up and going, so they weren't fussy about what courses we'd taken or the grades we got in high school. They just needed people to fill the seats. Doris went first, and the next year I joined her. It was really funny. Everybody was so new at it. We had one instructor who didn't even know the way to the office. They were trying so hard to integrate the school into the community that they almost never failed anybody. If you were there for every class you were pretty sure of a B, and with just a little effort you could get an A. And there were Older Men there. That's what we called them. Sometimes we'd say, "Over there, O M!" It wasn't like high school, where we admired the football players but we didn't know if they'd ever amount to anything. Everybody who went to the community college was already working, and in the evening when we went, everybody there had a full time day job. So we could meet a guy and ask, 'What do you do for a living?' and 'What are your plans after you graduate from here?' It was great; we could pick a winner with no guesswork. And we did! We both met our husbands there. Your mom and dad paired up first, and I started dating my husband a semester later. Oh, my, those were the days."

Jan had been strangely quiet during all this. She said, "Mom, you never talk about those days with me. It's a good thing Jack came to dinner, so I could hear some stories from when you were a girl. What's that all about?"

"Oh, honey, the subject came up now because of Jack and his mother, and it got me thinking good thoughts about those years in terms of sharing everything with my best friend, Doris. But when I look at you and talk with you I'm reminded of your father, and I guess I miss him so much that it still gets me choked up. I'm sorry. I'll try to do better because you ought to hear about what I was doing at the age you are now. Most people would say you're just like me in so many ways, and I can see that, but you're just like your father, too, and you remind me of him constantly." She paused, looking off into space for a few seconds, and when she turned back to us there were tears in her eyes. "I'll tell both of you and anybody else who wants to know, he and I loved each other so much that when he lay dying he was still my hero from our college days." She paused, again, lost in deep thoughts. "That's the kind of marriage I want you to have, with a love so strong that it'll carry you through the hard times, when the going gets tough." She said those last words with a choking voice, trying not to cry.

Jan and I looked at each other and nobody said a word. Her face was serious, almost grim, and her jaw was set. I could read in her face that she was determined to make it happen, and I suppose she saw that in my face, too. Without thinking about it, I got up from the table and walked around to where she was sitting, and stood behind her with my hands on her shoulders. Then I bent down and kissed her on the cheek. "Mrs. Miller, that's what I want in a marriage, too. I hope it all works out as well for us as it did for you and Mr. Miller, and for my mom and dad, too. That adventure today taught me a lot about Jan, how strong she is, how she can handle trouble, and even more about how we work together, how we can depend on each other. I want to use that feeling as a foundation for our future together, so we can be there for each other, forever." 

Jan put her hand over mine, and turned around a little in her chair to look up at me. For the life of me, I don't know what she saw in my face right then, but she let out a little whimper as she got up out of her chair and turned to give me a big, wonderful kiss. As we broke she said, "Oh God, Mom, I love this man! He took on two murderous thugs today to save me, and he knew that he might get killed doing it but he just went ahead and did it. Jack, be careful what you ask me because there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. Nothing!"

"I apologize for interrupting your wonderful dinner, Mrs. Miller. I'm sure none of us expected the conversation to turn so serious, but what Jan and I said was right from the heart. Life can't get any more real than what we've been through today. The only thing I can add is that you knew my mom and dad, the kind of people they were, and I'm their only child. Everything they were, I am, so you probably know me as well as I know myself. You must remember how they'd get behind issues that meant something to the people here in town, and even things that were important to the whole country. I learned from them to think beyond the end of my nose, try to see the big picture, understand things that matter. That's why I joined the Army, and it's why I gave it my best for five straight years. It's also why I came home with five stripes when my buddies were lucky to get two or three. And I might as well tell you that it's why I signed a job application today, for a job with the Sheriff's office. I wasn't going to tell you till I see if I can get the job, but after the way this conversation went, I want you to know about it. The real point is that I don't mouth off about something and then forget about it. I have principles and standards and convictions and I live by them. I suppose that sounds sort of pompous for a guy my age, but it's true and I know that Jan feels the same way. I'm sure we can be good for each other."




Peril in the Pines Ch. 01



Jan looked up into my eyes. "Jack, ask me the question so I can say yes. Ask me right now, right in front of Mom. Let's not dance around it any more. Let me hear the words."

"Jan, I love you more than I thought I could ever love anybody. It goes deeper than any feeling I've ever had. I can't even think about living the rest of my life without you. I only hope I can live up to your standards, and you set the bar pretty high. You're the most wonderful girl I've ever met. Please, will you marry me?"

"Just try to stop me! Of course I will, and yes, we'll be wonderful together. I love you so much that I know I could never love anyone else, and I can't wait to be Mrs. Jack Olson." 

MEDALS? WHAT MEDALS?

I was sitting in the Sheriff's visitor's chair, across the desk from where he sat in a well-used swivel chair. "I asked you to come in today to clarify a few points about your military service. How long were you on active duty?"

"Five years. I went in shortly after high school, just after my nineteenth birthday."

"Why did you enlist?"

"The answer isn't simple, so please let me explain the whole thing. After graduation I looked around at the world I'd been turned loose into, and I kept up with the news and analysis of events. I could see that things weren't going all that well in Afghanistan and Iraq. I tried to see the war from everybody's point of view but I finally realized that I'd never understand it all, so I just focused on what it meant to this country. I had no doubt that it was important or we wouldn't be fighting over there. I could see that we were doing a lot of good there, even if the results weren't perfect. I'd been trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn't want to waste it flipping hamburgers. I wanted to do something that would make a difference. Some day when I'm on my deathbed I want to look back and see that I stood for something, that I did what I could to make the world a better place, even if it my contribution was tiny. I saw the military as the best way to do that. 

"I still feel the same way now. If I had those years to live over again, I'd do the same thing. It was good experience, I learned a lot, matured a lot. I saved the lives of a few good people and took the lives of a few bad people. I tried to share everything I learned with my squad, and asked them to do the same, and I was proud of what we all did together. We had the best squad in the whole battalion."

"Why didn't you mention the medals you'd been awarded? I had to find out about them from the Army."

"Let's get real. I was a squad leader. I tried to set a good example for my guys. They all performed very well, and did what I'd taught them to do. I didn't see my actions as being at all unusual. I tried to take care of business. We got into some tough spots, but that was all the enemy's doing, not ours. My job was to get us out of them, and I did. I received some decorations and I have them all in a box at home. Maybe some day I'll make a little plaque to display them on. Maybe I'll show them to my kids, or my grandkids.

"Here's the way I look at all this. I did what had to be done, when it had to be done, just as well as I could do it. That was my job. The medals came later. The lives I saved were more important than all the medals in the world. Those medals didn't save the lives, I did. Read about Alvin York or Audie Murphy. They did what I did only a hundred times more, never dreaming they'd get medals for it. So that's why I didn't think they were important enough to mention.

"I'd really like to get a job in your outfit. But if I do I don't want to be regarded as some heroic figure here at home, when the things I did were thousands of miles from here, in another world with other people and other rules. Remember Ira Hayes, the Indian in the Marine Corps who stepped up to help some guys put up a flag on Mount Suribachi? Joe Rosenthal snapped a picture of them for Life magazine, and the Defense Department dragged Ira home to parade him at war bond rallies as a hero. He couldn't figure out why they were making a fuss over him, when others had done so much more, and so many of them died doing it. Eventually it drove him to the bottle and then to his death. I don't want that to happen to me."

The Sheriff looked at me and nodded. "I understand," was all he said about it.

While he was quiet I thought I'd try him with a question. "Sheriff, you must know everybody for miles around here. What can you tell me about Mr. Miller, the father of Jan, the girl who was with me in the woods?"

"Marty was a great guy. I knew him when we were just growing up. He worked as an auto mechanic and he was very good at what he did. I remember taking a new car to him one time with a problem and he said he'd rather not tackle it because it involved a system that was brand new that model year and he hadn't studied it yet. In other words, he had the integrity to turn down a job that he thought he might not handle well. In the automobile business around here he was a legend. He took care of all of our patrol cars, and I had a tough time finding another mechanic who could work to Marty's standards after he died."

"Thanks. That helps me to see what Mrs. Miller was talking about. She worshiped the ground he walked on. In fact she still does."

"Yes, Marilyn. She's a great person, too. I suppose it's none of my business, but I can tell you that with those two for parents, their daughter must be very special. My boys were impressed with how well she handled herself out there, with no experience at all in life or death situations. If you and she are serious, I'd say you're a lucky man."



Peril in the Pines Ch. 02



BACK TO EDEN

No matter what detours our conversation took, the Sheriff's mind zinged right back to the strange business in the woods. "Tell me, Jack, what'd you make of the things those hoodlums were doing out there in the woods?"

"I watched the fat guy picking up some kind of bricks and tossing them into a cart. They had to be valuable for him to be handling them himself, but I couldn't see any obvious signs of what made them special. They looked like adobe. They had to be durable because he was tossing them, not laying them down gently. The way he was picked them up made them seem pretty light, maybe lighter than regular bricks. I didn't handle any of them, and afterward I was wishing I had. If they really are light, I'd think that would rule out gold or platinum or uranium. I couldn't see where they came from. Seems strange, bricks out in the middle of a forest. Did your deputies bring them in?"

"No. I think I'll go out myself in the morning and look around. Want to go?"

"Sure. I've been curious about that whole business. That reminds me, can I have my pistol back, please?"

"Not until the coroner delivers his conclusions on the two deaths. But I can let you take one of ours."

"What kind?"

"Glock. Like 'em?"

"Not particularly. How about Smith & Wesson, or Beretta?"

"Sure. Got a nice Smith right here." He opened his desk drawer and took out a pistol, cleared it, then handed me the pistol, magazine, and the extra cartridge. I checked it, ran it through its paces unloaded, and loaded it up. "Thanks. Nice gun. Good trigger."

"That's one of my personal weapons, not the department's. I have others. You can keep it till yours is released."

The pistol was chambered in 40 caliber, not 9 mm, and I asked the Sheriff why he wouldn't have had a 9, which was a lot more common. "I personally prefer the 40. It has more recoil, but it hits harder, penetrates heavy clothing better. That ammo is what the FBI settled on after analyzing some gunfights that didn't turn out well for their side. We went to 9 when we switched from revolvers to semiautos, because that's what all the other departments were doing and the guns were readily available at good prices. Now that 40 is more common, I'd like to make a gradual shift to it. 

"My favorite would be 45, but in a gun with a dozen or so in the magazine, the double stack of 45's makes the grip a little fat for average size hands, and that means less accuracy. No solution is perfect. I wouldn't like to go back to the old eight round single stack magazines in a rural county with only one man in a car. Too dangerous for my deputies."

"You really give these decisions a lot of thought, don't you. You mentioned the safety of your deputies when I was here before. They must be on your mind all the time."

"You led a squad in combat. You know what it's like. Look, I've saved my money and I could retire any time I want to. I don't have to keep running for re-election. I do it because I'd hate to see somebody in this job who wouldn't take the safety of the public and our deputies as seriously as I do. But I don't go around wearing my heart on my sleeve, so just keep all that to yourself."

"Of course. What time do you want to go out to the woods?"

"Early. Can you meet me here at seven?"

"Sure. I'll see you then."

THE BRICKYARD OF EDEN

I was in the parking lot at quarter to seven. It was a strange time because there were lots of people heading to work on the main roads at that hour, but off the beaten track it was very quiet. I had sandwiches and a small thermos of coffee in a backpack, which I put in the Sheriff's SUV along with a light jacket. I carried my traveling cup of coffee into the building and waited while he was handing out assignments to several deputies and being briefed on special situations by the deputies who were ending their shifts and going home. He ended his conversations by introducing me to the deputies and saying that we were going out to the woods to look over the puzzling things that I'd seen out there. Then we were off, enjoying a remarkably smooth ride in the big vehicle. "I had the suspension customized when we got this car. It's built on a truck chassis and right out of the showroom it rode like a buckboard. I carry a pretty heavy load of equipment in it, and that helps to smooth out the ride, too. If I go out to look at a problem, I've got about everything here that the deputies might need in addition to what's in their cars. Some people think it's an awful lot to haul around all the time, but it might save a life some day. 

"When we get out here to the woods, I've got a Kevlar vest that I'll help you to adjust. Then there's an AR in 308 caliber that I'd like you to haul along. It's got selective fire and we've got some thirty round magazines for it. I'll carry a standard full belt, so we'll have all the hardware that we might need if they've sent in replacements to work at that site. I'm hoping we can look it over before they do that, and figure out what's going on there, but I don't want to blunder into a bunch of guys and be outgunned. I'll die some day, but I plan to do it at home."

We entered the forest along the trail the deputies had marked out with their yellow crime scene tape. I showed the Sheriff the clearing where we'd set up our picnic, and the place where Newt was standing when he was killed. There was a trail that led straight to the work site, but when we got close I led him off to the right, to the place where I'd stopped and observed before I shot the fat guy. We knelt there for five minutes, just watching to see if anybody would show up. Then we went to the edge of the clearing and stopped again to look and listen. Finally we walked right in and took a hike around the perimeter to look at everything there from different angles. We found where a truck with dual rear wheels had parked repeatedly. It wasn't clear where their driveway opened onto a real road, and the Sheriff mentioned that he'd have the place looked at from the air by the state police and photographed so we could map it out.

Then we walked in, following the many footprints from the truck to where I shot the fat man. Then came the shocker. We went to the place where he'd loaded the cart so I could show the Sheriff the bricks, and they were gone! 

The cart tracks were plain enough, running from there to the truck, but nowhere else, so we concluded that someone had come there and trucked out the cartload of bricks and the cart with it. But what did it all mean? How could there be so much value in an adobe brick, or a reasonable facsimile of it, that would demand all this secrecy, security, and labor? "I'd sure like to get my hands on one of those bricks," said the Sheriff.

I hadn't said much since we discovered that the cart was gone. I kept looking at the dirt that was piled haphazardly here and there. It didn't look right. I squatted down and picked up a handful and let it trickle through my fingers. "Look at this stuff. It didn't come from here. Do we have an evidence bag with us?"

"Yeah, a few of them right here in my pocket. How many do you want?"

"Three, if you've got that many. Thanks." I took out my little pocket notebook and made a crude sketch of the immediate area. Then I scooped up a handful from a pile of tan colored dirt. It was much lighter than the black forest soil, and there were no plant fibers in it. I dumped it into a bag, which I sealed and labeled with my initials, the date, and a capital A. I marked the location on my sketch with an A. Then I did the same thing in another place, where the tan dirt hadn't been dug up, and repeated the process, marking this one B. Finally I picked up a stick off the ground and dug out some of the forest soil away from the tan stuff and bagged it, labeling it C. 

I straightened up and showed the Sheriff what I had in mind. "The ground in this clearing is fairly level. You can see that this patch here has patches of this light-colored soil scattered on it, and there are a lot of footprints so somebody's been busy here. I think it was covered with the light colored soil and it looked like that patch over there until somebody shoveled the light stuff off." I kept thinking about what it might mean. 

"Sheriff, bear with me for a minute. Imagine that you have thousands of the mysterious bricks to hide, and you truck them in here and lay them out in one layer. If they were like regular bricks, you could lay 400 in a hundred square feet. Look at this area where there's just little bits of the light stuff here and there. Then that area over there where it's a little higher and there's no dark soil peeking through. All together it looks to me like around twenty feet this way and forty that way. That's 800 square feet. Enough space to lay out 3,000 bricks. So you've got them just lying on top of the ground. But what you brought them in here for was to hide them, so you decide to cover them up with dirt. You can't get a truck in here, with trees and big rocks in the way, but there's enough room to bring a cart in. So you haul in a few truckloads of dirt and use the same cart you brought the bricks in with to get it over here. Then guys with shovels spread it over the bricks, filling the spaces between them and covering over the top about an inch deep. You don't want to use dirt that clumps together like the forest floor so you use this stuff that's almost like fine sand. And I know now where I've seen stuff like that. Mine tailings! At the mines they crush rock into a powder as fine as table salt, and some of it looks just like this. It's a useless waste product to the mining company, and they've dumped it into piles that go for miles.

The Sheriff was deep in thought. "We ought to be able to match your samples to the tailings from some mine. I'll bet they made the bricks in the same area. But how can we be sure that this theory of yours is the way it really was?"

"Give me ten minutes." I walked over and got a long handled shovel that had been left leaning against a tree, went to the boundary where the dug out area met the undisturbed area, and started to remove small amounts of dirt. The shovel struck something hard, and I began to worry at it with tip of the shovel until it separated from the light tan soil. I reached down and picked up a brick, just the same light tan color, shook the loose dirt off, and laid it in the Sheriff's hands. I carefully replaced the shovel. Then I took off my shirt to wrap the brick in. I folded the shirt and laid the brick on it, brought the collar and tails up over the ends, then wrapped the rest of the shirt around until only the sleeves were left. I tied the sleeves to secure the bundle, which left just enough sticking out to carry it by.

The Sheriff put the evidence bags into the wide pocket of his jacket and took the brick. As we walked along he said, "This was a good morning's work." We walked a little farther in silence, until he chuckled. "If anybody asks me about your character, I'll tell them you'd give a guy the shirt off your back."

LEARNING TO PLAY HOUSE

Jan was visiting me at my house, with her attention divided between me and the house itself. The house was winning. "Oh, I didn't realize you have three bedrooms. So if we have a boy and a girl they'll both have their own rooms." 

We walked through the whole house, with me making small talk all the way and Jan not hearing a word I said. By the time we got to the kitchen, which has a pretty big pantry in the back corner, I said, "And that's a pantry but I keep the corpses stacked in there," just to see if I got any reaction. 

She was admiring the countertop and mentally putting dishes in this cupboard, pots and pans in that one, figuring out how much frozen food could be put in the freezer of the refrigerator, whether it would be a good idea to replace the old single sink with a double one, whether we'd have room to install a dishwasher, could I add a couple of lights under the upper cupboards to light up the counter, and on and on until she stopped cold and said, "What was that about corpses? What corpses?"

"I was just wondering if you know that I'm here. Did you hear anything I said to you?"

"Well, I heard that. It just didn't register right away." I gently turned her around to face me and pulled her to me for a big hug. "Oh, Jack, I'm just so excited about marrying you and being the best wife in the world for you, and I'm trying to get my mind steered away from being a single schoolteacher to being a working homemaker. It's a big jump, but I'm ready. I've been helping Mom around the house forever, trying to make her life a little easier. So I know how to keep house, although my cooking experience is limited. I'm torn on the subject of children. I love kids and there's nothing I'd like better than to stay home and take care of them, at least until they're in school. But I don't know anything at all about babies. All the children I ever see are in a classroom. I want to be a good mother, do it all the right way. I guess I'll subscribe to Parents Magazine and read some books. Maybe they have a parenting class at the college. Oh, Honey, I'm so anxious to be the good wife that you deserve."

"Don't worry about it. You heard your mother talking about when she and my mom were girls. It didn't sound as if they had a serious thought in their heads until suddenly they were married. And they managed to raise you and me. To tell the truth, you're probably a whole lot smarter than they were. We'll just take it a day at a time, put one foot in front of the other, and we'll learn as we go. I think that's how most young couples do it these days, and probably how they've always done it. It'll work out just fine.

"But speaking about how things will work out, I've been thinking about your mother. What's she going to do when you're out of the house? Can she get by without your contribution to the household budget? Tell me how all that works."

"Okay, here's what I know. She has an annuity that my father purchased for her, and it pays her somewhere around ten thousand a year. She does part time office work for Harold Gossum, the realtor, and takes home about two hundred a week from that, so that's another ten thousand a year. Her big expenses are food and medical insurance. The house is paid for and the taxes are only around five hundred a year. So for now I think she'll get by all right. The uncertainties are how her job will hold up, and what her medical insurance will cost as the premiums go up. We'll just have to keep tabs on her. You know she wants us to have every chance for a happy life together and she'll hate the thought of being a burden on us. She wouldn't want to ask for help until she's a bag lady living in an alley."

"Okay, here's what I've been thinking about. Next door is a vacant lot. It hasn't changed since God put the dirt there. I'm going to see about buying it and doing nothing with it for now. What we could put on it is one of those park models that the trailer parks have. They're the size of a trailer but they're built like a little house. They've got everything that's needed for an apartment, but the kitchen, obviously, is small with a tiny stove and sink and so on. Maybe I could make it an addition to our house, join them together so she could walk out of her apartment and come into the house through the pantry, or something like that. I'll try to get the lot as cheap as I can, some time soon, and sit on it. Then if some time in the next ten years I see a good price on a used park model, I can grab it and let it sit on the lot, and then do the final work of installing it a little at a time. We'd never have a real big expense all at once, and whenever she decides to sell her house and move into something smaller, here it is, waiting for her, with her grandchildren right at the end of the hallway."

"I never even dreamed that you'd be giving all this thought to my mother's future. It seems that every day I see a little more of how you think and feel, and I keep seeing that a lot goes on under the surface. No wonder I love you more every day." There might have been more, but we'd moved the discussion to the living room sofa by then and suddenly we were both struck speechless because our lips and tongues were otherwise occupied. Funny how that happens.

PLANNING A HIKE

The Sheriff called me and asked it I could come to his office right away. Ten minutes later I was in his visitor's chair waiting to see what was on his mind. He came right to the point. "First off, I want you to take as many of my deputies as I can spare, out to the brickyard in the woods. Barring other catastrophes, say early tomorrow morning. Vince will be one of them. He's big and smart and fast, lethal with his hands, and very accurate with a gun. You and he will carry AR's, just like the one you carried when we went out there. The others will be doing some physical labor but I want them to have their pistols on them all the time. I want to get all the rest of those bricks out of there, and back here. We can stack 'em in the second holding cell and lock the door. One of the vehicles that we confiscated in drug arrests is a big, nearly new pickup with four wheel drive. We'll have Timmy drive that in on the driveway that leads to the brickyard, and I'm getting a two wheel yard cart from county maintenance to carry the bricks out to the truck. Any idea how much weight we'll be hauling?"

"You carried that brick out of the woods, any idea what it weighed?"

"Not much. I put it on the postal scale and had it at four pounds including your shirt. So maybe three pounds, net."

"Okay, say there are, oh, between one and two thousand of them there. So a thousand bricks weigh 3000 pounds. Two thousand would be 6000 pounds. So the total will most likely be about 4500 pounds, two and a quarter tons. What can the truck handle?"

"Let's find out. "Becky, can you get me Ralph at the garage, please?"

"He's on. Pick it up."

"Ralph, that pickup we confiscated. How much weight will it carry?" "Oh, really? Well, that's good news. Thanks."

He turned to me with a smile. "It's got overload springs on it. He says three tons on a paved road at highway speed, but less if it's bumping up and down off the road. Sounds like just what we need."

ARMING THE EXPEDITION

My mind was racing ahead to thoughts of a possible battle in the woods. If the bricks were valuable, the bad guys would be ready to fight to defend them. "We know that the bad guys came back after the shootings, so they may have come back since you and I were out there. They might be there when we get there, and they might show up while we're working. These AR's of yours, Sheriff, how well do they shoot to point of aim?"

"Dead on. I've fired a few myself to check."

"And we'll have two of them. How many men will we have?"

"Figure six deputies, plus you."

"Okay, two rifles and five pistols. That'll work. We'll send in four deputies in the truck, including Vince. Coming home, maybe we can have Vince and one other guy ride in the truck bed. It'll be going slow, so the wind won't buffet them too badly. If anybody comes up behind the truck they can take care of them. I'll let the second guy take my AR. How's that strike you?"

"It'll work. So you'll take two deputies in with you through the woods?"

"That's what I'm thinking. The trail through the woods worries me a little. They know all about it. I think we ought to park our vehicle, get out quietly, and spread out and go in low. We can penetrate the woods at different places, and stop and listen. Then we go in as quietly as we can, taking our time. We can stop and regroup where you and I watched from, then go in slowly from there. We have plenty of time to get in there, so there's no need to rush. I don't want anybody to go running in and get hurt."




Peril in the Pines Ch. 02



"You're right about that. Look all around, then advance a little. Then look again and advance again. That's how we did it in the Marine Corps. You'll have radio contact with the men on the ground with you, and with the truck, so you can abort the mission if it looks too dangerous."

"What about aerial photographs? Did you get any?"

"This afternoon. We take off at two and fly for an hour. The state boys tell me they can have prints back to me by four or five. You can go home and I'll call you when I have the prints in my hands. When you come in I'll have Tim and Vince here to meet you and we'll all go over them together. I'll order pizza."

"Okay. One more detail. Can you deputize me for this mission? I'd hate to get killed and not have any death benefit, or be hospitalized and not have any insurance to pay the bills. It could wipe out my whole nest egg."

"I've already been working on that. Becky, can you come in here with that paperwork for Jack?"

"Here you are. And here's the oath. I'll witness."

"John Olson, do you solemnly . . ." and so on for about a hundred words.

"I do."

"Sign here and here. And then over here. On this line, name your beneficiary. Then sign here. Becky, you sign there. All right, that's all there is to it. Congratulations, Chief Deputy Olson. Welcome aboard!"

"What? Chief Deputy? I thought you were trying to hire a Senior Deputy. Fill me in."

"Here's how it was. All this had to be authorized by the county supervisors. They're a good bunch of guys, but they don't simply rubber stamp everything I want to do. I thought about getting their approval for a Senior and then going back to get authorization for a Chief later, and I decided it was easier to go over that hurdle once than twice. They don't care what the title is, they care about law and order and safety for our citizens. So I just changed my mind, that's all. Another thing, while I was thinking all this out, I called Marilyn Miller and we talked about you. You owe her a big kiss. Now you go home and I'll call you when I've got the photos."

I left with my feet barely touching the ground. I stopped at the flower shop and bought two bouquets and headed for Jan's house. She was just pulling into the driveway when I arrived. She greeted me with a kiss, and then I reached into the Jeep and pulled out the flowers. "What's the big occasion?"

"Wait till we get in the house and get your mother."

"All right. Come on in. Mom?"

"Right here, honey. Oh hello, Jack. What's all this?"

"Here are some flowers for you, Mrs. Miller. And here's a big kiss. Thank you for clinching my new job for me."

"Oh, I just had a little talk with an old friend. I understand he's a friend of yours now, too."

"He sure is! Jan, these are for you. I told you our engagement depended on my getting a job. Now that I've got one, it's official. These flowers are to celebrate our engagement, and a ring will follow in good time. You don't need to genuflect or curtsy. You can just admire the flowers and say, 'Thank you, Chief Deputy.'"

Both of the ladies screamed in unison, "Chief Deputy!" Jan came over and hugged me, and her mother hugged us both at once. I felt that my prayers had indeed been answered, and the only other thing I could have wanted was a photographer to record the happiness on our faces.

SYNCHRONIZING OUR WATCHES

I caught a quick nap before getting dressed for the mission. Then with my clothes and combat boots on, I lay down again on top of the covers and drifted in that beautiful world between asleep and awake. It was strange: One part of my mind could hear sounds from outside, yet I was dreaming a very pleasant dream at the same time. Jan was looking at me through the bouquet of flowers that I'd brought her. At first she looked very serious, almost stern, but then she gradually smiled, not just with her mouth or eyes but with her whole face. She was just about to tell me something when the phone rang. The Sheriff had the aerial photos.

I timed the trip from my house to the Sheriff's station: seven minutes. Add a minute to park and walk to the interview room. I walked in to find the Sheriff looking at photographs with the deputy who'd come out after the shooting, and another one who looked like a heavyweight wrestler. I mean he was big! His hair was dark with a little gray, his face intelligent, and he was sort of graceful when he moved. Think of Brad Garrett without the one liners and you'll be close.

"Hi, Jack," the Sheriff said. "You already met Tim, and this is Vince. 

I put my hand in Vince's and it disappeared from sight. His deep voice said, "I'm real proud to meet you, Chief. That was one hell of a job you did out there in the woods."

"Thanks, Vince. It was just survival. If those bozos had hurt a hair of Jan's head I'd have never forgiven myself." I glanced at the photos and asked, "Do we know how to get in there with a truck, Tim?"

"Piece of cake, really," said Tim. The dirt track isn't even a mile long. But they've been clever. The entrance isn't straight in. See how it angles off the road here and then turns way around to the right, so from the road it just looks like trees and more trees. I've driven right past there and never even spotted it."

The Sheriff explained, "Timmy knows these roads better than anybody around here. With him at the wheel we don't need a GPS. Whenever my sciatica acts up and it hurts too much to drive, he's my driver. I have to treat him to a cup of coffee or he takes me over all the potholes and big bumps and tells me I need to get the roads fixed."

"Can you show me how these photos fit into the map, Tim, so I can get a feel for what we'll be doing?"

"Sure can. We ought to mark it out on his map, anyway. This road is Main Street here in town. It becomes Myers Road. Then here we turn left onto Racebrook Road, and it twists and turns, and here's that funny little jog in the road. See, it shows up on the photo there. From there it's about half a mile to where this dirt driveway goes off to the left."

"Okay, wait a bit. From right here in our parking lot to that point is how far?"

"Well, it's about eight miles out to Racebrook. Then to the jog is another five and a half. So to the start of the track it's fourteen miles."

"So at thirty miles an hour it would take roughly a half hour. But how fast can you run it going out?"

"Fifty on Myers, forty on Racebrook."

"Roughly forty five average for fourteen miles. Call it twenty minutes, give or take. Now here's what I'm trying to get at. I'll have two deputies with me. We'll go in on foot, and we're not running in. We'll take every bit of a half hour to get to the brickyard, as you named it, Sheriff. We don't know what to expect there, so we want to look around before you enter that driveway. Once you're on that, you're not only committed, you're a sitting duck. So give us five minutes on site before we radio you to come on in. If we meet resistance that five minutes gives us time to neutralize it or retreat and abort the mission.

"Now back to the arithmetic. How long to get from here to where my Jeep was parked the other day, Tim?"

"What are you driving?"

"Sheriff, what do you want us to take?"

"Use the big SUV."

"That'll take about thirty minutes."

"All right, now I'll throw in a wrinkle. Does the railroad track show up in the photos?"

"Yeah, in these two over here."

"Where I parked the Jeep was on the south side of the railroad, where we could walk straight in. Tomorrow I'd like to park across the track from there. First question, how do I get over there? Second question, how do I know when I'm in the right spot?" 

"Look at the map. I'll put a dot where your trail into the woods starts. Now look back at Miller Road. This is where you drove off to go along the railroad right of way to the dot. But instead you'll go over the tracks and follow around this curve, and get off here. Let me mark it. Then over here to the railroad and along to the east like this. About half a mile. Now back to the photo. See this funny little thing? I doesn't look like much in an overhead shot, but it's a whistle post, about six feet high, white on the top half with a black W on the east side of it. Park there. That's right across from your trail with the yellow tape on it. In fact, you can see some of the tape in the photo."

"Okay, so let's allow forty minutes from here to where we'll park. Sheriff, do we know who's going to be with me?"

"Hard to tell. But most of the boys know that area pretty well. They've all parked out there with their girlfriends. You'll see so many tire tracks that you'll think it's a parking lot."

"Yeah," said Vince, "Every unwed mother in town got pregnant where you're going to turn to run along the track."

"Okay. So we'll take forty minutes to drive and park, thirty minutes to walk and sniff, and five minutes to sterilize the brickyard area. We'll be ready for you to turn in at the driveway seventy-five minutes after we leave here. And Tim, you'll take twenty minutes to get to the start of the driveway. So you'll need to leave the parking lot here fifty-five minutes after I do. Everybody agree?" Affirmative nods and grunts everywhere.

"Now Sheriff, I'm worried about the length of time we'll have to be on site. Did you get the lawn cart?"

"Yes. It's in the truck already."

"Does it leave room for two men to sit with their backs to the cab?"

"Yes, plenty of room for them to stretch their legs."

"Can you get another cart like that one?"

Vince spoke up. "Yes. The guys who take care of the courthouse have two of them, and the guys at the high school have two more."

"Could we fit three of them in there and still have room to sit?"

Vince answered again. "We ought to put 'em upside down, going across the truck bed. Can we go out there right now and see if it'll fit? If so, we can put three in there easily."

We walked out the back door into the parking lot, which was brightly lit by a farm style floodlight way up on a pole. Vince popped the tailgate and sort of leaped up into the truck. I'd never seen anybody get into a pickup like that. He picked up the cart with one hand, flipped it upside down, and set it down crosswise. It just made it with an inch or two to spare. "Look here: this is about where it'll go with two more behind it. I might have to bend my knees, but other than that we'll make it just fine."

"Good. Then let's call somebody away from their supper to get us two more carts. Who can do that?"

Tim said, "I know one of the guys from the courthouse real well. I'll go and take care of it right now."

"One last item. We'll need two shotguns with buckshot. Do we have them handy, Sheriff?"

Under his breath Vince muttered, "Now you're talkin' my language."

"Sure, Jack. I've got the armory key in my desk. Is that all of it?"

"I think that'll do it. All agreed?" Nods all around.

The Sheriff left to get the key. Tim was already out in the main office on the phone. Vince turned and put his hand on my shoulder. "I've been in this outfit for ten years and I've never seen a meeting like that. Is that how you did it in Afghanistan?"

"Just exactly like that. Anything less and the whole mission's a crapshoot. Let's make a pact right now: I won't gamble with your life and you won't gamble with mine. Ever. Agreed?"

"You bet!" He paused. "Oh, that's an unfortunate choice of words. But you know what I mean."

"Now look, Vince, are you comfortable with riding in the truck bed as a tail gunner?"

"I think it's brilliant. How'd you like to be trapped in the cab, not knowing what's coming at your back? Up in back I can see what's coming and do something about it."

"Okay. Now make sure you pick a good gunfighter to partner with you there. And take both of the shotguns and lay 'em down one on each side, where each of you can grab one in a second. You have to hope there's no traffic on the road if the shooting starts. Shooting from truck to truck is tricky, and you'll want full auto or the shotgun. We had a 50 cal machine gun on top of our Humvee, and even with that it wasn't easy."

"That gives me an idea. If they're in a sedan or a half ton, I can stand up with my feet apart, leaning back onto the roof of the cab, and shoot down into their windshield with the shotgun. Or with the AR on full auto. Give 'em something to think about."

"Another tip. Tell Tim to hold his speed down to thirty. If he's tearing along you'll bounce around so bad that you'll have a tough time getting off a straight shot. Thirty is plenty fast enough. They'll have a speed advantage over a loaded truck anyway, so count on firepower, not horsepower."

"Good advice. I never thought about that. Thanks."

"I'll see you here at six. We'll have our full crew assembled by seven ten. I'll leave at seven twenty. You'll leave fifty-five minutes later, at eight fifteen. If you start getting shot at while you can still back out of that driveway, back out and radio me so we can pull out as well. If you get a quarter mile in and start getting shot at, either run over 'em or hunker down and use the truck as a shield and shoot it out with 'em. Hand out the shotguns to a couple of good shooters. They're great in a close ambush. Tear a guy's head right off. Keep me advised on the radio so we can give you whatever support you need. We can run down the road and hit 'em from behind, but if we do I'll tell you so you don't shoot us by mistake. Agreed?"

"Yes sir. Now look, while it's just us here, I'm very glad you came aboard, Jack. I mean Chief. I think we're going to have a good time working together. I'll see you at six."



Peril in the Pines Ch. 03



LET'S PLAY HOUSE

I went home that night satisfied that we had planned everything we could. I had warned Jan that I'd be getting home late, and when I pulled the Jeep into my driveway I was pleased to see her car already there. I parked the Jeep next to it, and walked in to find her waiting for me in the living room with a glass of wine poured for me and soft music playing. She greeted me with, "Hi, Honey. I saved you the best seat in the house, right next to me."

"I'll be right there," I said. "Just give me about two minutes." I took my gun, well actually the Sheriff's gun, out of the holster and laid it on my nightstand. Then I slipped out of my pants and put on the pants of some nice looking pajamas that I saved for special occasions. And this occasion, I thought, might be the most special of all. My shirt went on top of the pants on a chair, to be worn in the morning, and I slipped on a T shirt that proclaimed "God is great, and I'm not bad!"

I came out and sat down, to be greeted with a very serious kiss. When we came up for air Jan was sitting crosswise on my lap, although I had no recollection of how she got there. Her arms were around my neck and angling down my back, and you couldn't have wiggled a putty knife between us. "Thanks, Sweetie, I needed that."

She backed off a few inches and reached down to the coffee table to hand me my wine glass. It was a White Zinfandel, fruity and sweet, and somehow it was exactly the right thing for me right then. "Hard meeting?" she asked.

"No, pretty good, actually. I gave two of the guys a sample of anticipating and planning when they're getting ready to do something. They're good guys, and they'll catch on with time. When the bad guys are playing for keeps, you have to control the situation so the good guys win."

"And you know how to do that?"

"Yes, and I intend to teach every one of the deputies to think that way. But they won't learn it overnight, and I have to keep reminding myself of that."

"And now you're home for the night. Time to shed the cares of the day and relax with someone you love. Someone you want to hold close. Know anybody like that?"

I set the wine glass down and pulled her right up against me tight. I had to force myself to ease off with my arms. I needed her so much that I might hurt her, squeezing too tight. "Oh Jan, it feels so good to have you here with me. I hope you don't have to hurry away."

"Not as long as you want me here with you. Ever. There's nothing in the universe that's more important to me than you, and your wants, and your needs. I knew you were up to your eyeballs in something important, and you'd need to relax tonight so you could be at your best tomorrow."

I started to explain that I couldn't explain, and she interrupted me. "No, you don't have to tell me about it. I know you have to keep some things secret in your job, but I can sense what you're feeling, did you know that? I'm not a mind reader, I'm a woman in love, and we have special powers."

"Then do you know what I need right now?"

"I could bet it would start with taking all our clothes off. Why don't we pick up where we left off out in the woods, when we were so rudely interrupted?" To add emphasis she grabbed the bottom of my T shirt and lifted it over my head, dragged it off my arms, and threw it across the room. "Your turn"

I pulled her shirt out of her slacks and did the unbuttoning act, pushed it off her shoulders, and pulled the short sleeves down her arms. Then her shirt joined mine. The bra was next and I made short work of that, gradually enlarging the pile on the floor. Then it was time to pull her tight up against me while our tongues enjoyed a little workout together.

She leaned back a little to say something important, and I freed up a hand to pay homage to her beautiful breasts and tasty looking nipples. It turned out that her earth shaking remark was "Aaaaahhh." Her eyes closed and I ducked my head down for a taste. Even though her nipples had already become as erect as little fingertips, in my mouth they stiffened more, and I sucked in as much of each breast in turn as I could. As I let up, she smiled at me and said, "I wondered if you'd keep sucking me into your mouth only my legs were sticking out."

"No, I can't get you inside me, as much as I'd love to. But I can get inside of you, at least partway. Maybe we should go into the bedroom so I can show you how it's done."

"I can't wait."

"Now just a minute before we go any further. I know you're very religious. How do you feel about premarital sex?"

"Well, I've researched the subject. In Biblical days, engaged couples had all the rights to each other that married people had. The engagement was when they committed themselves to each other, and they moved in together and acted just as if they were married. The wedding, which could come any time after that, was like a drunken celebration combined with a business meeting. Gifts were exchanged, including the bride's dowry that her family paid the groom to take her off their hands. So I have no scruples about making love, because we've committed ourselves to each other in the presence of a witness. Now that's settled. I went to see the doctor and got started on the pill, so that answers your other question before you even ask it. Now, remember that song that asks for a little less talk and a lot more action?"

We got onto my king size bed and for the next two hours we were so involved with each other that our bodies seemed to have merged into one. It was passionate and wild, it was slow and tender. It was simply the physical expression of our feelings. And fast or slow, hard or soft, it was intense, because that's how our feelings were.

At last we rolled onto our backs, gasping for breath. "Can you stay the night?"

"Yes. I have my clothes in the next room and my toiletries and makeup, so I can go straight from here to work."

"I'll have to get a bigger mirror for you to use."

"No need. I set up my vanity table in there, along with my padded stool."

"What's your mother going to think about this?"

"Who do you think helped me move all my stuff?"

"Wow! You mean you're all moved in? Oh, this has gotta be the best day of my life!"

The last faint words that came out of Jan's mouth, almost in a whisper, were, "Mine, too!" The last thing I remember was that she rolled onto her side facing me and laid an arm over me. Oh, we slept well that night.

BACK TO EDEN

Everything went according to plan next morning at the Sheriff's Office. At seven twenty I rolled out in the SUV, with Harold next to me and Doug in the back seat. They were a study in contrasts. Both of them were an inch short of six feet tall. Harold had a barrel chest and was thicker through than Doug, who was wiry and quick. Harold's hair was sandy with a slight reddish tinge. He was clearly at ease in our rustic surroundings, and had confided to me that he grew up on a farm and went out hunting deer any time that he had a few vacation days left when the season rolled around. Doug was a city boy, street smart and alert to the slightest sound but not jumpy. I figured I had a couple of good commandos with me, and as our walk in the woods drew nearer I wondered what we'd find there but I wasn't worried.

We got off the road as Tim had directed and I found the turn through some scrubby bushes by following a whole lot of tire tracks. We had a broad, smooth avenue to drive on, where the Burlington Northern guys had graded the dirt to a gradual slope away from the trackbed. The rails were much higher than we were, several feet higher than the roof of the SUV. Half a mile in, there was the whistle post, as promised. I went beyond it and made a U turn to park facing west, ready for a quick exit. We got out and grabbed our stuff. Before we started walking, I gave each of the guys a key to the doors of the SUV, and had them try them. Then I laid the ignition key on the floor mat almost under the driver's seat, and showed them where it was. 

I locked the SUV and gave them their marching orders. "If we just go right up into the woods in single file, walking along the marked path, any bad guys patrolling the area can pick us off easily and we'll all go home in body bags. So here's what we'll do. I'll go first, cross the tracks here, and go into the woods ten yards west of the path. As I go up the slope to the woods, I'll crouch down so I'm not making a very visible target. Doug, you come across next, a minute behind me. Cross about twenty yards to the west of me and do just what you saw me do. In the woods you won't be able to go straight because there are too many bushes and small trees in there, so zigzag as much as you have to but keep moving generally parallel to me. About every twenty or thirty yards I'll find a place where I can stand up, and you can see me. If we've drifted apart, then as you advance try to get back within twenty yards of me. Got all that?"

"Yeah, I've got it."

"Now Harold, you do the same except you'll be twenty yards to the east of me. Understand?

"Yeah. So we're going in spread out so they can't get us all at once."

"That's it exactly. Now here's the next part. As we go on, you'll see a big clearing about two hundred yards ahead. That's our objective. About thirty yards before it, I'll signal you to assemble on me. Here's the signal." I demonstrated the hand circling over my head. I'll stay where I am, and you come to me. Don't hurry. Be as quiet as you can. Stay low. When we're together we'll advance a little bit and look all around. Depending on what we see, we'll plan our next advance. Got that?" They both agreed. "All right, here I go."

I walked up to the tracks, gradually crouching lower and lower so I could see across the tracks but no higher than that. Then I sprinted across the tracks and down the slope to where I'd parked the Jeep on the day of the shooting. From there it was a trudge up the slope to the trees, in a crouch. I stepped into the woods and, I knew, disappeared from the sight of Harold and Doug. Then I waited, looking all around for any signs of movement or any sounds of a person doing anything at all. Satisfied, I turned and watched Doug imitating me. As soon as he got into the woods I turned the other way and watched Harold. Then I stood up and stayed up until they had seen me. I signaled forward and went back to a crouch as I started to advance.

We took about twenty minutes getting to the rendezvous point, and watched for signs of movement. Then I directed Doug to go to the right, flank the clearing, and wait at the far edge of it. I told Harold to go straight ahead and wait at the near edge of the clearing. I took off to the left, toward the place where the truck had parked.

I whispered into my lapel mike, "See anything?" Both answered in the negative. "Stay back in the shade of the trees, get down low, and get comfortable. You'll be there for up to a half hour. Keep looking all around, including back the way we came."

I poked around enough to assure myself that there was no ambush waiting for our truck. Then I radioed to Tim and Vince to come on in. I did a slow 360 scan and radioed to Harold and Doug to stay put while I went to guide our truck in. I walked to the place where the truck would turn around to back in to be loaded, and I could hear the truck coming in first gear, grunting from one mudhole to the next. I turned to look down the driveway toward the truck, just as three men emerged from the woods onto the rutted dirt and stood looking in the direction of the truck's noise. One had a rifle slung on his back and an old style walkie talkie that he was just bringing up to his head. Another held a rifle down at his side, and the third was bringing his rifle up toward his shoulder. I flipped the selector on the AR to full auto and raised it to my shoulder. I shouted, "Drop your weapons and lie down!" They whirled around and two rifles were being raised to point at me when I let off a burst to take out the three of them. It made a sound like a loud "BRRAAP" that echoed from the forest wall. The three bad guys lay on the dirt, motionless.

From farther down the driveway came two voices screaming. One said, "Holy shit!" and the other said, "I'm outta here!" These utterances were followed by sounds of bodies crashing though the underbrush, heading some unknown direction but away from where I was.

Vince radioed "You all right, Chief?"

"Just great, Vince. When you come to the three bodies in the road, take their weapons and have the bodies dragged into the bushes."

Next I walked to the three bodies and looked at them. Nothing remarkable about any of them. The soles of their work boots were all badly worn, so I knew they were around the bottom of the organization chart of whatever bunch of criminals we were up against. As I stood there, the walkie talkie crackled and a scratchy voice said, "Joe! What the hell was that?"

I picked up the boxy instrument and pushed the talk button. "That was the Hopi County Sheriff's Office. Joe won't answer your calls any more. Ever. Neither will the two guys with him, and two more just ran away. You are surrounded, outnumbered, and outgunned. This is your chance to come out onto the driveway and surrender. If you threaten to harm our deputies you will be killed." I took the walkie talkie with me as I went back to the place where the truck would have to start backing in. I stepped back from the main track and on into the woods where I could see without being seen. It was time to consolidate our force. I said into my lapel mike, "Harold and Doug, walk slowly to the truck parking place. Stay over to the south side of the clearing. I'll tell you when to stop." I got two affirmative replies and soon I could see them walking toward me. As they approached I stepped out to where they could see me and waved them into the spot where I had been standing. I listened to the truck continuing to approach, and as Harold and Doug were just about up to me the truck abruptly stopped. That should mean they'd come to the three corpses. I allowed half a minute for the guys to get out and then got on my lapel mike to Vince. "All of you stay out except Tim, and walk along surrounding the truck, like the Secret Service. I'll meet you at the end of the driveway, where Tim has to back around into the loading spot. Got that?" He did. "We've got enemy around us and I don't know how many or where. Keep your eyes moving."

I heard the truck start up again and I walked out to take a look. Everything was going as I had ordered so I walked down to join Vince and his crew. I walked with them and told them, "Start circulating around the truck. Different guys, go different directions. Walk fast and then slow. Stop and start. Crouch down and stand up. Don't give the enemy an easy target. And don't get run over. Watch everywhere."

Vince nodded and added a few pointed remarks to a couple of his guys who apparently thought we were being overly dramatic. "Good job with the AR down there, Jack. That spot where they were standing was perfect for blasting us good as we came around that last turn. We'd have had nowhere to go. They'd have picked us off as we got out of the truck. I don't know if these guys realize how close that was."

"Thanks" I replied. "I like this gun. Better than we had in the Army, smooth as silk. Did you grab their rifles?"

"Yes, and two boxes of ammo."

"Great. Pick the most experienced hunter and issue him one of the rifles. I expect some bad guy may play sniper pretty soon from behind a tree and I want him taken out."

I walked up to the driver's window and kept pace with the truck. "Tim, when you come to the end, shut off the truck, bring the keys, and walk with me for a minute. Got that?"

"Right, Jack. Hey, that was a close call for us where you popped those three guys. Thanks for saving our skins."

"That's what I'm here for, Tim. Did you leave that marked up map with the Sheriff?"

"Yeah. I imagine he's going nuts back there trying to guess where we are now."

"Right. I'm coming around to the other side to hop in and use your fancy radio."

As I slid into the passenger seat, Tim handed me the mike and set the selector knob to the secure channel. "Becky, is the Sheriff in the building?"

"Right here," came back the Sheriff's voice.

To Tim I said, "Close the windows." Then, to the Sheriff, "We met no opposition coming in on foot but I had to kill three guys who were about to shoot up our truck and our guys in it. I used their radio to order an immediate surrender but got no takers. Two other guys ran off, and they'll probably try to hitchhike down on Myers Road. I don't have a description, but they're scared shitless. Maybe somebody can pick 'em up.

"I'm pretty sure the enemy will try to stop our truck as we exit with the payload. We'll need some help. Can you get state troopers to drive up Racebrook Road to where this dirt driveway starts and then walk in, preferably with full auto capability? And can they run interference for us on the road when we exit here? You got that so far?"

"Sure, Jack." I could hear him chuckle. "I took a leaf from your book and anticipated that. Troopers are standing by. Anything else?"

"Yes. We're not going back to Myers Road. We'll go north on Racebrook the long way around to the railroad and then take the north side of the tracks going west. The SUV's over there, and we'll pick that up. I expect the enemy to set up an ambush at the jog on Racebrook, so we'll try to avoid them, but it might be a good place to catch somebody."

"Good plan. How long before you exit?"

"I'll call again in half an hour and give you an estimate based on the first few cartloads."

"Good. Keep me posted."

I turned to Tim. "You heard all that. How do we get to the railroad going north on Racebrook?"

"Racebrook ends at Three Trees Road. We go left on that and the railroad's about two miles. From here, it's probably six miles."

"Pretty good road or what?"

"Not bad. Some rough spots, not many. The worst will be getting out of here on this awful driveway."

By this time we were at the end. Tim shut off the truck and we got out. I came around and showed him exactly where we needed the truck parked and what the ruts and bumps were like along the way. Vince already had the tailgate down and guys were pulling out the carts and shovels and heading to the brickyard. "Tim, how's the truck after all that crawling along in low gear?"

"Real good. It's got the towing package and that includes extra cooling. We're okay."

"All right, back it in and we'll get to work."

REENTERING THE REAL WORLD

The brick removal went pretty well. After trying several arrangements, Vince had two carts in operation and two guys on shovels. They could dig the bricks out faster than we could haul them to the truck and load them. As an empty cart showed up, the cart man and shovelers would drop everything to get it loaded and on its way. We had extra shovels, so if a cart man had to wait he'd grab a shovel and help dig. At the truck, the cart man and another guy put the bricks from the cart onto the tailgate, and a guy up on the truck would move them forward and make a nice, even layer of bricks working from the cab back to the tailgate.

Tim was running one of the carts. I told him to pause after every load and take a look at the rear springs of the truck. I figured that once we were down to the overload springs, we'd better stop and get out with what we had. When I guessed that we had about a third of what we'd drive out with, I called the Sheriff again. "After we got a system worked out, we've worked for thirty minutes. I figure we'll leave here with about three quarters of the bricks that are here on the ground, about an hour and a quarter from now, so you can use that time to coordinate with the troopers. I suggest that they post a car with the flashers going at the corner of Racebrook and Myers as a decoy. How does that sound?"




Peril in the Pines Ch. 03



"I like it. I'll pass that along."

"We'll be leaving a bunch of bricks behind, and the enemy will come back to get them, so it'll give us a good chance to catch them and get those bricks, too."

"I'll get on it as soon as you hang up. Is that all?"

"Yes. I'll call you when we get outta here."

The digging and loading of the bricks continued went along smoothly until Tim called a halt and we put the equipment aboard and got set for the ride out. "The carts are on board," Vince reported, "Do we want the shovels?"

"Yeah. Bring 'em. Let those crooks get their own damn shovels. Oh, Vince, open the left rear door and bring out that box. Yeah, that's the one. Put it in the middle up against the front of the truck bed."

"What's in it, Chief?" asked Vince.

"Some firebricks. They look enough like the mystery bricks to make the enemy look twice. If you run out of ammo or are bogged down, start tossing them at the enemy's windshield. So plan A is we get in the truck and drive home. Plan B is you shoot the bastards. Plan C is you make it hard for them to follow us real close by throwing firebricks at 'em. I want those guys to think they're the real thing, worth thousands, so they'll want to pick 'em up. Maybe cause enough confusion to slow 'em down a bit. Okay?"

"Brilliant!" said Vince with a grin.

"Everybody on board?"

Tim looked around and reported, "We're all here." I climbed into the front passenger seat. Tim and I were in front, three in the back seat, and Vince and Harold up in the truck bed as tail gunners. "Let's go."

As we made the turn to head down the dirt track, a rifle shot from off to our left sent a bullet across the hood, in front of the windshield. The bullet plowed a groove in the sheet metal and ricocheted off to the right with that twanging sound you hear on TV westerns. Before I could say a thing, Harold was standing up and delivering two full auto bursts in the direction the shot had come from. I shouted to Tim, "You know the truck and the road. Get us out to Racebrook as fast as you can without killing us all."

The Sheriff had said that the troopers were in control of our exit to Racebrook Road, and when we came around a bend a hundred yards before the final zigzag, I spotted a campaign hat. "Look at that!" I yelled. The guys all went crazy yelling and cheering. I said to Tim, "Let me off to talk to that trooper. Keep going slow and I'll catch up to you on Racebrook."

The trooper said they had four cars to escort us, two in front and two in back. He looked impressive, tall and straight, with sharp creases in his uniform and that boy scout looking hat sitting perfectly square on his head. But the finishing touch was the bag hanging below his left arm with spare magazines for the AR he had slung in front of him, Army style, on his right side. Everything about him spoke of competence. After all the stress I'd been under since six in the morning, I could have kissed him. My final words to him as I broke away to run for the truck were, "You'll never know how glad we were to see you!"

We picked up the SUV and made it back to the Sheriff's Office without incident. Tim backed the truck up to the back door, and all the guys pitched in to unload the bricks and wheel them to the holding cell where they'd stay for a while. The troopers put their cars in a semicircle around the truck, and stood guard with their AR's slung in front, ready to fire. Vince had the unloading detail in hand, so I went into the office and reported to the Sheriff. He waved me to a chair after introducing me to Sergeant Duffy, the commander of the detail of troopers.

"Sheriff, Sergeant, roughly a third of the bricks are still out there in the woods. There's an enemy presence right there, has been all day, with some authority figure right there in command. He's the one who talked on their walkie talkie and I talked back to him and told him to surrender. Those woods are thick, and I never got even a fleeting glimpse of anybody other than the three that I shot. By now they're probably starting to get the other bricks out of there. If you want that walkie talkie of theirs, it's on the floor in the front of our truck."

"Already taken care of," said the Sheriff. "Now you sit back and tell us what happened. We both have our recorders ready."

"Okay, here's how it went," I said, and I kept talking for about ten minutes, first giving an overview, then going back through it with details, and finally adding some comments about the performance of the deputies.

Sergeant Duffy commented at the end, "That was quite an operation, Chief. Our people will pick up those three bodies. Considering the risks, you did well to bring everybody back in one piece. We'll look around and see if Harold's full auto bursts hit anybody. The bullets in the tree trunks will show us where to look. It's clear to me that all the kills connected to this brickyard adventure from day one have been defensive in the face of hostile actions, and that's what my report will say. Somebody may want to question you back at headquarters, but it's all routine, and you won't have any trouble over it. I'll come back here in a day or two to record a backup interview with Vince. He's a good witness and we all know him. I'm sure that's all the information we'll need to complete our file.

"Now that you've been through all this, do you have any insight into what this whole thing is all about?"

"Only conjecture. These bricks must be worth a fortune. They must have something valuable inside of them. I think that the outside is exactly the same material as the light tan dirt that we took two samples of the other day. It looks to me like mine tailings. 

"Here's what I think. Those bricks were made at an abandoned mine. You remember that German guy who was using the tailing material at the old mine west of town tp make lightweight building blocks? His operation was set up in buildings from the old mining company that had quit the site. Now suppose somebody had something very valuable, like diamonds, and they found a way to make lightweight bricks with a package of the precious stuff in the middle of each one. They could have an operation sort of like the German's outfit. To stash the bricks, they would have picked a spot away from the mine, but not too far, so to find the right mine I'd work backward, starting at the brickyard in the woods and doing a spiral search from there. 

"The employees who put the valuable stuff into the bricks would have no idea where they went to, and the ones who buried the bricks would have no idea what was in them or where they came from. The transportation crew could haul the bricks out of the mine to the woods at night, and haul the dirt out to cover them during the day, without ever knowing there was anything special about the bricks. I'd guess that it would take only a few weeks to make all those bricks and hide them in the woods.

"Trying to kill us and protect the bricks today probably took more men than any other thing they did, so I'd guess they brought in hired guns from some place away from here, and they wouldn't have known anything about the bricks. Any way you look at it, this is a very well organized operation."

BACK HOME WITH INTERRUPTIONS

After Sergeant Duffy and the troopers had left, the Sheriff said, "So you dusted three guys with the AR on full auto. How'd you like the gun?"

"It was wonderful. Shot to point of aim, action very smooth, fed ammo well. How many of them do you have?"

The Sheriff started to chuckle. "That's a funny story. When we ordered those guns from military surplus they were described as being ten to a crate, and we could order any quantity. So I ordered twenty, expecting two crates. But some supply clerk made a mistake, and what we got was twenty crates, containing two hundred rifles. In a small third world country, we could arm a revolution!" 

We shared a laugh, and it felt good after concentrating so fiercely all day. I asked the Sheriff, "Any problem if I go home early? I've been strung tight since six am and I'm beat."

"Sure. Go ahead. And don't come in before noon tomorrow."

Just then, Vince came into the office. "All put away nice and neat in cell number two, and double locked by Tim and me together. What's next, Chief?"

"That's great, Vince. Get everybody into the squad room. I'll be right in. Do you want to say something to them, Sheriff?"

"You do it, and then at the end I'll just say 'Good job.'" 

I got up and went into the squad room. "Guys, that was absolutely a wonderful job that you all did there. A few special points. First, you all did exactly what you were told, even when it may not have made much sense at the time. Second, you worked hard and fast and you cooperated well to get the job done so we could get out of there. Special attaboys: to Tim, who did a great job of driving in and out under very difficult conditions; to Harold for his lightning fast work with the AR that persuaded the sniper to pack it in; and to Vince, for his calm, positive leadership. Again, my thanks and congratulations to all of you. Sheriff?"

"Boys, I'm proud of all of you. Thank you for pulling it off so well. Now go on home and see your families. You can say that you were on a special assignment and that it was hard and stressful, but don't go beyond that. We still don't know who or what we're dealing with out there. You're dismissed."

The old yellow Jeep never looked so good to me. I climbed in and fired it up and headed home by the quickest route. Well, for a while, anyway. Four minutes into the seven minute trip I decided that the Pontiac behind me was suspicious, so I turned off to the right. Pontiac did the same. I entered a supermarket parking lot. So did the Pontiac. I drove slowly down an aisle as if I were looking for a parking place. So did the Pontiac. I turned up another aisle that lined up with an exit and loitered along, watching the traffic. The street cleared ten seconds before the light at the corner changed, so I waited till it changed and raced out onto the street in a screeching left turn, barely ahead of the stampede of cars that had been turned loose by a green light. I whipped around corners left and right, and made a roundabout tour of the neighborhood, ending up back at the Sheriff's Office. 

I drove in blowing the horn, slid to a stop, leaped out, and got the engine compartment between me and the Pontiac, which was racing in right behind me. I had my pistol in both hands, ready to blast the driver. But he surprised me. He stopped his car and opened his door, but he scooted back around the rear of his car. He was crouched low so I couldn't see him until he sprang out firing at me as he came. Oh, this guy was good, but trying to run and crouch and shoot all at the same time is tough, no matter how good you are, and his shots were spraying around wildly, bullets thudding as they hit the concrete wall of the Sheriff shop behind me. I kept my sights on him until he was coming straight at me, giving me a constant sight picture. Then I got off four shots fast, trying to stop him but spare his head. His momentum carried him forward but his legs stopped cooperating, and he landed on his chest, elbows and face, on a parking lot covered with sharp edged three-quarter inch crushed granite. Ouch! His elbows were slightly bent, and as they hit the ground his arms rotated up at the shoulders, which sent his pistol flying up and ahead, toward me, to land a few inches from my right foot. I picked it up, slid the safety on, and tossed it into the Jeep. 

I was holding my pistol in my left hand, so I transferred it back to a two hand grip and slowly walked around the guy on the ground, but not too close. If he made a hostile move I was ready to empty the magazine into him if necessary. But he didn't move. I hoped I hadn't killed him. Right about then the Sheriff and Vince came running out, and the guy on the ground moaned and moved a little. I called back over my shoulder, "Got your cuffs, Vince?"

"Yeah, I'll take care of him." And he did, with handcuffs behind the back and plastic zip ties binding the ankles together.

The Sheriff said, "Put him in holding cell number one, Vince, and I'll call for an ambulance and an escort." Vince carried him like a rag doll, making it look easy even though I figured the guy at about one-seventy. The Sheriff turned to me with a smile and asked, "Where do you keep finding these guys, Jack?"

I carried the hit man's pistol on a pen thrust through the trigger guard, just like the old Perry Mason shows on TV. I set it on the table in the interview room and sat down. I told the Sheriff, "I'd clear it if I had gloves, but I forgot to take any out to the woods with me."

The Sheriff was filling out the evidence tag. "That's all right. I'll get Henry to do it. Was that guy tailing you?"

"Yeah. I made him after a mile or so. He must have been waiting right around here somewhere. I used a parking lot to get separated from him, but he was almost up to me coming in here. He's very good at his job. Or was. I probably put him into retirement. I tried to spare his head, because I'd like to question him. But maybe you ought to do it. You're good at it. You'll have to coach me on interrogation.

"The whole idea of a hit man coming after me just made me mad. I was having a pretty good day till he showed up. I was starting to relax after being tense all day, and having him show up to try to kill me just seemed like one thing too much. I'm sorry, Sheriff. I'll try to control my anger better."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. He was what, the fourth guy who tried to kill you today? Fifth if you count the sniper. That's a lot for one day. It'd make me testy, too." 

We talked some more, and then I called Jan and asked her to come and pick me up. I left the Jeep in the lot and relaxed on the way home. But that night, I didn't take the gun off my hip until I went to bed.

Jan was very concerned about me. She was so sweet to me, so considerate, that it almost brought me to tears. I tried to tell her what had been going on, without telling her what had been going on. When we got into bed she massaged my neck and back, and all the way down to the muscles in the back of my thighs and calves. She was very good at it, and while she was massaging, we talked.

"In Afghanistan, did your missions make you feel like this?"

"Well, of course they were different, but yes, they gave me a lot of the same feeling. A day's work there might include two or three hours of intense danger, maybe the same amount of moderate danger, and the rest of a twelve hour day was relatively peaceful patrolling. The variety gave us a chance to relax a bit before getting scared again. And we had our Humvee to crawl into, like an armor plated cocoon, safe unless we got blown up. You can just imagine how careful we were to avoid getting blown up. In a way, we got accustomed to having danger all around us. Here I didn't expect it. This is supposed to be a peaceful place. I'm still not over the way you and I were surprised at our picnic in the peaceful pines. So some of this has to do with my expectations, and I'll have to make an adjustment to deal with that."

"How did the other deputies react to the precautions that were new to them? Did they think you were just some kid fresh out of the Army trying to show off, or did they treat you with respect?"

"I guess they respected me, at least to the extent that they did what I said. The idea of anticipation is still new to them. I think that the way they've been operating is to go about their business until somebody takes a shot at them, and then react in a semi panic. The same thing happens in the Army. But that's just not my way to go about it. I believe in thinking beforehand about all the things that can happen to us and taking precautions to prevent us from being hurt by them. And that's what I'm going to teach the deputies. But I expect it to be a long, slow, maybe painful process. The biggest ray of sunshine is Vince. He's a natural for Senior Deputy and he believes in the way I plan a mission. You ought to see the way the guys just automatically do what he says without thinking twice. The Sheriff will support me because he agrees that the deputies need to anticipate and plan better. If he didn't see it my way he'd never have made me Chief Deputy."

"What happened to your plan to come home early? You called earlier to tell me you were leaving right then, but it was nearly an hour later when you called me to come pick you up. Did something happen?"

"Yes, just as I was leaving something came up that I needed to take care of. It was an unintended consequence of the things we were doing today out in the woods, that's all. I took care of it, but I had to do it right away so I didn't have a chance to call you until afterward. I'm sorry if it was confusing for you. It was an unusual situation and I doubt that it'll happen again."

"How will you get to work tomorrow if you're going in late, after I've left?

"I'll call and get one of the guys to pick me up. No prob."

We went off to sleep that night in each other's arms. The cares of the day out in the woods slipped away as if they had never happened. My last thought was that every way I looked at it, I was the luckiest man in the world. I was lying in a soft bed, warm and dry, living in the world of my choosing, holding the woman I loved. It just doesn't get any better than that!



Peril in the Pines Ch. 04



BACK TO WORK WITH INTERRUPTIONS

I sort of woke up when Jan was getting ready for work, then dozed until 9:30, when I sat up in bed, ready for action. I grabbed the bedside phone and called the Sheriff. "How'd you sleep?" he asked.

"Soundly, with no bad dreams or anything. I guess my mind was busy processing everything that I'd learned from leading that raid, and when things are quiet I'd like to talk it over with you. I think I've got a few insights that I didn't have before. What's happening?"

"Pretty quiet. Domestic dispute that Gus and Terry are handling. Dog bite that Doug went out to. Two fender benders. Other than that, just burning up a lot of the taxpayers' gas and tires."

"Well, I'll be in soon. Could you have somebody pick me up around 10:30?"

"Sure. This afternoon you've got an appointment with our tailor to get measured for uniforms. What collar device do you want, maple leaf?"

"I'd be embarrassed to show my face above major's leaves. How about backing down to lieutenant's bars?"

"Captain it is. See you in an hour."

I had taken a shower the night before, but I took a short one just to leave me feeling fresh and alert. After I got dressed I had some toast and coffee, and was just washing my plate and cup when Tim drove into the driveway. We exchanged greetings and I got into the shotgun seat and clicked myself into the harness. Our patrol cars have four point harnesses for the front seats to protect our deputies in high speed chases and the like. It's not unusual for county patrol cars to crash into things because the distances are great and quick response to an emergency is important. A lot of patrol cars, especially in big cities, spend most of their useful lives rolling at forty miles an hour or less. Ours, like the state troopers' cars, are doing about seventy on most calls, and nobody has ever repealed the old rule that speed kills. Gunshots aren't the only things that make this a dangerous occupation.

I was starting to tell Tim about my plan to ride along with every deputy for a few days when the radio crackled and Becky's voice said, "Woman in advanced labor at 603 Vincent Terrace. Who can take it?"

Tim didn't hesitate. "I'm two blocks away, Becky. On the way. We'll see how good a midwife the chief is."

"Let me know how it goes, Tim."

In two minutes we pulled up at the house, where a very pregnant young woman was standing on the front porch, clinging to the railing. I jumped out before the wheels stopped turning and ran up to her. "Can you walk to the car, ma'am?"

"If you'll help me." I took her left arm, but just then she shuddered and groaned. Tim sprinted up and took her right arm. "I don't think I can make it," she said. "Baby's gonna come right now." I reached over and opened the front door. Good thing she hadn't locked it. Tim turned her and I caught her arm again as we walked her into the house.

Tim asked, "Is there a bed with a clean sheet?"

The woman had her teeth clenched but she jerked her chin toward a door and we went into what looked like a guest room. Tim yanked the covers back and we helped her onto the bed. I had seen what looked like a linen closet in the hallway so I ran to it and grabbed a stack of clean towels. I was laying one down between her legs when she gave out a screech and her whole body went rigid, every muscle like a piece of rebar. Suddenly I could see the baby's head, and with another strong contraction the head was all the way out and the rest was coming. Tim said, "Let me get it," and he spread a towel across his hands and supported the head in one hand and the shoulders in the other. And then it was all the way out, legs wriggling and a surprisingly large penis waving proudly. I unfolded a beach towel that was soft velour on the colored side, and held it across my arms. Tim set the baby on it, and wrapped the rest of the velour towel around the little fellow. "Ma'am, you have a beautiful little boy here. He looks just perfect. The cord is still attached so this is sort of clumsy, but you can take him and hold him up against you so he gets to know his mommy."

Tim's earpiece was dislodged and hanging on his chest, so I could hear Becky's voice saying, "Ambulance is on the way. Hold on for five minutes and they'll be there to take over. What is it, boy or girl?"

"Boy, medium size, crying a little and wiggling his arms and legs. You can tell the guys that the chief did just great. Maybe the two of can take this up as a side job, and we'll charge a lot less than Doc Barnes."

Becky came back with, "Good job, both of you! And Jack, welcome to the life of a patrol officer."

Tim wiped his hands dry and got his notebook out to get the particulars for his report. The young mother looked up at us and smiled. "Thank you both. You were wonderful."

I stepped back and inhaled deeply, wondering if I could have been holding my breath all that time. "You're welcome. We're here to protect and serve."

I heard the front door open, and then the ambulance crew was in the small room with us. Tim and the ambulance driver noted down the mother's, father's, and baby's names and the time of birth, and we got out of their way and left. I was wearing a yellow shirt, and on the front porch Tim said, "You've got blood smeared on your shirt."

"I'll leave it. It's like a merit badge for my first childbirth. I'm proud of it"

Tim and I came through the back door from the parking lot and Becky called out, "The obstetric unit is here!" 

The Sheriff waved us into his office. "Nice job. Have you done it before, Tim?"

"No, but of course I had the training at the academy. I was afraid my mind would be blank but it all came back to me about the time the head started to show. The chief caught on real quick and we did it all together, just as smooth as if we'd done it before."

I was still excited, my words tumbling over each other. "I never imagined it could happen that fast. From the time the head started out, it was over in a minute. It was all new to me, but the next time I'll be a little more confident. I had two good teachers, Tim and the mother."

"Well, sit down and catch your breath. Every day is different, but nothing builds our image better than delivering a baby. The mother is so afraid for her child that she doesn't even think about herself or the pain that she's in. Becky called the newspaper and they'll do a cute piece for the front page of tomorrow's paper. If we can get one more of these before my annual budget inquisition, we'll sail through and get everything I ask for. And Jack, this is only your second full day on the job. First it's a gang of thugs, then a hit man, and now a baby. You really hit the ground running!"

"That's the best way. It was exciting. I feel as if we participated in a miracle.

"I wanted to run something by you, Sheriff, and it affects you, Tim, so stay for a minute. What I'd like to do is spend a few days riding along with each deputy, to get a feel for the kinds of calls we respond to and get to know the deputies. I thought I'd start with Tim so I can learn the roads and the shortcuts from the local expert, in between childbirths. How does that strike you, Sheriff?"

"Sounds like a good idea to me. You two seem to be a pretty good team already, so it's a good way to start. Any thoughts, Tim?"

"Just fine with me. I'll look forward to it."

"Okay, Tim. You can get back to whatever you were going to do before playing doctor."

After Tim left the Sheriff opened his desk drawer and pulled out my key ring. "You'll need this. You left your keys in the Jeep, which isn't surprising. 

"Troopers laid a trap for the bad guys who were cleaning up the rest of the bricks, just as you predicted they would. Sergeant Duffy congratulates you on your insight. They captured five men including two who were wounded, plus a nice truck and all the rest of the bricks. Their lab is working on a few bricks right now to see what they're made of and what's inside. But we still don't know who runs the operation or what it's all about. If we don't find out how this all started, like with a high dollar theft or whatever, we can't prevent it from happening again.

"Of the three men who died yesterday, two have been identified. The troopers caught the two hitchhikers. So now we have seven prisoners and all of them are identified. The hit man you shot out in our parking lot here has not been identified, and hasn't regained consciousness yet. State CID is working to make sense of how all the known men fit together, to figure out how they were recruited and where, and they hope to learn more from interviews. You get enough guys who each let out a little bit of the truth, and then you fit it together like a puzzle. So that's in the works. The troopers want to talk with you when it's convenient. It'll give you a chance to get to know some of them. 

"Becky will explain about the tailor and the uniforms. 

"Now about the academy. A new class is starting the end of next month. You can attend the classroom lessons, which are usually in the mornings, and any of the afternoon practical exercises that you're interested in. They'll cover some interesting stuff about new devices to make our lives easier, and of course new regulations to make our lives miserable. Do all the driving exercises because we have some real problems here when things get exciting, especially in the winter. And these Fords don't handle like Humvees.

"Okay, that's all that I had for you. Now, what did you want to tell me?"

"First, about the deputies you sent out with me. I know you probably picked the best guys for the assignment, and there may be some others who aren't as good, but I was pleased to see how well they take direction, and how brave they are. Those guys would charge into a lion's den with a pocketknife. And they aren't afraid of hard work, either. If a guy with a shovel got ahead of the guys hauling and loading, he'd drop the shovel and go help haul and load, and vice versa. They're really good men. And they've obviously been trained well at the academy and here on the job, so I expect to see that they're good at what they do. What they don't know how to do yet is to anticipate and plan, so that's something that I plan to teach them as we go along. To say, 'Now plan for what you know will happen, and what might happen, and what has never happened but could,' is just words. I'll go over what happened out in the woods so they can see how to apply all this to real life events.

"If we do this with every big deal that we go through, eventually it'll become how they think about their jobs. A real danger is that spending so much time driving around in the beautiful countryside can dull their sense of urgency. The notion that they can wait to see what happens and then deal with it is a brave, macho attitude, but everybody can respond better and faster if the thing that happens has already been anticipated and planned for. I know how to do it, I've taught other people how to do it, and I've seen what it did for us in combat by reducing casualties. Look, Sheriff, I want you to know that I like these guys and I don't want them to get hurt, any more than you do.

"And then there's leadership. I've already found out that Vince is the obvious choice for a working leader, your senior deputy. He'll work every day as a patrol officer, but he's already recognized by the group as a leader, and if he says to jump, they just ask how high. Since he'll still be a full-time patrol officer he won't need any special approval by the board. Acting as the senior deputy will simply be one of his assigned tasks and his ability to do it will be good for a few points in his performance review so he'll get some extra pay for doing it."

I paused for breath and watched the Sheriff's face for a sign of how all this struck him. "I agree with everything you've said. When I was a Marine I felt the same way you do about anticipating and planning, but those weren't popular buzzwords then. Those guys were actually proud of being reactive instead of proactive. So what you're saying is that our deputies are like old style Marines. Which isn't all that bad, except that you wind up playing by the other fella's rules. If you plan the encounter you can be the one setting the rules to your own advantage."

"What you're telling me is that there's very little difference between how the guys approached your war and my war. When I got to Afghanistan I was put in a company run by a captain who hated the place, liked to stay in his nice safe office in a big building, and as long as the patrols went out on schedule he didn't think any command decisions were called for at all. He was just putting in time, counting the days till he'd go back to the states. The guys who were going out on patrol just did things any old way, figuring nobody would notice except the enemy and they were just ignorant camel drivers. That scared the shit out of me. The guys had an attitude just like the captain's and a lot of them had already made up their minds that they were destined to die in that Godforsaken wilderness so what difference did it make what they did. I could see that the enemy were smart, well organized fighters who were rigging every encounter to favor their chances of winning. I talked to the Captain and tried to tell him that the actions of the enemy were predictable and could be defeated by planning. He laughed at me.

"About half of the guys had deployed with the company, so half of my squad was due to go home together. Of the rest of us, I was the one who could read maps the best, so I was made squad leader. That's when things changed. I did things my way. We got a bunch of fresh replacements, scared to death, and they'd grasp onto anything I told them that sounded safer than just driving around waiting to be killed. So I charted out the six tactics that the enemy liked best, and three plans to defeat each one of them. I got everybody out to the range for weapons practice once a week. I inspected the squad just before we went out every day. I stashed extra ammo in the Humvee. I had every man learn all about manning the machine gun and driving the Humvee. And I led them in prayer going out and coming back. 

"We took fewer hits on our Humvee. It got so we'd see the enemy listening to the sound of an approaching Humvee and when they saw it was us, they'd head the other way. None of my guys got seriously hurt. The captain went home, and our new CO did his homework in a hurry and called me in to ask me how come we were so lucky. So I told him it was simple, the better we anticipated and planned, the luckier we were. Next month he promoted me from corporal right up to staff sergeant, and before I rotated back he promoted me again, to sergeant first class. He had me run classes at night for the whole company. I found I was dog tired from working such long hours, but the sleep that I did get was peaceful. 

"The crazy part was those medals you asked me about. They came so long after the fact that I was already back in the states. Even my purple heart. So the medals meant nothing to me, but anticipating and planning brought me home safe."

The Sheriff shook his head. "Funny how these things happen. Now look, I know this county better than anybody else who lives here. You keep learning about it and the calls that we have to respond to, and we'll spend some time going over it all, reviewing what you've learned. Let's see if you can do here what you did there, with your six favorite problems and plans A, B, and C for every one. I'll help you with all of it, and our objective will be to keep our county peaceful and our deputies safe.

"Here's a suggestion to think about. Put other things into your training program, too. Body building, weight control, special driving tricks, using everyday objects as weapons, unarmed combat, shooting with your 'other' hand, stuff like that. You could pick a different subject to be the training topic for each month."

"Hey, I've come to the right place! Back in the beginning I thought you might be a little skeptical about these things, and you're way out there ahead of me. 

"What provision do we have for working out? Does the county have a gym? Is there some special place where we can go?"

"See Becky about that. Lefty's Gym is across town, run by a retired deputy, Lefty Crowley. All of us get to use it for free. If you want to lift, go there with another deputy so you can spot for each other in the weight room."

"That's great!"

"Enough talk. Go on over to the tailor so you can get some uniforms. Oh, by the way, I did notice that blood smear that you're wearing so proudly. I know you've been waiting for me to say something. Maybe you'd be better off to frame that shirt than to wash it."

GUESS WHAT I DID TODAY

Jan was in the kitchen when I got home, and she looked up as I walked in. "Hi, Honey, what'd you do today?"

"I helped deliver a baby!"

"Deliver, you mean like childbirth?"

"Yes! A lady was in labor and the baby couldn't wait to get to the hospital. So we put her on a bed and the baby came right out. We wrapped him up in a soft towel and let her hold him. Then the ambulance crew came and took over. Tim was with me and he knew what to do, but really the lady did all the hard work."

"Oh, I wish I could have been there to see it. Boy or girl?"

"Boy. Definitely a boy. In fact if he doesn't change, he'll grow up to be the most popular boy in town."

"Well, just sit down and relax. I'll get you a nice cold beer, how's that sound? You get measured for your uniforms?"

"Yeah. They'll be shipped straight to the tailor so he can alter them to fit me. He said there's something about the width of my shoulders in proportion to something else. Whatever it is, I'll have my regular duty clothes next Tuesday, and my dress uniform a week later. Tomorrow I have to go get two pairs of boots and one pair of dress shoes. I have to go to two different stores for them. Then I'm supposed to go to Morrison's for underwear, socks, and T shirts. My holster and all that stuff will be delivered straight to the office. My service belts will go there, too. My new dress belt will be at the tailor shop when I go to get the dress uniform."

"What a lot of clothes. They dress you from head to foot, don't they?"

"I was surprised, too, at how much stuff there is, but it makes sense. Some of our deputies come from poor families, and we can't have them looking shabby compared to the others. So it's a good policy. I've really been pleased with the way the county takes care of us. All the best in uniforms and equipment, vehicles, training, you name it. But then they expect us to deliver. Some counties just turn everything more complicated than a speeding ticket over to the state troopers. Here, the attitude is just the opposite. Any crime in the county is our case until it can be proven that we're not equipped to handle it or that it falls into somebody else's authority, like a the Indian police or the FBI. Mind you, I didn't say unless, I said until. So we go right after it hot and heavy and if we turn it over, the Sheriff expects us to give them a case file they can work with. This is a very professional outfit."

"I'm glad. I knew you'd want to be part of something you can be proud of. When do you start classes at the academy?"

"Late next month. Becky said I'll have the schedule of classes on my desk Monday morning."

"Your desk? You've got a desk?"

"No, not yet. The carpenters who do building repairs and remodeling for the county will be in there working this weekend to convert a storage room to my office, and when I get in on Monday morning it'll all be there waiting for me."

"Oh, I wanted to show you this article in the morning paper. You know where Greenwood is?"

"Yeah, about forty miles south of here, in the mountains. What about it?"




Peril in the Pines Ch. 04



"Well, they've always had their own police force, just a handful of people, and since the lumber mills have closed they can't afford to keep it up. The chief is retiring and they're shutting down the department. Their county supervisors are trying to decide whether to have the state troopers patrol the city, or turn it over to the Pike County Sheriff's Office."

"Well, frankly I doubt that their county government is as concerned about taking care of their taxpayers as ours is. But look at what we've got here. They went through that same deal here back in the Great Depression and the Sheriff's office has been policing this town ever since. Small police departments are terribly expensive to operate considering the population they're protecting."

"Yes, and there's a companion article here about the same department. Look, see the girl in this picture? Pretty, isn't she?"

"Yes, she is. What about her?"

"Her name is Kathleen Cafferty. She graduated at the top of her class from the university with a major in criminal justice. In fact, in her major she had a 4.0 index. Then she landed a job with the Greenwood Police Department and they sent her to the police academy, where she just graduated at the top of h class. But the department was disbanded the day after her graduation from the academy. So now she's out of work."

"That's a shame. Has she applied to the state police?"

"I don't know, but I think she must have. If she could get on anywhere they wouldn't have put the article in the paper, would they?"

"Where does she live?"

"Just across town, over by the metal stamping plant."

"Oh, boy!"

"What?"

"I 'm glad you gave me a heads up on this. The mayor will be on the phone with the Sheriff and the county supervisors Monday morning. Maybe sooner."

"The mayor? Why?"

"Mayor McCarthy. Ring a bell?" Jan looked blank. "Mayor Mary McCarthy!"

"Oh, I see."

"I'll guarantee you that her parish priest has been bending the mayor's ear already. Let's see, over there she must be in Saint Brendan's parish, right?"

"I guess so."

"Monsignor Patrick Sullivan, pastor. Are you getting the picture? We have a lovely Irish Catholic colleen in need of help, and her Irish priest will talk with our Irish Catholic mayor and this will be like an avalanche of political pressure picking up weight as it descends on the Sheriff. He won't have the budget for another deputy, but the county supervisors will get their share of pressure, too, and by this time next week we'll have a new deputy, the first woman deputy ever in the department. Then we'll have to have a women's locker room and shower room and rest room, which will mean a building addition. That will cramp our nice, roomy parking lot. And while they're at it, they'll be putting wheelchair ramps all over the place to bring us into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"This cuts two ways. A well qualified woman should be able to get a job as a deputy. But I'm wondering what it's going to do to our department, and how it's going to complicate my job. Anyway, don't throw the paper away. I'll take it into the Sheriff's office on Monday and make sure he's prepared for all this."

I went in and took a quick shower and changed into comfortable clothes. "Anything going on this weekend?" I called out to Jan from the bedroom.

"I haven't made any plans but I'd sort of like to do something with Mom if it's okay with you. She's been all alone since I moved out, and it must be a pretty big change for her. Kind of abrupt."

"Okay with me. Why don't you give her a call this evening, see if she's got any ideas. If all else fails, we could take her out to dinner on Sunday."

"Sounds good to me. Our dinner's almost ready, fifteen minutes or so. I'll call her now, while the potatoes are cooking."

Later, over dinner, I asked Jan what her mother had to say. "Yes, she'd like to see us. She doesn't have any plans, so whatever we decide is okay with her." There was a pause. "While we were chatting she asked if we'd heard about that sweet Cafferty girl losing her job before she could even start it."

SETTING THE BIG WHEELS IN MOTION

Monday morning I was sitting in the Sheriff's guest chair at 6:30 am, nursing a cup of coffee and waiting for the Sheriff to finish his phone call with Terry Connelly, the county supervisor for our district. Mostly he was listening. Finally, he said, "Well, all right, if that's how you've got it arranged, that's how it'll have to be. You and Frank will have to come up with the funds, that's all. Just understand that I can't water down the quality of my department, so this will have to be handled with an abundance of judgment and discretion. And I'll have the final say over that other hire. Do we have an understanding?" "Good, you come here on Wednesday morning. See you then."

The phone call completed, the Sheriff turned his attention to me. "Well, Jack, here's what we're going to do. First, we'll officially declare Vince the Senior Deputy. Because he has both patrol and supervisory duties, he'll need a partner. We'll hire Kathleen Cafferty, and for on the job training she'll partner with Vince. For now, she'll have a locker but not in the regular locker room. She'll change into and out of her duty uniform at home. For a lavatory she'll use the ladies' rest room in the lobby, same as Becky does. You with me so far?"

"Yeah, it all makes good sense, based on what I know so far."

"The county will immediately buy that vacant house on the other side of the parking lot. Used to belong to old Mr. Henson. It's been vacant for over a year. Terry's brother is a realtor, so they'll take care of that. When it's torn down they'll enlarge our lot, and we'll need that, because we're going to get a big addition to our building, plus a face lift of the old part with new windows and doors and all that. The new addition will house a new locker room and shower room for the men, and the old locker room and shower room will be done over for women deputies. The new addition will also house a new state-of-the-art interview room, new holding cells, and my new office. You'll get this office when I move. The office you use now will become Vince's office. The old interview room will become a multipurpose room, for eating lunch and holding meetings. 

"Architects will bid on the remodeling, but because we'll need an architect who understands this area and also has experience on public buildings, it's likely that Frank Davis's cousin will get the contract. Since you've been away for five years, you might not know that Frank is the supervisor of the third district. Of course, with so many Hispanic people living in the county now, we ought to have a Hispanic deputy, and we'll get one from Manny Gonzales's district, if I agree to the candidate. He'd better be a damn sight sharper than Manny. With three of the five supervisors taken care of this way, the rather sizeable appropriation for this project will be approved, in time for the annual budget. That will allow it to be put on an accelerated schedule, to be ready next year.

"Oh, the building will be dedicated all over again, as if it were all brand new. That will allow it to be named after Mary McCarthy's father, a former mayor and county supervisor. His name will be all spelled out on a plaque in the lobby, Francis X. McCarthy. For brevity, the name on the front of the building, in letters at least a foot high, will be 'The McCarthy Center for Public Safety' or something like that. So at first glance, it will appear to be named after our mayor, and it will display that name, like a billboard, in time for her reelection campaign. All the Irish Catholics will be reminded how we bailed out the lovely Kathleen Cafferty, mostly by her large family shouting it from the rooftops, and also by Monsignor Sullivan whispering in private, just in time for Terry's reelection, which just happens to coincide with my own. And of course, we'll get the Mexican kid's picture in the paper along around then, doing something with schoolkids. Maybe get him and Kathleen Cafferty to do something jointly with the Explorers or whatever else comes along.

"I want you to understand four things about all this. First, it really is high time that we hire a female deputy, and a Hispanic one, too. Our department should reflect the diversity of Hopi County, and it doesn't. Second, the county really ought to give our base here a facelift. It needs it and we deserve it. Third, this whole scenario may sound like backroom politics, and it is, but it's the way things get done in a democracy and there's nothing illegal about it. And fourth, all this is strictly confidential, and not to be breathed to a soul, including Janice and her mother. Got that?"

"Got it. Now I suppose that we're going to give this the full court press with the news media, right?"

"Right."

"Good. Just keep me out of it."

"Can't be done. Remember that all of our hiring and firing records are official documents, subject to the Freedom of Information business. So if they start to look into our most recent hire, they'll also uncover the one before that. The first thing I'd say about that is that you'd better look pretty sharp in your crisp, new uniforms. The second thing is that by the time all this hits the news you'll be starting classes at the academy. Now you tell me what's the third thing."

"I'd damn well better get just as good grades as Kathleen Cafferty did. Shit!"

"Think about it."

"Oh, I will, I will."

MAKING A NEW FRIEND

I had picked up my duty uniforms the afternoon before, and was showing up at work for the first time wearing the official, drab clothes that we chase bad guys in. They are a dull gray color, and they're sort of like the fatigues that were the work clothes of the Army before camo's. Made for comfort, they hang kind of loose, permitting free movement. The pants are worn bloused at the top of short boots that resemble combat boots. The shirts have the official county crest on the left shoulder, with Hopi County spelled out above and Sheriff's Office below. Then over my breast pocket was my name and below that Chief Deputy. Embroidered patches on my collar lapels displayed the two silver bars of the captain's rank. Slightly in back of that on the left lapel a small black microphone was clipped in place, and on the left side of my belt was the radio, not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. On the right hip was my pistol in its holster. This was the 40 caliber Smith & Wesson that I had borrowed from the Sheriff. Because I liked it so much, and because he wanted to transition us from 9 mm to 40 cal, the Sheriff sold the gun to the county and then issued it to me. It was an ideal arrangement for me in that it was a great pistol, tuned just the way I like them, smooth as silk because it is well broken in and with a trigger pull to drool over, and it didn't cost me anything. Just ahead of the radio on my left was a carrier with two spare magazines. Scattered elsewhere around my waistline on the belt were all sorts of other stuff that I'd probably never use. The duty belt with all the standard equipment on it weighed about ten pounds, and I'd be wearing it all, at least until I was finished at the academy and the news reporters and photographers went away. Mace, handcuffs, all the rest of it, seemed to me like the chains that Christopher Marley dragged after him when he came to see Ebeneezer Scrooge. I could see that a flashlight would have some utility, and I mentally promised myself that I'd haul the rest of the stuff around until I could see which of the hardware was worth the weight it added.

I put it all on and went to find Vince to see if I had it on right. He tactfully suggested that I take the cuffs out of their leather case and remove the plastic bag that they were sealed in. Then he rummaged through his locker and found a small flashlight, powered by two AA cells, with a black leather case that would be more practical for me than the four cell Maglite, which was carried partly to light up the dark and mostly to club bad guys on their hands and wrists to make them drop things we didn't like them to wave at us, like guns and knives. In fact, he told me, the state's attorney had determined that the four cell Maglite was a weapon, and people other than sworn peace officers were not permitted to carry them in public places where weapons are not permitted. 

Vince showed me how to position the hardware so I could sit down and not have it sticking into my back. I took him into my office and closed the door. "You and I need to talk about some things that are going to happen around here, in confidence. What I'd like you to do is come over to my house some evening after dinner. Or better yet, come for dinner. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't even know whether you're married, Vince. What is your family situation?"

"I'm divorced. I have two kids, pretty big now, one in high school and one in middle school. They live with my ex-wife and I have them every other weekend."

"Are you seeing anyone?"

"Yes, I have been for three years now. We live together. I don't know if we'll marry. We've talked about it, but mostly those talks just bring back sad memories for both of us. But as we both see it, we're in it for the long haul."

"Well, maybe you could bring her along with you to dinner at my house some time soon. We're almost in the same boat as you, living together but not married, although we do plan to marry after I get a few paychecks from here into my bank account. We could eat and then the ladies could chat while you and I talk privately for a short time, maybe an hour. What's your lady's name?"

"Rose. Rose Wilkins. She's tall, nearly six feet, and she's the first woman I ever knew who knows what it's like to be taller than everybody else. I'll let her tell you how we met. As soon as we sized each other up we knew that we were a match made in heaven. Poor Rose had been married to a little guy about five foot six and she towered over him. It worked all right for a while, but eventually both of them got so they didn't want to be seen in public together. So they divorced amicably. She doesn't have any kids."

"Mine is named Janice Miller, goes by Jan. I dated her a couple of times when I was home on leave, but I wasn't about to get serious with anybody when I was going back to Afghanistan. Long distance relationships can be a big problem, and I had no way of knowing whether I'd come back in one piece. But I looked her up when I got out and we clicked. We're so close that I even love her mother, who's a wonderful lady. I'd like very much to meet Rose, and I'll be proud to introduce Jan to you both. I might even be able to arrange for Jan's mother to be there for dinner. Make it more of a family get together. Now just for a teaser, I'll leak one tiny detail. Some time in the future, probably next year, this office will be yours. Your title will be Senior Deputy. That's all I can say right now. It's just too hard to keep anything a secret here."

"What's that mean? You won't take away my patrol car, will you? I won't be tied to a desk, will I?"

"No, and no. How could we handle the real tough calls without you out there to race off to them? Most of the time you'll be out on patrol, answering calls, and being a cruising supervisor. But come to dinner and you'll learn more details that will fit the puzzle together and make some sense to you.

"Now on another totally different subject, will you take a ride out to the academy with me this morning? I'll explain what it's about on the way."

"Sure. I can be ready to go in a half hour."

"Great. When you're ready, come by here and grab me."

On the way, Vince remarked, "I've made this drive so many times that the car knows the way." We cruised easily over a newly repaved state highway toward the state's police academy, tucked away in a forest in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. "It's customary for a department to be represented at the graduation of one of its own, and when the Sheriff couldn't attend, I'd go in his place. It was always quite a sight. They have a special area, off on one side of the regular parking lot, where the patrol cars would park. Each agency has its own paint job and style of lettering. The lot is on the west side of the building and the setting sun would light up all of them like a floodlight."

"That would be something to see, all right. I'll get to see it when I graduate, I guess. I'm supposed to see Gordon Reese, the director. Do you know him?"

"Oh yeah, Gordy's an old friend. I did a four year hitch in the Navy and then went into law enforcement when I got out. Same as you. At that time Gordy was a patrol officer in Dawson, and he came here part time to teach the classes on arrest and arraignment, the interface where the police, prosecutor, and court come together. Then he taught some other classes, and when he retired from Dawson he came here to teach full time. Then when Curt Higgins retired from the director's slot Gordy took his place. I'm sure you'll like him."

And I did. Gordon and I seemed to hit it off right away. I explained that I would be attending classes as a part time student except when I was needed back in the county, because I would be working at my job full time, too. I asked him to help me highlight the subjects that would benefit me the most, and conversely the ones that would be a waste of my time, and he agreed. "I doubt that you'd get all that much out of the firearms instruction, from what I heard through the grapevine." he said, with a chuckle. Since I wouldn't be attending all of the classes, I asked that I be allowed to audit and be excused from the examinations, being given a 'completed' grade instead of a letter. Gordon looked at my face searchingly, and then laughed out loud. "All right," he said, "it's a deal. Could this have anything to do with Kathleen Cafferty?"

"Who's Kathleen Cafferty?" asked Vince.

I jumped right in before Gordon could say any more, with "I told you that you'll be finding out more about what's going on when you come to my house for supper. I wasn't going to give you a name yet, so just forget about that for now and trust me to keep you up to speed as this thing goes forward." Then to Gordon I mentioned, as if it were simply a matter of passing interest, "Vince is our new Senior Deputy. As soon as it's official he'll be wearing sergeant's stripes. I understand that you've been able to watch him develop enforcement for a long time. You must be very proud of him. He's like the poster boy for all lawmen, as far as I'm concerned."

"Good Lord, it's about time he got some recognition. If somebody ever tried anything with me or my family, I'd be praying that Vince got the call." He turned to Vince. "Congratulations, big fella. I'm going to ask the Sheriff if he'll let me announce that at the next graduation, along with Jack's appointment, of course. But there's no hurry on it, so I'll hold off until the new developments are ready to be made public."

"Gordon, while we're here, I'll give you a heads up on something I'll need help on after I graduate. I'd like to have a topic every month that we'll get our deputies refreshed on. For example, weapons that we don't use every day, or martial arts, or fingerprinting, or whatever. We'll have one of our own men give the instruction, and then have group sessions at the range or the gym, and so on. A lot of it will duplicate your classes so maybe we could use your lesson plans. Could that be arranged?"

"Of course. It's not a thing we make a big deal about, but one of my responsibilities is to consult and assist in what we call 'in service' training to be given by the operating departments. It's written right into my job description. You just rest assured that we, and I personally, will give you whatever help you need."




Peril in the Pines Ch. 04



"You know, you've just lifted three big worries off my mind in just the few minutes we've been talking here. Is it my magnetic personality or does it help that I'm a friend of Vince?"

"Probably a little of each. And Sheriff Peterson, too. Personal friendships still carry a lot of weight with me. Did I hear correctly that you and Marty Miller's little girl are paired up?"

"Yes, definitely. Now and forever. Did you know Marty?"

"Oh, Lord, back when your Sheriff and I were rookie cops, Marty was one of our bunch of guys that hung around together. We called it our 'gang.' I was into hot rods, and Marty helped me out a lot. He didn't mind working on them as long as he didn't have to shell out the money for parts. He was one of the first in the gang to get serious with a girl, and he was saving his money very carefully."

"Was her name Marilyn, by any chance?"

"Sure was. They got married and I lost track of them, but they were great people."

"Are you married, Gordon?"

"Oh my yes, for at least a hundred years now. Grace takes good care of me."

"Now look, some time soon I'm going to have Vince and Rose come to my house for dinner, and a little shop talk afterward. Marilyn will be there, and of course Janice. Could you and Grace come, if it doesn't interfere with your plans?"

"Oh, hey, that'd be fun. Wait'll I tell Grace that a serial murderer has invited us to dinner."

"OhmyGod, don't tell her that. I'm really a very peaceful person. It's just that I'm trying hard to become the oldest peaceful person in the state.

"Hey, we'd better be making tracks. I'll be in touch, Gordon. And thanks a lot for everything."

JAN STEPS UP TO THE PLATE

When I got home that night, I explained to Jan what I had wound up promising, and I felt bad that I hadn't talked about it with her first. We talked about the dinner perty expanding from four to seven, and I could see that she was nervous about the cooking and serving part. But other than that, she saw nothing wrong with having the people I had invited, and I began to press her on a date for it. Her suggestion was to have it on a weekend, which hadn't occurred to me, but when I thought it over it made a lot of sense. And then she laid a surprise on me by suggesting that Gordon and his wife stay overnight at our house, using the guest bedroom, instead of driving the sixty or seventy miles back to the foothills late at night. So the dinner and talk plan that I had hatched was growing before my eyes, and I was delighted to see that Jan was getting right into the spirit of the occasion. Then I did a very strange thing. I started to get misty and then shed a few tears.

Jan sort of ran across the room to me. In fact, it seemed that she traveled eight feet in just one or two jumps. She took me in her arms and asked what was wrong, and I just cried harder. After a minute, though, I was able to pull myself together and tell her what was causing the tears to flow. "When I was over in Afghanistan, most of the time I was so busy that when I finally stopped moving and thinking I just collapsed into my bunk and was out like a light. But there were days when we didn't have patrol duty and after I worked on my clothes and personal equipment I had time to think, and especially after my mother passed away I felt isolated, first with the loneliness of being so far from home, and then because even when I got home there was no one with an emotional tie to me, nobody to whom I was special, no love, no togetherness, no companionship, no support. 

"I knew what I was doing in the Afghan war about as well as anybody, so I'd most likely come home without being all mangled up or scared out of my wits. But then what? Would I continue to wander through time and space as a solitary soul, with nobody to care about me, keep me company, help me over the rough spots? As I got closer to you and more involved with my work, I lost track of that feeling. It wasn't gone, just temporarily shelved. Now I'm caught up in this dinner party and it's grown way beyond what I originally thought it'd be, and it would be reasonable to expect that you'd be angry and I'd be on the verge of panic. But here you are, calmly taking the initiative in making it happen, not as a helper but as a full partner. And finally that isolation I dreaded is gone forever, because I have you. You're not just at my side, you're an integral part of my life." I had strung so many words together that I was out of breath, and I took a few deep breaths before saying, "Jan, you've done so much for me. My wonderful, amazing Jan." 

Jan didn't say much. She smiled and showered me with kisses, on my lips, on my cheek, on my head, on my neck, and with each one I sank deeper into her warm hug as she almost cradled me like a small child. "Don't worry about a thing, Jack. I'll get phone numbers from Becky and talk with Rose and Grace. I'll introduce myself to them and we'll talk about the dinner party. I'll try to get it set up for this coming Saturday, and then I'll check back with you and it will be our plan, and that's that. The ice will be broken between all of us ladies, so we won't be a bunch of strangers. I'll get to work with Mom to plan the dinner. She'll come here to cook with me, and she'll bring over whatever pots and pans and utensils we'll need that I don't have. Our plates and dishes and knives and forks are very nice and brand new, so they're no problem. It'll all work out, everybody will enjoy themselves, and afterward we'll all be close friends, forever.

"Listen to me. This is how friendships grow. They don't just happen, they're cultivated. The relationship you're building with Vince and Gordon is going to carry you over a lot of potential problems in your career. They're going to feel a personal interest in your success, and they'll take it upon themselves to help you along. I doubt that you thought about it before reaching out to them, but you're very young to be in the position of responsibility that you have, and these men, with so much experience, will be the best mentors you could have on your personal team. You're getting to be Jack Olson Incorporated. And you're so wise to cultivate their friendship, their interest, because you can't do it alone, Jack. Nobody can." She was stroking my cheek at this point. "I'm proud to be the vice president of Jack Olson Incorporated. You can always count on me, Chief."



Peril in the Pines Ch. 05



BACK TO THE BRICKS

The next morning I'd just finished updating my list of which deputies were going where when the Sheriff stepped into my office and closed the door. This was so unusual that I immediately dropped what I was doing and stood up. "What's up?"

He took a chair and said, "I've got interesting news about the brickmakers. The state CID director called me, all excited. And it takes a lot to get those guys stirred up. They think they have a lead on the big boss of that operation and it's not good. You know what a problem it always is when we have a dirty cop. He thinks the boss of the brickworks is somebody in the state government. He asked me if we could help him sort it out, work with them to make sure they've got the right guy."

"Any details available? Like what's inside the bricks, to start with?"

"They've figured out that there are two varieties, and they can tell them apart by a very faint color at one end. The ones that are yellowish contain uncut diamonds, and the ones that look a trifle greenish contain drugs, but not the kind you'd expect. It's powdered oxycontin, ready to be made into tablets by anybody who has a pill press. The bricks are also very sophisticated, made from powdered silica but with a binder added to keep them intact if they get wet. But if they're cooked up in hot water, around 180 degrees I think he said, they break down immediately. The payload is in what they're calling a capsule, like a small jar made of aluminum with a screw top. It's all sealed up tight until somebody unscrews the lid. The jars with the diamonds are smaller than the jars with the oxy, so all that somebody at the receiving end has to do is dump a bunch of bricks into a big pot, fill it with water and cook it up, and then spill out the whole mess onto a coarse screen and sort out the jars that are left after the pulverized rock has been washed away."

"Seems like a complicated way to hide something."

"The key is in the distribution. We picked up about three thousand. They could make millions of them, and the payload could even be something entirely different in each lot. The brick scheme is just a way to store and move high value contraband, without anybody knowing what it is. There could be tons of stuff already shipped all over the country that we never knew about."

"Okay, I can see that. But who is the suspect?"

"We don't know."

"And how can we help?"

"We don't know that, either. He's just trying to line up players right now, assemble a team that can jump in when he knows more."

PARTY! PARTY!

Our Saturday night dinner party started on Saturday afternoon, with everybody sitting around our backyard patio, sipping drinks and, by the time that we were on our second round, telling stories. I heard about funny things that Marty and Marilyn did when they were dating, how Marilyn became the unofficial mother figure for their "gang," and about the time they all went to Colorado together to a custom car show and Marty rented one motel room, in which all the guys slept on the floor in sleeping bags while Marty and Marilyn shared the bed, and how embarrassed Marilyn was to be seen in bed with Marty because they weren't married yet. 

Then there was the story about the afternoon of their wedding reception. The guys got drunk and put a black bra on the statue of Venus in the garden where the reception was held. Gordon added one last detail, "Nobody ever knew whose bra it was!"

"I knew," said Marilyn.

"It wasn't yours, was it?"

"No. Remember Geraldine, my bridesmaid?"

"It was hers?"

"Tommy Wilkins helped her out of it down by the weeping willow tree, and put it in his pocket. Later it fell out on the ground, and one of the other guys picked it up and was waving it around. Gerry couldn't very well say, 'Hey, that's mine,' so nobody objected when they put it on the statue. It was a pretty good fit, too."

Jan looked over at me. "You'd better not let anybody pull a stunt like that when we get married."

"Look, unless you want to elope we'll have every cop in the county at our reception, with plenty to drink and Gordon and the Sheriff and your mother there to coach them. So there's no telling what might happen. Twenty-five years from now we can all sit around and tell stories about it to our next generation and they'll say things like, "Mother! How could you let such a thing happen?"

Jan came over and sat on my lap and said, "Now Mom and I have to go in and check the roast and do a bunch of other things or nobody will be eating tonight. I want you to remember every story that gets told so you can tell me later."

Rose stood up and said, "I'll come and help." That's how she said it, not "Is there anything I can do?" but with a positive spin on it, to show she wanted to help. Grace chimed in, too, and all four of the ladies went trooping off to the kitchen and left us men alone.

Vince leaned forward conspiratorially and asked in a lowered voice, "Okay, what's the story on Kathleen Cafferty?"

Gordon looked at me, and I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "Oh, go ahead and tell him. I think it's sort of funny anyway."

So Gordon launched into the sad, screwed up tale of Kathleen and her abortive career enforcement. That done, I explained the pressure that had been brought to bear on the Sheriff by the mayor and the monsignor to give her a job, and how that one hiring decision had brought about the plan to give us almost a whole new building.

Vince, being Vince, sat and thought about it for a few seconds. "Gordy, what kind of a person is she?"

"Well, I'd say she'd be an asset to any department. Start with her appearance. She stands about five seven or eight but she doesn't appear that big because she's so perfectly proportioned. Very pretty face. She works out and keeps herself in good shape, bench presses about two hundred, but she doesn't look like a big muscled person. She's fast, too. In martial arts, she can take any of your medium sized deputies and put him on his back. The high grades she's made speak for themselves, but for all that, I think of her as a little girl. She hasn't any street smarts. If she knows that a guy is bad, she can take care of business, but there's a good chance that she'd never suspect him of whatever he's up to because she doesn't think of people the way we do. And it's not exactly that she's been sheltered. She's just so nice that everybody has always been nice to her in return. You get what I'm saying?"

"She's a diamond in the rough, and with the right polishing she can be a real jewel."

"Exactly."

I got my two cents in. "And you are going to partner with her and educate her in the ways of the world, for two reasons. I want her to learn the ropes the right way, and you can teach her far better than anybody else. And I don't want any harassment of her. Period. This girl has a right to a job, and I'm sure she'll be an asset to the department. Diversity is real, and we're behind the times. We'll be getting Hispanic and African American and American Indian deputies and it's up to us to integrate them as coworkers and friends. The community looks to us for direction, and we'll supply it without exception."

Vince smiled. "So we're coming into the twenty-first century, at last. Well, you're right, Jack, I am the best one to give this girl her street training, and I'll do it right. Probably Rose will invite her to dinner one night to get her to feel less like an outsider, and I understand where you're coming from about the guys treating her with respect. That'll be my project, too."

"Okay, so now all you have to do is keep this under your hat until it happens. When I announce it, look surprised."

"Oh, I will. How's this?" and he made an exaggerated face to indicate the kind of shock that would mean he just saw a ghost. That was good for a laugh, and we were exchanging droll comments about that and related subjects when Marilyn came out to announce that we should come in to dinner. When we were all seated around the dining room table, I asked, "Marilyn, you're the senior member of our little family. Would you please say grace?"

"Dear God, thank you for good friends to warm our hearts and good food to warm our stomachs. Please watch over us going out and coming in, and keep us all in peace and safety, in Jesus' name. Amen."

Gordon chuckled. "Marilyn, you always did have a way with words, and you haven't lost it."

After dinner we were sitting at the table, digesting. Let me make it clear that the food was not delicious. No, it went way beyond that, maybe to superb, or magnificent, and we'd all had seconds of something because it was so good and the company was so pleasant. We were basking in the glow of the well fed, and I asked, "Rose, Vince said that you would be the best one to tell us how you two met. Would you enlighten us?"

"Oh, well, all right. Now I know you've probably never noticed it, but he and I are both a little on the tall side." That drew a laugh. "We were at a basketball game, over at the college. We like basketball, especially because when we're in the company of all those giants, they make us look petite." More laughter. "During halftime, everybody was milling around, getting coffee and snacks, and in came a deputy all covered with snow to announce that while we were all concentrating on first half of the game it had started snowing, and it wasn't safe to drive right then. By the time the game ended it was a real mess. The parking lot hadn't been plowed, and some of the streets were cleared of snow but not many. The deputy was back and he got on the public address system, to say that plowing was going on but it would be safest if people would hang around the gym for an hour, to give the trucks a chance to get caught up. You know how people are, impatient when anything interferes with their plans. I was relieved to have a place to wait where I'd be warm and dry but a lot of people were grumbling. Somebody said let's just sit down on the bleachers again instead of standing around, so we did, and a guy Vince had gone to school with yelled, 'Hey Vince, why don't you do your magic act for us?' and somebody else said, 'Yeah, Vince, do it,' and then a lot of people were shouting it, so Vince got up. This magic act was something he'd done in high school, tricks that didn't use special equipment but relied on presto, no, pesti, no, Vince what's that word?"

"Prestidigitation. The hand is quicker than the eye."

"He came out onto the basketball court and made a few things disappear and then pop up where you'd never expect them to be. Then he called for a volunteer from the audience, and one of my friends pushed me out toward him. He started the bit about what's your name and have we ever met before, and I said yes. That's not what he expected. He said, 'We have, where?' and I said 'On Route 85. You gave me a speeding ticket and it cost me a hundred dollars,' and everybody laughed. Then he said, 'Well, I'll give you a chance to make your money back,' and he did the trick where he makes a twenty dollar bill look like a whole bunch of them, and then when he shakes the handkerchief just the one bill falls out. The whole crowd went 'Awwwww.' and felt sorry for me. So I went right along with it and pretended to cry. He was still holding the handkerchief so he made a big show of wiping my tears, and we bowed, and everyone applauded like crazy. While they were applauding and asking for one more trick, he said to me that I'd made his act look good, and he'd like to show his appreciation by taking me out to dinner. So that's how it all happened. It was true about the ticket, but I've forgiven him. And I drive slower now."

"I never knew you could do magic," I said. I've always been fascinated by guys who can do all those things with just their hands. Can you explain any of it?"

"Just like anything else that's tricky, it takes lots of practice. There's usually an element of misdirection, but the thing that all those tricks depend on is being good with your hands, meaning every single finger. Like this," and he took out a half dollar and held it between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Then it looked as if the coin suddenly had a mind of its own, flopping from the back of one finger to the next while he held his hand in sort of a loose fist. It went stepping down to the little finger and then came back again, ending up right where it started. "Now I'll do it slowly and you'll see the very slight movements of the fingers that make the coin move like that." It was pretty amazing. At the end of the magic demonstration he flipped the coin up in the air and caught it with his left hand, and he did the down the fingers and back up the fingers trick slowly, then faster, and then so fast that it was just like a blur. And mind you, this was his left hand and Vince is right handed. We all applauded the show. He looked sort of bashful and made a show of fumbling around and dropping the coin. Then he looked for it on the tablecloth, and all over, looking puzzled, until he finally said, "Oh, there it is," and lifted it out of Rose's cleavage. He was good, no doubt about that. And he also had hands big enough to use a half dollar for tricks that guys my size would do with a quarter.

The party didn't last too long after that. Marilyn didn't have her car, so Vince and Rose dropped her off on their way home. Jan and Grace excused themselves and turned in, while Gordon and I sat in the living room and enjoyed a snifter of good French cognac. Gordon asked, "Was this the first time you've entertained?"

"Yes. We've talked about it but we don't have that many friends in common yet. Remember that I'm only recently back here after five years of wearing government clothing."

"How bad was it over there?"

"Bad. Maybe I'm just reflecting an enlisted man's view of things, but I found that the enlisted men were pretty good soldiers, whereas the officers were a very spotty bunch. Some excellent, but a lot of them not very good. There were officers who came out of National Guard and reserve outfits, who'd been just going to meetings and getting paid for it as an easy way to pick up a few bucks, without giving much attention to the details of being responsible leaders. ROTC officers were good, and West Point grads were the best. But most of the real leadership, training, and supervision was done by noncoms."

"Well, that hasn't changed a lot then since I was in. We had a few lieutenants who'd received battlefield commissions, and they knew what they were doing. But it's hard for an officer to get into a position to see a war from the soldier's viewpoint, and that's where it's being fought. So any officer who hasn't gone on patrol with his men knows as much about the war as a guy back home reading the newspaper.

"The same is true of police work. A guy like Vince is worth his weight in gold because he's constantly seeing the real world close up. I hope you're getting out there on the street, and in the farmland. What's your impression of the men you've got out there in the cars?"

"Better than I expected. I've got a couple that need some re-motivating, but even the ones who appear apathetic, come to life when they need to. They know how to do the things that cops have to do, but their strategic thinking has never matured. None of them are candidates for firing, but some of them just need to be tutored a bit, so they can see what's important." 

"Funny you should say that. I've been thinking about offering a refresher course for patrol officers. I think we might help some who've become complacent, and we could get some useful feedback from them, too, to learn what's really going on out there. We record audio and video in our classrooms all the time, and we sometimes pick up useful information that way. Our problem is figuring out what to do with what we learn. Some of the police chiefs and commanders are really anxious to improve, but some are resentful when we try to help them. And going to city managers and mayors is a joke. So our problem isn't so much getting information, as being able to put it to use."

"Well, if you come across any info that I could use, let me know right away. I promise that I'll use anything I can get my hands on to improve our performance. We owe the taxpayers that much."

"I'll let you in on a secret. We all have to keep working constantly on improving everything we do or see or hear or touch. It's not a challenge that gets done once and then it's over with. It has to be an everlasting preoccupation with making everything better and better and better, because we can never get it perfect. Your department is one of the best in the state, and yet if we put a good evaluation team in there for a week they'd come up with a list of things to work on that would cover half a dozen pages. Your Sheriff knows this, and you do too, I'm sure, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. But ignoring the need to improve, that would be something to be ashamed of."

"Speaking of useful information, Gordon, do you have any information on Kathleen Cafferty that would help me as I try to get her settled in successfully with my deputies? I'm anxious to do this right, because she'll become the cornerstone for diversifying the department." 

"I'll put together a confidential file on her for your eyes and Vince's and the Sheriff's, only. I'll help you through this. Have faith. This will all work out and you'll come out of it knowing how to handle the next one better. 

"But we'd better leave some problems for tomorrow. If we solve 'em all tonight, tomorrow will be a dull day. Many thanks for your hospitality. Good night, Jack."

THE BUG INFESTATION

I had called the state CID detective who was working the case of the mysterious bricks, and asked him to get together with me at the abandoned mine where the bricks were made. Two days later I was standing beside Detective Dolan in a doorway of a big, barnlike building looking at the press that he said the bricks had been formed in. He put a finger to his lips, and waved his hands at the things he wanted me to see. Then he took me by the arm and walked with me twenty yards from the building. "You can see that the mold has cavities for making twelve bricks. Our tech staff has estimated that it could make a dozen bricks in a half hour. Allowing fifteen minutes to dump out the bricks, fill the mold cavities halfway, set the capsules in, fill the mold the rest of the way, and close the mold again, we can talk twelve bricks every forty-five minutes, or nearly two hundred bricks in a twelve hour workday. That's a thousand a week. And they could expand, with more shifts, or more molds. You can see that in this building they're using maybe five per cent of the floor space. The main ingredient, pulverized rock, is from the tailing piles. They've got enough of it out there to last them a hundred years, just from this one mine, and there are mines all over the state.

"We figure this was a trial run. Three thousand bricks should be plenty to prove out the process. They could move them to selected destinations by truck, train or barge, because unless you Xray them, you'd never know they weren't just regular bricks to build stuff with. And who's going to Xray a brick? They'd need a connection to some building materials retailer, where the right people could order them by the pallet load, and get them delivered. Or the guy at the other end could pick them up with his own truck, and take them wherever because nobody tracks purchases of bricks. And if they're too conspicuous on pallets, then somebody could lay them on a patio or a garden path, even lay them two or three deep. Who'd suspect a bunch of bricks? I think it's a nearly foolproof scheme."

"All right, it's a wonderful way to store and ship high end contraband. But who would have the right connections with the kind of people who'd have products they'd want to hide in the capsules? I could see how there could be a chief executive to put together the whole business and several marketing people to make the connections. All the rest would be unskilled laborers and hired guns, and other than the guy actually making the bricks, nobody would need to know anything about the real purpose of them. Any ideas who the main figures are?"




Peril in the Pines Ch. 05



"What we're beginning to understand is that even though we don't know who they are, we may know where one or more of them work."

"Where's that?"

Dolan looked as if he were in agony, as he answered, "Same cop shop where I do."

Detective Dolan and I walked over to look at the tailing piles and continued to toss ideas around. As preposterous as it seemed, It was starting to make sense to me, and I could see that the brick business had the potential to be one of the biggest criminal schemes in history, and all very easy to operate because of its total simplicity. The income it would produce was so great that there was no need to operate it every day or even every month. The simple, dumb looking bricks were so inconspicuous that they could be stored in plain sight. If necessary, bricks without capsules inside could be made to hide the ones with the valuable payload. The whole scheme would look so profitable and foolproof that it would appeal to a state employee, offering a huge return on a small investment without putting his position in the community in jeopardy.

"Have you planted any bugs around here? I should think the head man would come by to check up on his equipment."

"No, we haven't, but we can't be sure that the bad guys haven't. My problem is that if I check out the necessary stuff from our stockroom to bug the place, it leaves a paper trail that one of our own could pick up on, and that blows the game. Actually, I wanted to ask if you'd do me a favor. Could you get some surveillance devices from the county that we could install here?"

"Sure, I don't know why not. Hold on a minute." I keyed my lapel mike and asked Becky if the Sheriff was there. He got right on. "Sheriff, I want to pursue a possible lead in the brickyard case. I may have to use some bugs and related items."

"Go right ahead. You don't even have to tell me that you're giving Dolan a hand. He's a good guy and he'd do it for us. Better not tell him what I said or you'll blow my crusty image."

"You heard the man. Come on back to the Sheriff shop with me and we'll get busy on it."

I radioed Vince on the way in, and asked him to meet me there. I took him and Dolan into my office and we discussed how we'd handle the loan of equipment from our end. What made it easy is that we still had an active case on the bricks, with a county case number. We hadn't closed it because we didn't have the responsible person in custody yet. So it was all perfectly honest and legal.

As I should have suspected, Vince and Dolan knew each other from way back. This was law enforcement in the real world. We had enough different agencies at all levels, with their individual command structures, to make communication from one to another seem impossible. But the way it really worked was through an old boy network. Some guys even had a name for it, "the brotherhood of the badge." Guys who had worked together once on this case or that, guys who had gone through the academy together, distant cousins ands, next door neighbors, even guys who shared common enemies, communicated mostly by cell phone calls that left no paper trail. They could work together quickly and efficiently to get the job done. But how could I have gained access to these invisible lines of communication and cooperation? My history in law enforcement was measured in weeks, so why wouldn't I be on probation where the good old boys were concerned? It started with the reputation of our department, which meant the reputation of our Sheriff, a good guy who had never stabbed anybody in the back who didn't deserve it. My ace in the hole was Vince, the consummate old timer, who knew and was known by key people all over the state. To top it all off, every cop in the state had heard what had happened out in the woods. Criminals who would kill a cop without thinking twice were the cause of insomnia and marital stress that made divorce so common among cops, and eliminating a few of the bad guys in a righteous shoot found instant favor among the brotherhood.

Just as police departments protect and serve their communities, the old boy network protects and serves the policemen. Given the right credentials, becoming accepted can be surprisingly quick, as I had already found. And according to what I'd heard, it's just as quick to lose acceptance for failing to be supportive, or for trying to use friendships to cover up corruption, or for simply being an asshole. My actions from now on would make my reputation flourish or die in a fraternity whose members carried badges and guns, and made life or death decisions in split seconds. Nothing for me to worry about, just something to bear in mind. 

On the way from the mine to town, Dolan had called a private contractor he had used to bug and debug buildings. We didn't have long to wait until Fearsome walked into my office. Given the nickname, I had pictured some remarkable, scary looking person, but the man who walked in was the most unremarkable looking man I ever saw. He was average height, average weight, had average brown hair that was cut to average length, even had an average voice. This was Fearsome Fred Fox, or just plain Fearsome for short. If you saw him you'd never remember anything about him, which was just how he liked it. He listened to our description of the job and then went to our stockroom and selected just a few little boxes. I asked what he had in mind, and he said that the first step would be to examine the building, and next he would run a test to make sure he could transmit signals from the mine to the Sheriff shop successfully. We threw a stepladder into the back of Vince's crewcab pickup, which didn't look like a police vehicle and wouldn't stand out like my yellow Jeep, and went off to the mine.

Fearsome waved us back, and while we waited outside he entered the building with a little instrument in his hand. When he pushed a button it hummed, and it also had a meter with a thin needle that waved back and forth. Fearsome was wearing soft soled shoes, rather like real Indian moccasins. He breathed softly, walked silently, never bumped into anything, and if we didn't see him we'd have never known he was there at all. When he joined us out in the open, he was just collapsing the antenna on his instrument, after which he slid it into a pocket sewn into his right pantleg down by his knee, that reminded me of a carpenter's folding rule pocket. "Don't add or subtract any bugs from that building. It's got audio and video pickups all around, and whoever did the job knows his trade. Any conversation anywhere inside, even way back in the corners, should be picked up clearly. What's needed here is to add another transmitter, so that whatever the bad guys can hear and see, you can hear and see it, too. We can use a voice activated receiver back at your office, with a recorder switched on and off by the receiver.

"Here's the tricky part. You'll want to know who's listening to these bugs, so to do that we'll need to find where the handshaking signal is coming from, that tells the transmitter that its signal is being received. The transmitter here doesn't have the power to send very many miles with a useful signal to noise ratio, so the receiver should be nearby, and it won't be hard to sweep for that return signal. I'll use an airplane to do it, and it won't take over an hour. We'll do it during daylight, with a crop dusting trainer that a friend of mine owns. He'll go through the motions of dusting cotton fields, but I'll be in the student pilot's seat with some of my instruments. By tomorrow night I'll have the exact location of the receiver, and if conditions are very good I may even be able to tell you the make and model of it."

Two days later, Fearsome set up a receiving and listening center in my office. A bookcase near my desk held a receiver that looked like a cell phone and a recorder not much bigger that could hold several months of conversations. I would be able to check the audio every day to see what, if anything, we'd picked up, and any portion of the memory that seemed interesting could be copied and taken to Dolan's home, where he and Fearsome had set up a safe viewing center in his basement rec room.

The trap was set. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the mouse to step into it.

JAN'S BAD DAY

Jan was late getting home, and came in feeling pressured by the need to supply an evening meal that she hadn't even had time to think about. I shut off the dinnertime news broadcast and said, "Don't even take off your jacket. We're going out to eat. Where would you like to go?"

"No idea. Surprise me."

"Italian food okay.?"

"Great. Anything I don't have to cook will do. One of those afternoons at work."

"Want to talk about it?"

"I had a lot to do, more papers than I could conveniently carry, and I was trying to decide what I wanted to bring home with me, when Joyce Stuart said something about outlawing handguns. The stupid woman wouldn't know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of, but the fact that she has never shot a gun of any kind somehow makes her an expert with the opinion that life would be perfect if only we didn't have guns all over. Then she got warmed up and said that no woman should ever be allowed to touch a gun because their hands aren't strong enough to shoot them, and in fact every woman who has ever possessed a gun has accidentally shot herself or somebody else, and so on and on and on.

"I tried to keep my cool, but finally I said to her, 'Joyce, you don't know what you're talking about. Don't make sweeping statements based on misleading information you've been fed, cultivated by your appalling ignorance and gullibility.' She got furious that anybody would challenge her opinions, and started shouting at me out in the hallway. The principal heard her screechy voice and came running, thinking that something terrible was happening. Fortunately, by then I was just leaning against the wall saying nothing, watching her erupt. The principal took her by the arm and gently walked her into his office, still spouting her nonsense. So that's how my day ended. I went back into my classroom and got my purse, set all the papers on the desk, locked up, and walked out. That woman is so dumb that every week she's got another screwball notion to push that's one per cent fact and all the rest hot air. I'm glad that I haven't got a kid in her class. People that dumb shouldn't even be allowed out of their houses, let alone polluting the minds of innocent children."

"Maybe over dinner you'd like to tell me all about why the NEA opposes merit raises for teachers, and considers tenure a right granted by God, along with breathing air and walking on two legs."

"Don't get me started! Children come into the world knowing nothing, and that makes them favorite victims of stupid people who become teachers because they can't do anything else. They need to find some group of people who know even less than they do, and young kids fit that mold. But I've had it now. I'm going to get that stupid Joyce fired. It's either that or I'll have to quit teaching in that school. You may have to help me."

"Me? Why me? What do I have to do with teaching?"

"I need a very small voice recorder. Do you have one?"

"In my desk at work. About the size of a long, narrow cell phone. Or if you want to go even smaller there are some about as big as a matchbook. What do you intend to do with it?"

"I'll get the mother of a kid in Joyce's class to send her kid off to school with a bugged backpack. Every night the day's conversations get dumped onto a computer, and then the tirades get filed according to subject and date. And I think I know just the mother I need to get involved in this. Clara Smithers has a cute, bright little girl who sits in the front of the classroom. I'm going to call Clara and talk this over with her. Maybe I'll call her when we get home tonight."

"Boy, I hope I don't ever get you this upset. No telling what you might do to me."

"Oh, it's just that I hate to see what a bad teacher can do to a child's learning process. Some of these kids might be better off to stay home and watch television. And I think I have a right not to be badgered by stupid people trying to tell me that the sky is falling, or worse yet that it isn't falling but it's made of concrete."

"I'm not going to use one of the county's recorders for that, but I'll be glad to take you to the store to buy you one that would work well for that purpose. But I can't be involved in this campaign of yours. Anything that might even smell like an improper use of police power could cost me my job and make things bad for our whole department. You'll have to pay for it, and keep the receipt to prove that it's yours. If anybody asks, you bought it to record parent-teacher conferences, and you'd never dream of recording a person's voice without their permission. Clara Smithers asked to borrow it, and you let her take it. Period."

With that out of her system, for the moment, anyway, we had a very nice dinner. Jan had veal parmigiana and I had chicken cacciatore. For our salad course I ordered an antipasto plate and we split it. We came away well fed, with that glow that you get when your food has been prepared with great attention to all the small details. Even the house wine was good. At home, Jan spent most of an hour on the phone and came into the living room looking pleased with herself. I didn't want to hear anything about it, and instead I pulled her down next to me and kissed her on the neck. That started an hour long seduction that got us to bed, aroused. And later to sleep, exhausted, satisfied, and contented.

THE BRICK FACTORY

Every morning after the urgent business had been attended to, I would lock my office door and listen to any audio recordings that had come in from the mine building during the last 24 hours. Usually it wasn't anything at all, or perhaps a door banging in the wind. But finally one morning there were voices, and the words were disturbing. I called Detective Dolan and he showed up an hour later. I asked Becky to find Vince, and he arrived a few minutes later.

"So far there's been nothing on the recorder, and I can only infer that nobody has been there. Or if anybody was there, he didn't say anything. There have been sounds, like wind blowing, parts of the old building rattling, stuff like that. But here's where the voices start:"

"I kept telling you the press shouldn't be left here like that. This building isn't tight. The wind blows through here and carries dust and sand. Look down by your foot. Pretty soon this thing won't be able to make a brick any more."

"Quit yer belly achin'! That dust is just on the surface. Go out and get the generator runnin' and I'll put the machine through a cycle to show ya. Look in the mold cavities. That dust in 'em is the same thing I'm gonna load in there to make the next batch of bricks. All it did is make my job easier. Less to shovel. No way to keep the dust out of here, anyway. You close the door and the wind still comes through. Look up at all the places where you can see daylight coming through. Every one of those holes is like a little wind tunnel. You can hear the wind moaning in the tops of the trees and feel the draft in here at the same time. When the wind is out of the north it vibrates some of that corrugated roofing like a harmonica, and it sounds like a ghost wailing.

"You better make sure we got enough binder to make yer five hundred bricks. I'll go get the goodies outta the truck. What's in 'em this time?"

"I don't know and I don't care. As long as they pay for the bricks, they could have dog shit in there, it's all the same to me."

"Yeah, that'd be the day, when they'd pay five hundred a brick to move dog shit."

"This time I got a thousand, so they must have something pretty hot in those cans."

The voices trailed off and there were sounds of doors banging in the distance.

Dolan's eyes got big. "What could they have in there? Say that the can, what we've been calling the capsule, holds half a pound of something. The brick business is just packaging. So somebody will pay two thousand dollars a pound to package something? These crooks are getting half a million dollars to make five hundred bricks? And that doesn't get them delivered, just packaged? What could be so valuable that it'd support that kind of overhead?"

"I don't know. How much are they getting on the street for cocaine these days?"

"The narc guys could give us a current number, but I recall hearing a hundred dollars a gram a while back. That's nearly fifty grand for a pound. The people in the drug business have a problem with drug-sniffing dogs. It'd be worth a lot of money to beat those dogs, and maybe they think these bricks can do it."

I tried to get back to the problem of the CID man's involvement in the brickyard business. "Did the voice of the boss sound like anybody you know?"

"No. The building may have enough of an echo to make voices sound different. But when we see the faces I'll know. Let's take this to my house. Fearsome's got me all set up."

Dolan's rec room was quite comfortable. Several black boxes were on a table, allowing Dolan to screen the recorded video tracks on a fifteen inch monitor, and select any or all of the eight tracks to watch simultaneously. His big screen TV was hooked up as a repeater, showing in living color everything that the monitor was showing in black and white. Vince and I lounged in comfort on overstuffed chairs to watch the show. 

The sound of the door banging shut started the audio and video, and we had a good view of two men walking in and going directly to the press. The cameras were mounted high overhead. At first the men had their heads down, looking at the press and the dust, and all we could see were the tops and backs of their heads. But when they looked up to see the places where the dust was blowing in, two of the cameras captured their faces clearly. Dolan let out a yell. "Look at that son of a bitch! Him, of all people! I've got to get the commander on this! He's gonna shit a brick!" He stopped the show and switched to show just those two camera tracks, frozen on the two faces looking right into the cameras.

Dolan got onto his phone and walked into an adjacent room where the furnace and air conditioner are located. Vince and I looked at each other, wondering what all the excitement was about. "Did you recognize either one of those guys?" I asked Vince.

"No, they're both strangers to me. Dolan sure knew one of 'em, though."

"While we're waiting for the next act, I'm gonna make a call of my own. Tell Dolan I've stepped out for a little fresh air."

I got the Sheriff on the phone and filled him in quickly. He agreed to come over immediately but silently, and say that I'd told him we were setting up a secure viewing room here and he just stopped in while he was in the neighborhood to see what it looked like.

What happened next was like a clumsy group entrance in a poorly written play. Dolan and I came back into the rec room at the same time. I winked at Vince and said, "Jan's feeling better. She was a little queasy this morning."

"Maybe a little morning sickness?" Vince shot back with a smile. "You wouldn't be keeping anything from your friends, would you?"

"If that's what it is, it'd be news to me."

I resumed my seat, but Dolan was pacing. "I got the commander, explained that we have something here that he needs to see, and that I couldn't explain over the phone. He's on his way."

The State Police Commander was coming from twenty miles away, but the Sheriff had only two miles to travel, so he arrived first. He came in smiling. "Hey, Dolan, Jack told me you were setting up a viewing room here and I wanted to see what it looks like. I'm thinking that we ought to include one in the remodeling that's planned for our building. Oh, hey, that's a great picture there. You can see every line in their faces. Show that to a jury and you'd get a conviction right off. This was shot up at the old mine? Must be some great cameras to do so well with the dim light in that building. Hey, isn't that, oh, what's his name?"




Peril in the Pines Ch. 05



Dolan cut in. "I don't want to talk about it until the commander gets here. This is the sort of thing that could get him a legislative hearing on top of criminal trials and who knows what else. People get murdered over less. I was so anxious to see if there really is a mole in our department, and now that I see this picture I'm almost wishing I didn't know."

We sat back and made small talk until the Commander came through the door, so tall that he had to duck his head to clear the door frame. He looked surprised to see the Sheriff, but forced a smile and shook his hand. The Sheriff introduced Vince and me, and I got up and offered him my chair. I think he'd have been more comfortable to stand, but he accepted and sat down. Up to this point, he hadn't looked at the TV screen. Once he was settled in the chair, he turned toward it. "Hey, that's Ralph, isn't it?"

Dolan looked miserable. "Yes, unless he's got a twin brother."

"Well, suppose you tell me the story. Start at the beginning. I want to hear it all. Don't leave out anything."

The Sheriff said, "Jack is the only man who's been through it all from the beginning. Go ahead, Jack, take it from the top."

I glanced at the Sheriff, who was seated on the sofa looking at me. He winked at me and gave a slight movement of his left hand, which I could see held a small recorder. "Commander, this all began before I'd even joined the Sheriff's department. I was out in the woods with my fiancee for a picnic, and we were shot at." From there, I laid out the whole scenario, ending up with getting the CID involved and using my office as a secure receiving post for the audio and video transmissions.

Dolan picked up the story then, explaining that the CID was trying to find a leak that was tipping off various suspects before their places were raided, and why the man in the left hand picture was the last guy they'd have suspected. In fact, he said, there must be more people involved.

The commander looked at all of us before he said anything. "Here's what we're going to do. I'll be in the office of the FBI's Special Agent in Charge for the state, this afternoon. We're going to turn everything over to the feds and let them do their thing. We must all keep this in strictest confidence. The feds will have our heads if we let this leak out, and I will if they don't. They can be hard to work with, and they may want to shut you out of it, even though we have several homicide charges here to hang around the necks of the people running the brickyard, as you call it. Just be patient and eventually we'll have enough evidence from their investigation to make all of the criminal cases that will come out of this.

"You've all done a great job on this case. Now you've uncovered a serious problem in my department and I'm sure you understand that it's going to cause me a lot of headaches until I get it straightened out. It'll probably turn out that none of you will get your pictures in the paper, because the FBI likes to consider that their perk, but after this is all over I promise that you'll get commendation letters that can go into your personnel files, and take home to show your families. And even use in a re-election campaign, Sheriff. In the meantime, you have my thanks. Ask anybody who's ever worked with me and they'll tell you that I don't forget my friends." He started to leave and then turned back to add, "Or my enemies"

The commander left. The Sheriff turned to me and said, "It looks to me as if this wraps up our case on the brickyard. We'll open new case files on the homicides, and they'll be left in abeyance until someone is convicted of a felony. Then we'll add a reference to each case file showing that conviction, and the homicides will be charged to the perpetrators as murders arising from the commission of a felony, and they'll go to the county attorney for prosecution.

"Now I've still got one question. Who are the people in these photos?"

Dolan sighed. "The one on the left, who acts like the boss of the outfit, is Deputy Commander for Internal Affairs. He's a miserable SOB, but I can't understand how he'd have the connections to the crooks who are their customers. That's why I think there are others involved in this, probably detectives in major crimes or narcotics, or both. The guy on the right looks to me like a long time patrol officer who retired last year. I'm dead sure of the IA guy, and less sure of the other one. But they'll use facial recognition software and make a positive ID. If that is the retired guy, he'll sing like a canary to protect his pension and they'll get all the rest of the guys from him."

The Sheriff nodded, and said, "Well, the commander said it all. This was handled very well by you guys, and it's good to see that teamwork still wins ballgames. Anything you need, Dolan, you know where to find me." With that as his exit line, he departed.

I nodded to Dolan, said "Ditto," and Vince and I left as well. 

As far as I could see, the brickyard case was was all over. But sometimes it's impossible to see everything.



Peril in the Pines Ch. 06



With the excitement of the brickyard case suspended, I was able to attend to administrative matters. As I had promised, I rode with Tim for a total of five days, spread over two weeks, and I learned a lot about the county. I was reminded of the opening scene of "The Music Man" in which the anvil salesman denounces Professor Harold Hill, not for being a con man but for not knowing the territory. Tim really knew our territory, and the more he taught me about it, the more surprises I got. 

There was a small enclave of farmers who were refugees from Latvia, that nobody had ever told me about. We went there and parked the cruiser in front of the coffee house where many of the locals congregated, and went inside. The sudden silence was deafening. Tim walked through, shaking hands with the men he knew, and paused in the exact center of the room to say loudly to the proprietor, "Chris, let's have coffee for everyone, on us!" That language is understood in every restaurant and saloon in the free world, and it broke the ice. As everyone got his coffee fixed to his liking, Tim announced that he would like to introduce "Our new Chief Deputy, Jack Olson, the same man who shot those murderous criminals a few weeks ago."

I stood beside Tim and said, "We are reorganizing our deputies' routes to provide better service to every community in the county. It's not easy because this is a big county, about half the size of Latvia. We can't have a deputy here all the time, but we can have one cruise through here daily, and not always at the same time, and he can be nearby so that he can get here quickly if you need our help. You have a right to good law enforcement, and we'll do everything we can to provide it. 

"We heard that someone said 'when the criminals show up, the deputies disappear.' That's totally wrong. In fact, it's the other way around. Criminals don't want to face law officers, so when our deputy comes here, step up and tell him what your problems are and what you want him to do for you. We're only as good as the information you give us, so tell us what you need. Thank you for listening, and enjoy your coffee." 

Immediately three men stood up and formed a line to talk to us. We listened politely, Tim took notes, and I told them all the same thing: "We'll investigate this. If you learn any more about these people, call us so we can get them." We handed out our cards to one and all, I paid for the coffees, and we left to a round of applause.

Out in the car, I asked Tim, "Who's been covering this area?"

"Most of the time, nobody. I doubt that they've seen a car here in a couple of weeks."

"Well look, that has to change. These people keep to themselves, mostly because they're scared. Suppose you and I were dropped into the middle of Latvia. There's a language problem, plus general distrust. But if they think we don't care about them, it just makes it worse. So let's consider this a problem area when we're remaking the patrol routes. Talk it over with Vince. You both know the territory, and you both know what we need to do, and the resources we have to do it with. I'll be depending on both of you to help put the cars where the people are. It's my responsibility, but you're the guys with the detailed knowledge to put it together correctly, so I have to depend on you. Do we have anyone with ties to these people?"

"Howard Snell's wife is Latvian. I think she speaks the language."

"Then let's jump on that to get something started here. Could he bring his wife here to interpret for him? Could we set up a meeting in advance, and put out flyers to tell the people that he'll be here every Tuesday or whatever to talk with people about law enforcement? What do you think?"

"There's a potential liability problem for us if we bring his wife here to do that."

"Then I'll talk with the Sheriff and figure out how we can deal with it. Make her a special deputy with limited duties, or whatever. He'll know how to do it."

"You know, this isn't the only place like this in the county."

"I figured that, and I already know you well enough to guess that you'll show me the rest of them. We'll tackle them one at a time to see how we can help these people. After two or three, we'll find that it's easier to do the rest because we'll be learning as we go. Never overlook the importance of learning. We have to be smarter on Friday than we were on Monday. The era of the dumb cop is long gone. The day that you can't look back and find something you learned, is a day wasted. And every day I spend with you I learn a lot."

My time between ride-along days was filled with other things, and just as I had said to Tim, every day I learned something new. I found out that we had a lot more capability in our communications setup than we were using. It was possible to locate any cell phone, knowing the phone number and sometimes one other number that identifies that particular phone. So I got the man from Verizon to come in and explain to the Sheriff and Becky and me how it all works. Then I made up a form and gave a copy to each employee, where they could list the phones for themselves and their immediate family, so we could track them if he wanted us to. I met with everybody who worked for the department to explain what I had in mind. Immediately hands went up and people protested that this was an invasion of their privacy. I'd thought about that ahead of time and had an answer ready. "First of all, you're exactly right. But before you close your minds to this, take a minute to look at the big picture. We're trying to be more aggressive in combating crime. It's too soon to discover how well we're doing, but it's an ongoing effort and in time the improvement will become noticeable. Noticeable to us, to our honest citizens, and most importantly, to the criminals who live here. We'll be taking the food off their tables by shutting down easy ways to get what's not theirs. They won't like it, and some of them may decide to fight back. Suppose you do a great job of arresting some professional crooks, like maybe car thieves for example. And suppose that one or two of them decide to hit back by kidnapping your wife or child. I hope and pray that it never happens, but if it does I want to find them fast, for you. That's what this is all about. 

"This whole deal is voluntary. If you don't want us to have the information, that's your decision because you have a right to your privacy and we can't muscle into it. But think about it. Wouldn't you like us to be able to track those phones to protect your family? Go home and talk it over with your wife. There's one thing that I'm finding out about deputies' wives: they worry a lot more than they let on to you. She may surprise you by saying, 'I think about that every day when the kids go off to school.' Try to reach a decision together on it. And remember, this doesn't cost you a cent. It's like a fringe benefit that's completely free, if you want it."

Meanwhile I was working on a to-do list. Every day I was adding more items than I was crossing off, but that was all right because most of them would be ongoing for weeks or months. Every day I spent a few minutes writing down what I did that day, what I accomplished, and what I learned. Those pages went into a notebook that would eventually overflow into other notebooks, until I had accumulated the sum of my experience in learning to be a good chief. Because that's what I wanted, to be the best chief deputy that I could be, and maybe even better than some others. I'd like to look a taxpayer in the eye and say, "What you're getting for your tax dollars is a safer place to raise your kids than any other county in the state."

THE KATHLEEN CAFFERTY CAPER

Usually I sat down with the Sheriff after the morning crises had been dealt with and the deputies went out on their assignments, and over a cup of coffee in his office we'd talk about other things. He'd tell me about things he saw on the horizon. I'd tell him about new things that were coming up, new information I'd received, trends that were developing, rumors I'd picked up. We'd talk for half an hour or so and when I left his office we knew that we were singing from the same hymnal.

One morning I asked him what had happened to Kathleen Cafferty. "I thought we would have seen her weeks ago. What happened?"

"That's very interesting and also very complicated. She had been hired to be a cop in Greenwood. Before she was sent to the academy, which involved Pike County paying her tuition in advance because Greenwood didn't have any money, the county manager insisted that she sign an employment contract, committing her to remain a member of the Greenwood Police Department for a year. If she quit before then, she'd have to pay back the tuition on a sliding scale, all of it if she quit right after graduation, tapering down to nothing at the end of the year. If she was fired for cause, she had to pay up the same as if she'd quit. If she was laid off, the county would give her a termination payment of half the wages she would have earned if she'd stayed the whole year. And then everybody forgot all about the contract, which was all signed, perfectly legal and binding on both parties. That is, everybody forgot about it but Kathleen. She was notified by letter that on a certain date the Greenwood Police Department would no longer exist and she was terminated as of that date. So she got out her copy of the contract. In fact, she was studying it when I went to the house to meet her and her mother. She showed it to me.

"Now I know those guys in Pike County, and I knew exactly what they'd try to do if she tried to enforce the contract: They'd first try to put her to work as a file clerk or whatever for a year, and reduce her salary accordingly. If that didn't fly, they'd try to attach her to their Sheriff's office. And if that didn't work, they'd try to put her to work as the only cop in Greenwood. But the letter was very specific, and so was her contract, so she has some rights. 

"Jack, you know me. She's a sweet girl from a good family, and sharp as a cactus thorn. She'll make a great deputy for us if she can take what she learned at the university and the academy and combine that with some worthwhile experience. So I got my back up and took her and her contract to meet the county attorney. He grabbed a young guy named Chet who's a paralegal, doing spadework for prosecutors and other odd jobs to pay his way through law school, and told him to get her out of Pike County with all the pay that she's got coming, period. And he said that if he couldn't do it, bring the contract back to him and he'd do it himself, but Chet would be out on the street.

"So the last I heard, young Chet was roaring like a lion, and Pike County had till the end of the month, that's next Tuesday, to pay up or she'll sue them for her pay plus damages plus cost of collection."

"I never heard of anything like that. Are things really that bad in Pike County?"

"Well, they have very little industry now that the logging is almost nonexistent. There aren't any colleges or junior colleges in the county. Unemployment is over twice what it is here. Almost all the restaurants are closed, so there aren't even any waitress jobs available. Two of their banks failed in the last four years. Property crime is high, and major felonies are on the rise. So I'd say, yes, things there are very bad. But they're bad because nothing is being done to make them better, and the idiots they elect to govern are lucky to find their own parking spaces. As I see it, they're panicky and have adopted an 'every man for himself' mentality, so they're all afraid to admit that they screwed up and they have zero concern for what all their blundering will do to Kathleen."

"Is your plan still to bring her in here as a deputy?"

"Absolutely. I'm not going to let those fools stand in the way of that. But we just have to wait until these legal hassles are over with. Naturally if she already has a deputy job here, no judge is going to be very sympathetic for her predicament, so we'll just have to stand in line."

"You mentioned Kathleen's mother. Is her father alive and present?"

"No. He was killed years ago in some big accident. He had good life insurance, plus there was a big settlement from the accident. So they're not starving. Still, I want to see her get what's rightfully hers."

"Would it hurt anything if Vince and I went there and introduced ourselves, and got to know them a little?"

"Well, don't make any promises without clearing them with me, but it seems to me that it might be a good idea."

That afternoon, things were quiet and we did that very thing. Becky called Mrs. Cafferty and cleared the visit with her, and we took a ride over there in my Jeep, rather than a patrol car, to avoid exciting the neighbors. Mrs. Cafferty greeted us at the door and made it clear that we were welcome in her home. Kathleen came into the living room and we introduced ourselves and sat down, and were immediately offered tea and cookies. Vince, always the diplomat, said, "Mrs. Cafferty, usually I refuse an offer like that, but it's been a tiring day, and I think tea and cookies would probably be the best thing to pick me up. Thank you. You're very kind."

That settled, I said, "The Sheriff has filled me in on your contractual situation, and I realize that you can't come to work for us until that's settled. But he says he is just as deeply committed to hiring you as he ever was, and his word is golden, so I have to assume that it will happen. And when it does, I want it to go smoothly for everyone. So I thought that if we could talk a little now and get to know each other, at least we could answer your questions. I figure that the longer you have to wait, the longer you have to worry, so maybe we can make it a little easier for you."

Mrs. Cafferty nodded, and Kathleen said, "I've heard all sorts of tales from the people I was in the academy with, about being the first woman in an all-male police force."

"Have you shared any of those stories with your mother?"

"Some. I didn't want to scare her."

Vince spoke up. "The chief and I have decided that there will be none of that. Our department is hard on crooks and friendly to cops, and that's how we intend to keep it. We'll meet with all the deputies just before you come aboard and discuss the matter quite frankly with them. And by frankly, I mean like 'one false move and you're fired.' I know them and they know me, and I'm sure we can keep things running smoothly. Over the years, we've always tried to recruit and train the best deputies in the business, and in return make them feel that they've found a home with us, and our record speaks for itself. We're an elite police force, and our deputies come and never leave. That's how we'd like to make it for you."

My turn. "Vince is our Senior Deputy. He directly supervises all the deputies, and is out every day on patrol himself. He's been enforcement a long time. I really believe that nothing will come up that he doesn't know how to handle. Kathleen, you have all the educational background that anyone could ask for, but no experience. You and Vince complement each other, so I plan to have you work as Vince's partner. He's patient and he explains things well so I know you'll learn a lot. At the same time, this needs to be a two way conversation. There will be times when something you learned in school will differ from our practice, and when that comes up you need to talk it over with Vince so we reach a complete understanding. Neither of you will be saying, 'You're wrong and I'm right.' It will be more like 'Here's how we do it,' and be 'Here's what they taught us,' and the two of you can hash it out and figure what's best in this situation and what might be best in another. If it's important, we'll talk it over with all the deputies. Two very important points here: It's always best to talk things out; and we're always ready to improve anything we do."

Vince asked, "Do you have any questions for us?"

Kathleen jumped right onto that one. "Will I share a locker room with the men?"

Vince knew that I was ready for that one so he gave me a nod. "There are two answers for that. First, let's look ahead a year or so. Our building will be getting a makeover, including such a big addition it's going to be like a new building. There will be complete separate facitities for men and women: locker rooms, showers, lavatories; all clean, well lighted, and comfortable. But the present is another thing. You will have a locker to put your stuff into. It will be separate from the men's locker room, but it will not be in a real locker room. Maybe in another room, or maybe in a hallway. You'll have to change into and out of your uniform at home, and take your showers at home. You will use the women's rest room in the front part of the building. It will be inconvenient for you, but it'll be temporary. Try to think of yourself as a pioneer, not as a second class citizen."

"Will I be doing regular patrolling or will I be assigned to some cutesy duties like making coffee?"

"From day one, you'll be on patrol with Vince. There will be times when he'll send you out with another deputy, either to get experience with a certain type of call, or to learn something specific from a deputy who is especially good at it. On the job training in police work can be frustrating, because you're not always solving murder cases the way they do on TV. The calls are answered as they come in, and you might get two armed robberies in a week, or you might not see one for a year. So I can't tell you when you'll get your own patrol car, but when you do, it'll be because I've decided you're ready for it. You'll be the same as every other deputy, with only two exceptions. One is strip searches. If we have a woman who needs to be strip searched, you'll be called. And we won't have you strip search men. But the fact is that we very seldom have to do strip searches so that won't come up much. The other is domestic disputes. We hear that women are better than men at dealing with those, and if that works out for us, then you may get more of those."

"What about weapons training?"

"Just the same as the men. As soon as you're an official member of the department, we'll get you to the range to get the feel of our weapons and fire for record. I doubt that we have any new weapons that you wouldn't have come across at the academy, but we may have some older ones. I want to be sure that you get plenty of time shooting AR's on full auto, because that's something that doesn't come up much so you might be handed one some day and you don't want to start to learn about then, out in the middle of some street with bullets flying around. 

"My concern here isn't that you're a woman but that you're new to the department. Another thing that we'll be teaching all of our deputies about is weapons, especially rifles, that are not normally police weapons. For example, we confiscated some deer rifles with scopes, and found that not all of the men on that mission had experience with them. So that will be the subject of one training session."

Kathleen thought about that, and I thought maybe we had satisfied her curiosity. But no, there was more, lurking there.

THE PERSONAL TOUCH

Kathleen seemed to be studying my face. "Are you the one who shot all those people out in the woods?"

"Yes, I am. However, that case is still open, and I can't discuss it."

"You must be some kind of a shooter! Where'd you learn all that?"

"In a strange and far-off land called Afghanistan. I don't boast about my ability because there's always somebody who draws faster and shoots straighter, but I did well enough to come back from there in one piece. We have some deputies who are real experts with various weapons, and you'll meet them. Vince is working up a coaching list so that if you need help with pistols, for example, he can send you to the range with a real pistol expert. In a few months we're all going to learn to shoot pistols well with the wrong hand, and we'll keep at it till we can qualify that way. We'll do training in simulated night shooting. All these things are important, and they might make the difference between life and death some day."




Peril in the Pines Ch. 06



Vince asked, "Anything else? I get the impression that there's something you want to know but you're hesitant to ask."

Kathleen sat and looked nervously at Vince, then at me, and then at her mother. I got the idea and said, "While you two talk, I'm going to go to the kitchen with Mrs. Cafferty for a private conversation." 

I got up and took Mrs. Cafferty by the hand and we walked out. As we entered the kitchen I could hear Kathleen say, "What's been bothering me is..." I let the swinging door swing shut and we were alone.

"Now if you'll pour me another cup of tea, Mrs. Cafferty, you can share with me what's been bothering you that you couldn't ask in front of Kathleen."

"What makes you think I've got something bothering me?"

"Because if I were sending my daughter out to be a cop, I'd be worried sick."

"Look, Chief..." I stopped her there.

"There's nobody in the room except you and me. My name is Jack."

"Oh, all right, Jack. I want Kathleen to be happy, do what she wants to do, and be good at it. Will she be in danger? Will she be accepted? Will she be able to do the work? Will she be an outcast in the neighborhood?"

"That's a lot. Let's take it a piece at a time. In some situations, a woman cop may be targeted by some criminals who think they can pull something over on her. Face facts: she's smaller than most male cops, and there are some people out there who still don't believe in treating women the same as men. Here's my answer. First, she'll be learning daily from the best in the business, and they just don't come any better than Vince. Second, she's very smart, might have the top IQ in the department. Third, her skills as tested at the academy are up at the top. Fourth, I won't let her go out on her own until I'm sure she's ready. She'll probably come home and complain to you that she's being held back, and it may be true because I'll want her to be even better prepared than most of the men. So yes, she'll be in some danger, same as we all are. And yes, she'll be able to do the work and excel at it.

"Next, I think she'll be accepted. Our deputies are skilled and they know it. Once they see that she is, too, they'll welcome her into their ranks. If I find that we have any who are reluctant to do that, Vince and I will make it our personal goal to take care of that. Now, about the neighbors: unless you've got a bunch of drug peddlers or pimps living around here, I think they'll be proud of her. She may become sort of a neighborhood celebrity. You'll just have to wait and see. If there's a problem, tell me or Vince. We deal with problems every day. Now what else is on your mind?"

"Oh, I guess that's all, Jack. I just want everything to go well for my little girl. She's all I've got."

"Well, then it's my turn. This is in strictest confidence. I'm still very new at police work. My background is in leading men in combat in the Army, and I got thrust into this job by a quirk of fate. A very lucky quirk for me, as it turned out. I'm anxious to do a good job, and I thought I had a good handle on it until this unexpected challenge named Kathleen came up. I have to make this work out all right or I'll be in a world of trouble. My men, and the Sheriff, too, expect me to be able to figure out how to handle everything that comes along, and I expect the same of myself. I don't want to let anybody down, including Kathleen, you, the Sheriff, or my deputies. So I'll depend on you to tell me if anything is off key. You know Kathleen inside and out, and if there's a problem you'll sense it first. Even if you don't know what it is yet, let me know if there are any signs of uneasiness or trouble. Her career may depend on it, and maybe mine too. Make no mistake, I'm very good at leading and supervising and managing, but this is different and I've got to show that I can make it turn out right. Now here's the deal I'd like you to agree to with me: you watch my back, and I'll watch out Kathleen's. Is that a deal?"

"Yes, it sure is. I think you and I are going to get along very well, Jack. And we'll just keep this little conversation to ourselves, won't we?"

"Yes, we sure will. Seal of the confessional."

"Right. How about another cup of tea? Or something stronger?"

"Tea, yes. The other, not while I'm working, thank you. But maybe some other time." Mrs. Cafferty busied herself with the tea, and then I said, "Oh, before we leave, there's one other thing I was going to ask you. It might be that Vince will want to invite you and Kathleen to his house for dinner or maybe just for a drink, to get better acquainted with you, and for you to meet his fiancee. If you would feel funny about that, let me know. But I've got to tell you, Vince is a wonderful guy, and Rose is simply a delight."

"Oh, I think that would be nice. Is this something that is commonly done?"

"Depends on the people involved, but it's pretty common for partners to get to know each other's family because they work so close together every day. They get to feel like relatives in an extended family, and that's good for them, because in a tight spot it's only natural to protect a family member more aggressively than you would a business associate."

"Is all police work dangerous?"

"No, in fact most of it isn't. Policemen do a lot of work with school children, and they do things to help the underprivileged. They direct traffic. They investigate crimes daily, long after the bad guys have left, because before we can try to get justice done we have to know what happened. They help people whose cars have broken down. If people are injured, they give first aid. Oh, that reminds me, I helped deliver a baby last month. Boy, was that a thrill! You've probably heard the saying, 'we protect and serve' and it's true. Sometimes it seems that the police are the people who jump in and take care of situations that nobody else can handle. Think of us as the people who give you the ability to sleep through the night instead of lying awake worrying."

"Why do we have Sheriff's deputies patrolling our streets instead of city policemen?"

"It goes back to the Great Depression. The city was about bankrupt and couldn't afford to pay for a police department. The county stepped in and hired the policemen as deputies, and has patrolled the city ever since. It costs a lot to run any police department, and if the department is small, it can be prohibitively expensive to operate. Piggybacking it onto a county department saves a lot of salaries, like the chief, dispatcher, phone operator, armorer, and so on. The bottom line is better protection and better service for everybody."

"Jack, for a young man you have such a wonderful grasp of everything. You must be a very exceptional person."

"Thank you for the compliment, but I assure you that any of our deputies could answer your questions just as well as I can. They're very good at what they do, and they know a whole lot more than you'd expect. Remember what I told you: we want the public to be well taken care of, and we want our deputies to go home safe and sound after every shift. And you can be sure the Sheriff expects Vince and me to work hard to make it happen."

We went to rejoin the conversation in the other room, and Vince and I left shortly after that. In the Jeep, Vince said, "That girl is going to be a wonderful cop. I think she'll make our transition from all male to coed a lot easier than I expected. We can give the Sheriff a good report on this recon trip."

"Her mother is okay, too. She'll be a big help. I'm feeling good about this, and I'm anxious for it to happen. Hey, the Sheriff filled me in on the legal hassling over Kathleen. Has he got a burr under his saddle for Pike County?"

"You're seeing the residue from some shady stuff they tried to pull on him many years ago. Remember when the Commander said he remembers his friends and his enemies? That goes double for our Sheriff. And he has a very long memory.

At home that evening I was telling Jan about the conversations with Kathleen Cafferty and her mother. She asked, "What kind of a person is this Kathleen?"

"Seems like a very normal young lady. Quite determined to get into police work. She's a habitual hard worker and overachiever, and she has a driving ambition to the best that there is. I'm afraid that's going to be hard for her to satisfy, because it's not that kind of work. You never know what the day will hold, and a call that you could excel at may go to somebody else while you get to spend the afternoon directing traffic around an accident. I just hope that after spending so long preparing for this, she's not disappointed."

"How'd Vince take to her?"

"Seemed to me that they both liked each other right away. I think they'll work well together and she'll learn a lot from him. The lack of a women's locker room is going to rankle her, and we talked about it, but that will be taken care of in a year. She's not a kid, really. She's only a few years younger than I am, but she seems idealistic. I'm sure it's the same for beginning teachers. You get on the job and it isn't quite the way you pictured it, but you take a deep breath and plunge in, and eventually you find that you've mastered it. I talked with her mother privately for a few minutes. She's very nice, and I'm sure she'll be a big help to Kathleen as she gets settled in. She'll need somebody to talk to, somebody who's willing to listen, and it's hard to beat a mother for that."

"Any idea when she'll be able to start work?"

"No, it depends on the legal razzle dazzle with Pike County. The Sheriff got our county attorney involved with that, and I guess they're out to settle some old scores. The Sheriff isn't the only one nursing old wounds from the Pike County people. If the case goes to court, it could be a while. I'm hoping that they'll settle and we can get on with it. The longer we wait, the harder it'll be. I just want to stop waiting and start doing something. And I think that the longer we wait, the more the rumor mill will get fired up, and everybody will know that we're planning a significant move and not telling anybody about it."

"Maybe you ought to go ahead and tell the guys what's coming. Well, I suppose that has to wait for the legal issues to be cleared up."

"Yeah, it's a shame to delay it like this. We'll talk about it tomorrow morning, I'm sure. The Sheriff will want to know how it went when we visited the Cafferty house, and I'll let the conversation roll around to my impatience."

"Do you want to have the two of them over here some night?"

"Seems a little much. I think Vince and Rose may have them to their house, which would be a natural thing since they're going to be partners for the training period. Having them here would seem like making a celebrity out of Kathleen, and I don't want to do anything that would make her feel funny about working for us. I think I ought to stop fixating on the whole issue, because I think I'm blowing it out of proportion. What we're doing is hiring one new deputy. Period. And it's probably going to go smoothly and there won't be any problems."

DECISIONS, PLANS, AND NEGOTIATIONS

When I got home that evening Jan mentioned, "My car was making a funny noise today, on the way home. Will you take it out after dinner and see how it sounds to you?"

"Sure. If you want, we could switch cars tomorrow and I could have our mechanic give it a once over. But let's wait till I listen to it and then we can decide."

There was a crashing noise outside. Actually two crashing noises, one right after the other. We both jumped up and I reached for my pistol and went out the door. I took a quick look and turned back to Jan. "Call 911 and then give me the phone."

What had made the noise was a large SUV that bounced off a car parked across the street and then careened across to our side of the street, right into Jan's little sedan. It had come to rest almost completely in our driveway, with the front bumper of the SUV about where the driver's seat of the sedan should be. We wound up with a crowd scene with deputies, a fire truck, an ambulance, three tow trucks, and all the neighbors from our street, the next street in each direction, and who knows where else. The drunken driver of the SUV was hauled away to the hospital after taking and failing a field sobriety test. The firemen cleaned up the broken glass, shards of torn metal, spilled gasoline and oil, and then left. The tow trucks had a tough time separating the SUV from Jan's car, but finally left with the parked car that had been hit first, the SUV, and Jan's sedan, plus an assortment of loose parts that had been dislodged during the impacts. The onlookers seemed disappointed that the show was over, and after looking around to see if any other cars were going to come crashing into things, they slowly trudged back to their homes. We were left looking at skid marks on the street, the driveway, and our lawn, and one car where there were usually two.

Jan took the disaster in stride, but when we came back into the house and locked the door behind us, she buried her face in my shoulder and cried. I took her over to the sofa and held her while she sobbed, with her shoulders shaking, until there weren't any more tears left to shed. I held her close to me then and got her calmed down. Finally she looked up at me and said, "What am I crying for? At least I wasn't in it."

I was quick to add, "And now we don't have to figure out the cause of that noise you heard driving home."

The book value of Jan's car was so low that the insurance payment for totaling it wasn't enough to pay for a set of tires. I didn't want to go deeply into debt right then, so we shopped for used cars the next weekend, coming away with a pretty good notion of what we could afford. But I had already put out feelers to a few people I knew, and within a week we had a very nice eight year old sedan, quite luxurious, with low miles. It certainly wasn't the usual sort of car that a school teacher would drive, probably more like a principal's or a bank branch manager's car. It wasn't in high demand because it got low gas mileage, maybe eighteen mpg in city traffic on a good day, but for Jan's daily commute of four miles each way it was entirely suitable. Most important, Jan liked it.

Weathering that crisis without our family finances becoming totally unhinged, left us in a good position to go ahead with wedding plans. We seriously considered bypassing the engagement ring and going directly to the wedding ring. This was a major decision, and the result would be to slide the wedding date forward or back by several months. I left it entirely up to Jan. To me it made less difference than tomorrow's weather forecast. Finally, after talking it over with her mother and all of her friends, Jan announced that she'd rather be married sooner and go through life with one ring on her third finger instead of two.

The result of Jan's decision was that, as weddings go, she was months behind the curve in planning and preparing. The frenzy of making all the decisions and signing contracts and writing checks shifted into high gear. And was it ever frantic! The shop that she wanted to get her gown from went out of business. The Church was available on the Saturday when she wanted to get married but the party house where she wanted to have the reception wasn't. I stepped in on that one, and suggested that she talk to a hotel about getting their ballroom for the reception, with guest rooms on one floor tentatively reserved for the wedding party and guests so nobody would have to drive home under the influence. It seemed to me that with all those rooms rented, the hotel ought to throw in the ballroom free and even a free bar for the first two or three hours. Jan was shocked by my suggestion, and said that no hotel would go for such a deal, so I asked her if she wanted me to talk with them. Of course, I knew how to pull it off, because the hotel I had in mind was where the Sheriff's office held two training seminars that I intended to make annual affairs, and we also had a longstanding, unwritten understanding with them about being discreet in our handling of occasional problems with their guests who had imbibed unwisely. It was definitely in the hotel's interest to sweeten the deal for our reception as much as they could. At the same time, I was bargaining with two outside caterers and allowed the hotel to bid against them on the dinner as well. 

Vince and I went there in uniform to sit down with the hotel's general manager to rough out the scope of the proposed contract with the hotel. We already knew the terms that the hotel would try to base their proposal on, simply boilerplate that they used for every contract. Vince and I had agreed in advance to object to three of the caveats that the hotel had stipulated as if they were laid down by God. They didn't really mean much for our wedding reception, but our real motivation was to let the GM know that we were writing the agreement, not his staff. When we had finished explaining that we weren't about to agree to those three items, the GM sat back in his chair and looked from me to Vince and back to me again without saying a word. Then he shrugged slightly and said, "Let's not make these issues a deal breaker," and went on down the list of items in our proposal. In the end, we let the hotel have the whole thing: ballroom, hotel rooms, food preparation, food service, wine with the meal, and an open bar before and after the meal. With so many services provided, they could shave their prices here and there and still make a profit, and they gave us a price for the package that nobody else could have come even close to. Compared to the tentative budget we had put together, we saved a shade over two thousand dollars, and we emerged as heroes in the eyes of our ladies.

It made sense that there would be couples at the wedding who had small children at home, so they would need to get home that night instead of staying overnight at the hotel. I got hold of the outfit that provided limousine service for weddings, and arranged that they would provide three smaller vehicles with drivers to take guests home, and if necessary take their baby sitters home as well. Nobody had thought of that, and it seemed like a safe, sensible service to offer to our guests, with the understanding that the number of vehicles was limited and they might have to wait a half hour for their ride or share a car with another couple. To help guests decide whether or not they ought to drive, I arranged for a team of Explorer Scouts to give breath tests in a room near to the ballroom, with a rotating group of deputies to supervise. We made a donation to the Explorers program, and even with that included our total transportation package was roughly what we had budgeted for the limo alone.

When we had all the plans together, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Jan called the society editor of the newspaper and we set up an interview to outline all the features of our wedding plan that were designed to let our guests enjoy themselves without worrying, and without compromising their safety. This was run in the paper a week before the wedding, and since it turned out to be a slow news day, it was run with a big headline on the front page of section two of the paper, with a continuation inside to the society page. Our plans were detailed enough, and showed our concern for our guests clearly enough, to make our wedding the big event of the season in the mind of the society editor, and the whole county had long ago accepted her judgment in such matters the absolute last word.

Our friends and relatives, my friends from the law enforcement community, county attorney's office, and leading politicians, and Jan's friends among schoolteachers and administrators, made up a sizeable guest list, but we invited everybody we thought might want to come and help us get our married life off to a good start. As the date drew closer, instead of getting more nervous we were getting more relaxed. Everything had been planned so carefully that we were completely sure nothing had been left out, and everything was going to be perfect.



Peril in the Pines Ch. 07



SURPRISE!

On the Wednesday afternoon before the wedding, I called Jan's cell phone around three o'clock to leave a message about some detail or other, and was told by a recording that Jan was not answering. I left a message, expecting a call back within fifteen minutes or so. When I didn't get it, I called her again, and again got the recording. We'd been planning to do a little last minute shopping together and then grab a bite to eat at a restaurant, and I couldn't understand how there could be a change of plans without her calling to let me know. So I called the school and was told that Jan had received a call earlier and had asked that somebody cover her classroom so she could leave early. This sounded very strange and I began to worry about something bad happening to Jan.

I immediately put the procedure into motion that would track the location of her phone. One aspect of the procedure was to call in help from the state police, and I did that without delay. Meanwhile I had sent deputies to Jan's school and our home. She definitely wasn't at home and there were no signs that she had been there. At the school, they got the same story I had been given. The BOLO was already out for her car, which was distinctive enough to spot easily. I called the Verizon rep and he got their techs going on the search. They worked up a location history on her phone, and when that was available the rep and his head tech came to the station. By then Vince had set up a command post in our interview room. I was standing in the doorway talking with Vince when a burly guy said "Excuse me," and I looked up into the face of Detective Dolan from the CID, who had come over to offer his assistance, and to pass along a message from the Commander that the entire state police apparatus was ready to assist in any way they could.

It made me feel good to know that we had so many people ready to help find my wife. But as warm as that made me feel, it didn't make a dent in the hollow feeling I had where my stomach used to be, the site of all my worries about the most precious person in my whole world.

An hour after my first indication of trouble, a little guy wearing a sweater vest and sandals showed up and explained that he was a writer from the state's biggest TV station, and had been sent to help us draft a message to be broadcast every half hour, announcing Jan's disappearance and appealing for help from the public to provide any relevant information and to find her car. He explained that after his station broadcast the message the first time, it would be made available to all of the other radio and TV stations in the state.

By this time, the long table had been cleared of incidental items so that it could be used for whatever was going on at the moment. Vince sat at the end closest to the door, and the Sheriff was at the opposite end. Across the hall, Rose and Deputy Andy Beyers were working the phones, checking at the bridal salon, hair salon, flower shop, hotel, every place where Jan might possibly have gone. I was mostly in my office, with Tim at my side. I had already surrendered my car keys to him and I was depending on him to do everything for me, to prevent my nervousness from screwing anything up. We had a deputy watching my house, and two more at Jan's mother's house.

At five o'clock the Sheriff called for a recap of every bit of significant information that we had. The cell phone had been tracked, and its travels had been plotted on a big map on one wall of the room. It had been at the school, not moving, until about two thirty, when a call had come in on it, originating from a phone at the public library. The call lasted about three minutes, after which Jan's cell phone had left the school and gone by a fairly direct route across town to the parking lot of the hospital. Again it sat still, jiggled a little, and then started moving again. It circled the block twice as if to detect a tail, and then headed north toward the interstate highway.

The recap narrative was interrupted by Becky's voice on the intercom announcing that our deputies had found Jan's big sedan parked at the hospital, unlocked, with the keys in the ignition switch. A flatbed wrecker was on its way to pick it up and take it to the state police garage for detailed examination.

Before the recap could be re-started, Dolan announced that state police cruisers were covering the interstate in both directions from the nearby interchanges. Then there was an announcement that the phone had entered the interstate and was headed eastward at seventy miles an hour and faster. The room was quiet as everybody wondered what that meant, and Dolan looked up from his phone to say that state police helicopter number two was paralleling the highway about a half mile to the south, and the pilot had determined which car seemed to be slowing down and speeding up exactly as the electronic track did. The car appeared to be an unmarked light blue Police Interceptor model Ford LTD, and a telephoto camera shot of the license plate showed that it belonged to the state CID! The pilot did not see any other cars operating in conjunction with the blue Ford, and a roadblock was being set up fifteen miles ahead, on a stretch of highway where there were no exits for ten miles.

At this point, Deputy Jeremy Phelps rolled in a TV set on a wheeled stand, and after fiddling with the wires he stood back so everybody could see the screen, which showed the picture from the nose camera on the helicopter. A minute later there was a crackling sound and the pilot's voice was heard to say that helicopter number one had joined the chase. It was headed for the vicinity of the roadblock, where it would loiter out of sight until the blue Ford was past the last exit before the roadblock. The pilot was offering the opinion that the helicopter might be carrying a high ranking officer who would take charge of the chase once the blue Ford had been entered the roadblock zone.

Tim and I had entered the interview room when the recap had started, and were standing in a corner near Vince's end of the table. We had a good view of the TV set, but we turned to look at Dolan when he put his phone on the table and said, "Oh Boy!" He gestured to get the Sheriff's attention and said, "The pilot of helicopter one just told me that his passenger is the Commander! He's going to take charge of the hostage negotiations when they have stopped the car that we think is carrying Janice."

The room got quiet. It seemed that everybody had stopped breathing. I could hear my pulse thudding in my ears, and I stood as still as if I were on a stakeout in the woods. The picture on the TV showed that helicopter two had lifted above the houses south of the highway just enough to bring the blue Ford into view. It came around a curve and slowed as the unknown driver caught sight of the roadblock ahead, where state police cars with flashing lights flanking a huge dump truck parked across the pavement a half mile from the blue Ford. As the blue Ford slowed down, more police light bars lit up with flashing blue and red lights, so the driver could clearly see that there was no possibility of going east, no matter how he tried to get around the obstruction. At the same time, a car came into view, paralleling the blue Ford down in the graded apron beyond the shoulder to its right. The light bar on that car lit up. A car came up from the far side of the westbound lane, onto the westbound pavement, and its light bar came to life. As the blue Ford got to within a hundred yards of the roadblock, red and blue flashes came into view from the west, revealing that more cars were following the blue Ford to keep it from turning around.

Helicopter two made a low level pass over the blue Ford, its camera peering into the windows on the right side of the car first, and then on the left side as it banked to the west and lifted away from the car. The driver was a middle aged man, slightly heavier than medium build. In the back seat was a woman whose face had been obscured when viewed from the right side, but from the left side, as she looked out the window and up at the helicopter, I could see that it was Jan! "Dolan!" I screamed. That's my Jan!"

Dolan immediately relayed the information into his phone, and in a few seconds we heard the helicopter two pilot say, "The identity of the passenger has been passed on to the commander's helicopter."

Our whirlybird's eye view tilted and rotated as the helicopter did a climbing 180 over the highway, well behind the blue Ford. When it was again headed eastward, we could see helicopter one flying sideways, almost skimming the ground north of the highway. The blue Ford slowed to a stop about fifty yards from the roadblock. Immediately helicopter one came to a stop and touched down on the grass beside the highway, just long enough for the tallest man ever to wear the state police uniform to step nimbly out and wave to his pilot, who immediately did a jump takeoff, spun around, and headed out of the camera's view.

The commander was hatless, and wasted no time sprinting to the police cruiser parked facing eastward on the westbound lane, behind and to the left of the blue Ford. He crouched by the driver's door, talking to the driver. Then we saw someone running into the picture from north of the highway carrying a rifle, which he handed to the commander. The pilot of helicopter two came back onto the audio, saying, "I'm listening to a conversation on a radio channel that you can't hear. The negotiator is talking with the driver of the blue car. The driver is waving a pistol as he lists his demands, and he already said that if he doesn't get what he wants, his hostage will die a slow, painful death."

Meanwhile, we could see the commander at the rear of the parked cruiser, rifle in his hands, lying out across the trunk with both elbows planted. It seemed to take him no time at all to get steady and acquire a sight picture, then squeeze off a shot. The head of the driver of the blue Ford jerked and seemed to expand, and the right side of the windshield turned all red. Then he slumped and came to rest leaning against the driver's door. Immediately the picture was filled with men in state police uniforms, all running toward the blue Ford. The first one to reach the car opened the left rear door and reached in to help the most beautiful girl in the world out of the car, onto the pavement. He said something to her, and she turned her face up toward the helicopter and waved.

I really don't remember what happened right after that. Tim told me that I yelled "Yes!" and pumped my fist in the air, and then turned to him and collapsed into his arms, crying like a little kid. I do know that he helped me into my office and went out and closed the door. I had just finished a prayer of thanks when Vince came in and sat down in one of my visitor chairs. He looked anxiously at me, yet he was smiling. I do remember saying to him, "Please help me get up and go back to the interview room."

I stepped into the room and everybody stopped talking and looked at me. I said, "I want to tell you all, and all the people who worked on this rescue, that this is the greatest thrill of my life. My Janice is safe, and you all did it. Every one of you, tell your coworkers this: if you ever need anything that I can do for you, I'm your best friend in the world. Thanks again." And then they were all coming over to me, to shake my hand, pat me on the back, lay a hand across my arm, grab my shoulder, anything to show that they understood. I knew that they'd do it all again if they had to.

It wasn't until almost seven that night that I got to hold my Jan. She had been interviewed on the site, checked there by paramedics, and then flown back into town on helicopter one with the commander. The helicopter set down in a parking lot a block from the Sheriff shop, and I was there to greet her. She and I both hugged so tight that she was gasping for breath when we backed off. "Oh, Jack, I don't want you ever to be farther away from me than this."

"I feel the same way. Were you scared?"

"I was so scared that I thought I'd pee my panties. And then I was more afraid that I'd do that than I was of anything that awful man said he'd do to me, so I just kept squeezing my legs together and that gave me something real to concentrate on."

"What did you and the commander say to each other on the way back?"

"He said that you'd just done him a big favor, and he was surprised that he could return it so soon afterward. He told me that I was very brave, and he felt bad that it was a gang of his own men that had terrorized us like this. Then I asked him why he had taken over and fired that shot himself. He said that he has an excellent SWAT team, but he is also very good with their sniper rifles, and he knew just exactly where he wanted to place that bullet. Then he said it had got personal with him and it just felt right to end it himself, and to save my life as a way to show his gratitude to us for exposing those bad cops. He's really a good guy, so imposing with his height, but so real and so human. Oh, he said he and his wife are coming to the wedding. Then I asked him for a favor."

"What kind of a favor?"

"Well, it seemed as if he was rescuing me from those crooked cops so I could marry you. So I asked him if he would give me away. He asked me why, and I told him I don't have any close male relative to give me away, and he and all of his men who were involved in my rescue had saved me for you, so we could have our wedding. They really were giving me to you. He had a yellow legal pad in the helicopter, and when we landed at his headquarters to drop him off we worked out the words that he'll say, while we sat right there on the helipad. He'll say that he's representing my mother and father, and everyone in all the professions, in and out of uniform, who contribute to the enforcement of our laws, and made my rescue possible. So it's his pleasure to give me in marriage, on behalf of them all. The more we worked on the words, the better it seemed, so he agreed to do it."

"Honey, you have such amazing instincts. Nobody else would even have thought of that, but you did. You and the commander put it together and it's going to be just perfect, just the same way that you're always just perfect."

The I held both of her hands in both of mine and we offered a prayer of thanks, and asked that all of the people of all the law enforcement agencies be kept from harm. On the Amen, she fell into my arms and I held her tight.

ORANGE BLOSSOMS AT LAST

The wedding went off without a hitch. Jan looked like the happiest girl in the world as she walked slowly toward me on the arm of the commander. As we left the church, the drill team from the Police Benevolent Association formed an archway for us to pass through, with eight men on each side in crisp uniforms, holding their sabers over our heads in response to the shouted commands from their brigadier who stood alongside with the golden shoulder rope setting him off as their commander. We did get one thing wrong, though: Jan was the one beaming from ear to ear, while I was the one who was so moved that I had tears running down both my cheeks. 

At the reception Vince, the best man, gave a very moving toast, which was followed by another toast from the Sheriff. After all, he would soon be campaigning for re-election. Our deputies were there in their dress uniforms, including the newest member of the team, Kathleen Cafferty. Her date was Chet Meyers, the paralegal who had backed down Pike County and secured her settlement. They were seated at one of the tables of our deputies and their ladies, while her mother was sitting with Mayor Mary McCarthy, County Attorney Charles O'Brien, and Monsignor Sullivan, who led us in prayer before the meal in his rich, deep baritone voice with hints of a brogue that he must practice daily to keep from losing it.

We had asked all the policemen from the various departments wear their dress uniforms, to add a little zest to the appearance of the men, who usually just blend into the background at weddings. So Vince and I and the ushers, Tim and Harold, were in our dress uniforms instead of tuxedos. Jan, of course, wore white and she was so gorgeous that she made my heart melt just looking at her. The state policemen in their dress uniforms included, to my surprise, Detective Dolan, whom I had never seen in anything but plainclothes. Also seated at that table were Gordon and Grace Reese. Gordon was in uniform, too, being entitled as director of the academy to the rank of Colonel in the State Police. The master of ceremonies quipped that nobody would be stealing any wedding gifts from this reception. 

Those gifts were piled in an empty room nearby, and I mean piled! There were two tables there to start with, but so many gifts were coming in that the hotel staff removed the tables and put everything on the floor, stacked high in one corner and cascading down and out until there was no place to walk in nearly half of the room.

The bridesmaids, maid of honor Rose and Jan's cousin Sally, were in light lavender gowns. Or maybe they were mauve, what do I know? Whatever you call it, the color had been chosen to harmonize with our dress uniforms and we made a dazzling sight when we lined up for group photos. The photographers were having a field day. Our professional wedding photographer, Beatrice Sanders, flitted about with three cameras while the newspaper photographer and two TV cameramen were off to the side, competing for the best pictures and trading comments about composition and lighting. Jan and I were buttressed by the tall bookends of Vince and Rose, who almost seemed to be guarding us. And after what we'd been through three days earlier, that felt good.

At the end of the meal, while the tables were being cleared and dessert was being served, I got up and made a speech. I thanked everyone for helping us celebrate the beginning of what we were sure would be a lifetime together. Then I went on to explain that when I came home from overseas my immediate family had all passed away and I felt like an orphan, but thanks to the solidarity of our law enforcement community, I had come to feel like a brother in the greatest family on earth. When the applause died down I paid a somewhat similar compliment on Jan's behalf to the teachers who were filling up four tables and beaming at Jan, like the sisters and brothers she never had. Then I raised my glass in a toast to family and friends, and invited them all to enjoy the party.

I led Jan onto the dance floor. As we danced I talked seriously about that day out in the woods, when both of us acted and felt like two young kids hiding from the big world out there. Since that day we'd made the transition to a mature married couple, relishing the closeness of all our friends as we had grown into our roles in that big world, a world that we didn't need to hide from any more. I promised her that no force on earth would ever come between us. I added that I could not imagine us ever moving away from our home town and our friends. We ended the dance with a kiss that brought applause, whistles, and foot stomping, and I waved at our guests while Jan blew kisses to them all.

Truly, life was good!

EPILOGUE

All that was a long time ago, and a lot has happened since then. Our number one son, Vincent Timothy Olson, just completed his master's degree in criminal justice by going to school part time while working full time for the state police. He is continuing to work there, and said he has a surprise for us, some big promotion that he's keeping very hush hush.

Our middle child, Marilyn Rose Olson, is continuing her studies at the state university, majoring in biochemistry. She has inherited her mother's love of learning, and I expect her to pursue at least one graduate degree and probably more, before embarking on a career in medical research.




Peril in the Pines Ch. 07



Then there's the baby of the family, Gordon Martin Olson, who recently graduated from the police academy up near the top of his class, and is now a rookie investigator on the state's attorney's staff.

Jan is still beautiful, still wonderful, and still teaching. She turned down two offers of principal jobs, and insists that her elementary school pupils still make her feel young at heart, and challenge her daily to put meaning into their lives.

Jan's mother passed away a year ago, in her sleep with a smile on her face. She loved being a grandmother, and as our children grew into their teens she regaled them with stories of her own younger, wilder years while stuffing them full of milk and cookies, the same afternoon snack she'd spoiled them with since first grade. We still have her cute little mother cottage, the park model with a large slide, attached to our kitchen. It's all ready to welcome visitors at any time. It sits at the back of our extra lot, with a four car garage in front of it. One of the things in the garage is my old yellow Jeep. It's been lovingly restored and is all ready to roll, but I left the bullet hole that the hit man put in the hood, as a reminder of past adventures.

My old friend and mentor, Sheriff Peterson, served two more terms after our wedding and then announced that he was retiring from public office. He called a press conference to make that announcement, and mentioned that he hoped to see Vince run as his successor. Various old hands in the police world filed papers to run for the office, but within two weeks after Vince officially announced his candidacy all the others had withdrawn, leaving Vince to run uncontested. Talk about professional respect! I can't think of a more profound compliment for the way he's done his job and lived his life.

I'm still Chief Deputy, promoted a step at a time to wearing colonel's eagles but still pushing constant improvement, anticipation, and action plans A, B, and C. Vince is in his fourth term now, and he says this will be his last. Sergeant Kathleen Cafferty Meyers is getting ready to run to succeed him, with attorney Chet Meyers, her husband, managing her campaign. I figure she's a sure thing, because she's done such a good job all these years that she'll get a lot of votes from the police in the county, plus the Irish, plus the feminists. Then there's the religion angle to consider. The Catholic votes alone will give her a formidable push, and she's also very popular at Chet's temple, so she may get a strong Jewish vote as well. As for Chet and his asociates, nobody has ever figured out how to predict whether lawyers will agree on anything, but I'll go out on a limb and guess that the attorneys in the county will support Kathleen, too, and we've got a lot of them. I'll make another prediction: once Kathleen is elected, she'll do such a good job that she'll keep the job as long as she feels like running for re-election.

Many things have changed over the years, and we've scurried to keep our Sheriff's office up to date and as efficient as any police force in the southwest. But one relic of the past that I've refused to part with is the good old all-steel Smith & Wesson 40 caliber pistol that the Sheriff handed me before I was even on his payroll. To some it probably seems old fashioned, but to me it symbolizes accuracy, reliability, and security. And symbolism aside, it'll still shoot the bullseye out of a target any day of the week.

Oh, I've gotta go now. Tim, my senior deputy, just came in to get me for a tour through the northern part of the county, where we'll meet with leading citizens in three towns whose residents are asking for more patrols through their area. I've promised Sheriff Vince a full report tomorrow morning over coffee, so we can come up with a plan. But of course, we'll actually come up with plans A, B, and C. That's how we do things around here!