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Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 01

By: HansTrimble



AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is another story arising out of the seemingly innocuous situation of a young couple going into a forest to have a picnic lunch and make out a little while they're there. The first story I submitted that started out that way, got mangled up in the submission process, and only a little bit made it through. Later I re-submitted it, slightly rewritten, under the title 'Peril in the Pines' in seven chapters, and it came out all right.

This story starts out the same way, but it takes a different route, with a different setting, different characters, and different plot. So you might think of this as 'Peril in the Pines Reconsidered.' 

This story contains almost no sex. What little sex there is, I have described in general terms rather than elaborate on every drop of sweat and glob of semen. If you want torrid sex scenes, minutely described, that will leave you feeling gooey and sticky and exhausted, you'd do well to read some other story. 

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 pines was like the background score in a suspense movie. We found a tiny clearing, just wide enough to accommodate our blanket, and set Val'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 awed by the solemn beauty of the place. It could have been a majestic cathedral.

I lay down on the blanket and motioned Val 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.

Val rolled onto her side to face me and softly said, "Hold me, Ken." I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and gently pulled her close. I could feel her breath against my neck. "I love you, Ken. I love you all the time, but this seems like the ideal place to tell you so. 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. I can even feel your heart beating. It's so peaceful, and the trees sort of blend into the background so I can concentrate on you. Ever since I came home from overseas I've been a little tense, and the only way I ever feel totally at peace is when I'm with you. This is so relaxing, holding you, looking at your face, your body, and feeling you warm and soft in my arms. But what about you, are you comfortable? Can I do anything to make it better for you?"

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

There it was, the invitation I'd been hoping for. 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 Val raised up halfway to let me take it off and toss it over by the backpack. I pushed her brown hair with the blond streaks 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 her shirt. Val 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. Our intimacy didn't depend on either one of us saying a word, except for when I whispered, "I love you, too, Val. Loving you is the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I want to hold you like this forever."

Then a rifle bullet slammed into a tree trunk about four feet from our heads with a cracking sound, followed immediately by the distant bang of the rifle shot, and I instinctively tightened my grip on Val and rolled up over her to shield her from harm. I felt little fragments of pine bark falling onto my bare back. 

Val 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 Daewoo 9mm, 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 fifty or more, which I guessed was the distance from us to the rifleman. With my other hand I grabbed Val'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 hope he'll come close enough so I can get a shot at him. We'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"Ken, 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. Val 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, oily 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, Clyde, right now. Can't have 'em runnin' their mouths to the law. Remember, they've seen yer face now."

Clyde's hand holding the rifle started to move, and stopped. He was thinking, apparently something that he didn't do often and couldn't do quickly. My guess was that he was hesitant to murder us in cold blood, or 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 Val's shirt, and got off a quick shot, shooting from the hip except that I was lying on my back. Hipshots are rarely all that accurate from a standing position, and lying down flat didn't help any, so the bullet barely grazed his right arm. He started to drop the rifle but it lurched forward and he just caught the butt end of the stock with his left hand. He was startled, more than hurt, but the unexpected injury, plus the rifle being upside down, confused him, and I took advantage of the moment to yell, "Lay the gun down and step back."

Clyde blinked, shook his head, and then laid the rifle on the ground and took two steps back, stopping when he backed up against a tree. I got up into a crouch, took a step forward, grabbed the rifle with my left hand, and passed it back to Val. "Now turn to your right and start walking. Don't stop, don't turn around, and don't go anywhere but out toward the railroad track. And keep quiet. At this range I couldn't miss with my eyes shut."

We made a strange procession. Clyde was in the lead. His right arm was bleeding steadily, just above the elbow. His left hand was clamped around the wound, and he staggered slightly as he walked. I came next, with my pistol in my right hand and my shirt in my left. Val brought up the rear, struggling to carry the rifle, slip her shirt on, and stick her bra in her jeans pocket, all at once. As we got to the edge of the woods I reached back and took the rifle from her so she could get herself organized, and by the time we got to the pickup she was looking pretty good. But she always looked good to me so I guess I'm not the most reliable witness.

Val dug her phone out of her pocket and dialed 911. She handed it to me, and I talked to the police operator. "We have been assaulted by an armed man. We're holding him at gunpoint, and we need a policeman or two to take him off our hands. They should go on Miller Road to the railroad and drive east, along the south side of the tracks, half a mile or so. Look for a bright yellow pickup. There's another bad guy in the woods who wants us dead, and he may come after us. Please hurry."

I had Clyde sit down halfway between the woods and the pickup, with his legs straight out in front of him. Then I had him take off his cap, put the rest of his rifle cartridges in it, and put it as far to his left as he could reach. Then he quickly returned his left hand to his wounded arm, and I stayed behind him while I grabbed the hat. Val popped the magazine out of the rifle and pulled back on the bolt just enough to see that there was a live round in the chamber. She put the safety on, topped up the magazine, and shoved it back into place. Then she pushed the safety to the 'fire' position and turned her attention to the woods. At my suggestion, she moved away from us by ten yards, and got into a prone position with her elbows planted in the dirt. Her position was perfect. I just hoped that if it came to pulling the trigger, she was up to it.

Then it all happened at once. A short, fat guy with a pistol in his hand stepped out of the woods, just about in front of me. I don't think he noticed Val off to his left, and I know that my pistol was hidden from him by Clyde's body. He yelled, "Clyde, get up and get over here!" Clyde started to obey, and put his left hand down on the ground to help him stand up. I fired a shot into the dirt a few inches from his fingertips and he changed his mind. The fat guy said, "Then I'm gonna kill you both." He raised his pistol to aim at us but he never made it, as the rifle fired and he got a funny look on his face. He started to fall forward, dropped the pistol as he fell, and landed flat on the ground, face down.

Val asked me, "What do you want me to do?"

"Cycle the bolt and then watch him through the scope. If he moves, put a shot into the ground near his head as a warning. If he moves again, shoot him in the head."

We could hear a distant siren getting closer, and by the time I'd finished talking to Val the tires of the police car were crunching on the dirt of the railroad right of way. Two uniformed policemen got out and took charge of the situation. Clyde was handcuffed and bandaged, and put into the car, where he was read his rights. They decided the fat guy was dead, and left him where he lay in a pool of blood. Val and I were questioned and gave statements separately, speaking into a hand mike in the front seat of the police car. Then she was put into the police car and taken to the police station by one policeman, while I followed, driving my pickup with the other policeman riding in the passenger seat. On the way to Miller Road we passed the police van that was going to look at the crime scene and haul the fat man's corpse away.

TOO MANY QUESTIONS

I sat in an interrogation room, across the table from a police captain. First he asked me to tell him what happened. Then he started with questions.

"What were you doing in the woods? Don't you know you were trespassing?"

"It's BLM land. Everybody goes there and nobody ever says a thing to them. It's not even fenced or posted. What we were doing was getting ready to have a picnic. We had our stuff in a backpack and a cooler, and unless somebody took them they're still there on our blanket."

"What if you'd started a forest fire?"

"This is where we grew up. We've lived with the threat of forest fires all our lives. We wouldn't be so stupid as to start a fire in the woods. We don't even smoke."

"How did you decide that those two guys wanted to hurt you?"

"First a rifle bullet into a tree just above my head. If I'd been standing up instead of lying down, it would have killed me. That was to get my attention, I guess. Then, when the tall guy came right up to us with a rifle, I had no illusion that he wanted to chat. Then the other guy yelled at him to kill us, and he started to move the rifle when he heard that order."

"How did you know that the person who yelled to kill you was the same one who came out of the woods with the pistol?"

"Same voice. He was yelling again, and I had no trouble recognizing the voice."

"What made you and your girlfriend so sure that the fat man was going to harm you?"

"He yelled that he was going to kill Clyde and Me. Then he raised his pistol to shoot us."

"Did you tell your girlfriend to shoot him?"

"I had told her earlier to top up the magazine, move away from us, lie down into a prone shooting position, take the safety off, and be ready to defend us from the other man. So while I didn't say, 'Fire' just as the guy was starting to aim his pistol, I had already told her enough so she knew what to do."

"How many shots did she fire?"

"Just one. Looked to me that she got him in the center of mass, and from that angle she probably took out his heart, some arteries, and a lot of nerves. If the bullet hit a rib first and tumbled, it could have torn up one or both of his lungs. She placed the shot perfectly."

"What were you doing while she did that?"

"I was lining up my pistol to shoot him, over Clyde's right shoulder. When he started to fall forward I held off, and when he dropped his pistol and went face down onto the dirt, I lowered my pistol."

"Did you put the safety on?"

"No. I still had to hold Clyde for the police."

"Why did you take a pistol into the woods with you?"

"It goes where I go, unless there's a sign on the building saying that firearms are not allowed, or it's a place where I know they aren't allowed, like a school or post office."

"What makes you think you can handle a gun properly?"

"I've had excellent instruction, both in the Army and as a civilian before I enlisted."

"How did you know that your girlfriend could handle a gun properly?"

"Because I taught her."

"And I suppose you think of yourself as an expert in firearms instruction."

"I gave combat firearms training to over a hundred men in the Army. I don't have hard statistics, but based on what I could get I figured they accounted for over five hundred enemy combatant deaths, and not one of my trainees was ever wounded by small arms fire. A few were blown up, but that had nothing to do with their ability to handle their personal weapons."

"Where did all this happen?"

"A worthless wasteland called Afghanistan."

I pushed my chair back and stood up. "These questions have gone beyond anything that will be useful to your investigation, so I'm leaving." 

"You'll leave when I tell you to leave."

"Think again. I've been sitting here cooperating with you all this time of my own free will. You have no evidence of any crime on my part, because I haven't committed any. Even if I had, not one word of what I've said could be used against me because you've never read me my rights. If you want to hold me here, you'd better go through the right motions, and if you expect to ask me one more question you'll have to do it through my lawyer. And another thing, I want my pistol back and the thirteen hollow point cartridges that were in it when I surrendered it to your policeman."

"We'll have to keep your pistol and ammo for a while until the coroner rules on the events that took place out there today."

"The coroner has no business with my pistol. It caused a minor flesh wound in Clyde's right arm, and that's nothing for the coroner to concern himself with because it didn't result in a death. One Band-aid will take care of it. Val killed the fat man with Clyde's rifle, and you can keep that forever, for all I care. Now stop lying to me and give me my pistol and ammo."

The captain looked resentful, as if somebody'd let the air out of his balloon, and I wondered if I'd done a smart thing coming on so strong to him. But he'd behaved like such an asshole that I certainly wasn't jeopardizing any blossoming friendship, so I mentally shrugged off the exchange. Looking at him I could see that the wheels were turning, but finally he said, "You can pick up your stuff from the desk sergeant on your way out."

TAKING THE NEXT STEP

I was surprised to see that Val was ready to go, waiting for me by the front door of the station. "How come you got off so easy? Here you were the one who killed the fat guy and they let you out in just a few minutes, and I had to sit there and get grilled six ways to Sunday, and insulted to boot."

"Why do you suppose that was?"

"Probably because you're a beautiful girl and I look more like a hardened criminal."

"Well, I told them all over again what happened and I wrote a statement and signed it."

"Why?"

"Because they asked me to."

"Well, if they decide that they need a fall guy, they can always pull out your statement and try to make something of it. When you told them what happened, they recorded it so they'd have it to refer to as they investigate what was going on out there in the woods. They didn't need your signed statement at all. It won't help them, but it could hurt you."

"Oh, I never thought of that. Should we have got a lawyer to go in there with us?"

"Probably, but it's too late now. Let's just see what comes of all this. Our defense is that we didn't do anything wrong, so I don't see how we can get into any trouble unless the police try to do something underhanded."

We got into the pickup and drove to the diner to get a late lunch, since our picnic stuff was still in the woods, surrounded by yellow police crime scene tape. The diner felt so familiar, so normal, that what had just happened to us seemed very far away, almost like a chapter in a novel that we'd read a long time ago. We sat in our usual booth, just as we had so many times before, making small talk about harmless subjects. The familiarity helped calm me down, and it helped that I was looking across the table at the most beautiful girl in the world. We ate our burgers fast because we were hungry, and then picked slowly at our onion rings and sipped our coffee refills, and let our world get back to normal. Our conversation about unimportant things was getting to be a way of avoiding our real thoughts. I kept imagining the things that Val and I could do together with no one around to see us, and finally I suggested, "How about we go over to my house and watch TV while we make out on the sofa?"

"I've got a better idea. How about we go over to your house and throw the TV out the back door for all I care, and make out on the sofa?"

"Great! Let's go."

At home I spread a big beach towel on the sofa cushions, with the soft velour side facing up, and it was so soft that we found we didn't even need any clothes at all. We sat up and took a break after an hour, and shared a bottle of Bud Light. While she was tipping the bottle up to get the last few drops, I told her about something that had been on my mind. "There's a position that I've seen in pictures that I've been dying to try. I don't know if it has a name, but it looks very promising."


Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 01



"What's it like?"

"You lie on your back, actually sort of rocked over to the side a little. Say you're rocked over a little bit to your right. Then you pick your left leg straight up in the air and hold it up there with your left hand until I get plugged in, and then you can let that leg drape over my right shoulder."

"It sounds like fun. Let's give it a try."

"I think the sofa is too narrow for it. Let's go in on the bed, where we'll have lots more room."

The king size bed was a perfect laboratory for trying out new wrinkles in our favorite indoor sport, and we found that we could start with the new position and then move a little this way or that way and get a whole new slant on things. Literally. Finally we rolled over and finished off in our old favorite, the cowgirl position, which is the way we like to wrap up our workout sessions.

Lying on our backs an hour later, we were spent. "Oh, Ken, I love you so much. We just fit together so perfectly. I could never get serious with any other man, both emotionally and physically. You're the only man in the world for me, always."

"Then why don't you move in with me? I've got this whole house, all mine, not even a mortgage on it. Plenty of room here for both of us. Everything here that we'd ever need. Here we can make love any time we want to, and we won't need to hide from anybody. You compare a king size bed to the back seat of a car, and there's no contest. I've got a nice big kitchen with all the usual stuff, lots of plates and cups and bowls, and all sorts of pots and pans. We could cook anything right here that you could cook anywhere else. There are two bathrooms, so you could take over one of them and spread out all your magic creams and potions, and if you want to wash something by hand you can hang it up on the shower curtain rod to dry and it won't bother me at all. What else could we ask for? It's a shame to waste all this space on just me."

"Oh, Honey, I don't know. It's always seemed to me that our time together is more special somehow if we go back to our separate homes after our dates. Maybe I wouldn't feel that way if I tried living with you for a while. I'd agree in a minute if I could be sure that it's the best thing for us."

"Why not try it for a week or two, and then make up your mind. If you think you've lost anything by it, or that you're just not ready for it, you could move back home and go back to the way things are now. But think about it, when we get married you won't say good night and go home to your mother's house. We'd be living together then, so maybe it's a good idea to try it now and see if you can stand to be around me all the time."

"Oh, are we going to get married? You never mentioned that before."

"Well, of course we're going to get married. What's such a big surprise about that? You're the one who just said a few minutes ago that I'm the only man for you, always. What did you have in mind, that we'd still be going on dates when we're seventy years old?"

"I guess I never thought it through. I want to be with you always, but I never thought of it in terms of marriage. I know that seems pretty dumb. It's just that getting married seems like such a grownup thing to do, and just dating and making out and making love is more like being a fully grown girl but not like being a woman. Girls buy shoes and make out and have sex. Women have checkbooks and grocery lists and imaginary headaches. That may sound strange, but these things aren't the same for women as for men."

"Wait, are you saying that you don't want to marry me? You've got me confused. We're completely involved with each other, don't see anybody else, share our most intimate thoughts together, fuck every chance we get, act like an old married couple when we talk about buying something or saving the money, even stopped seeing some of our friends who are too wild for our tastes. I thought I understood what's going on, but maybe I don't."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to marry anybody else, and I'd never want to get involved with anybody else. There's nobody else that I'd be comfortable getting really close to, physically or mentally or emotionally. But when you say that we'll get married some time, it means that we're going to be grownups, like my parents and the people I see at work. That's like entering a different world."

"But eventually we will enter that world, no matter what. We can't be kids forever. People who try to do that wind up being real losers. All that I have to do to become thirty, for example, is live for another six years. I don't have to take an entrance exam or fill out an application or anything. The only difference for you is that it'll take nine years. You can't ignore it. It's there, it's real, and it'll happen no matter what we do."

"Maybe moving in here would be the best thing I could do, to get me used to the idea of adulthood gradually, while I've got you right here like a security blanket. Please be patient with me, Honey. These things need getting used to, that's all. Acceptance isn't just a matter of understanding the facts of life and being able to do the arithmetic. It's emotional, too, and emotions take time. If we start to live like married people, but you're still right here at my side, and you still love me and make me feel special, I'll get over being scared and my emotions will get on board and it'll all be okay. And then I can start to think seriously about marriage and a family and forever, without it making me uncomfortable. Please be patient with me, all right?"

"Of course. Come here to me. Let me hold you. There, that's it. Do you realize that when we're living together we can wear anything around the house that we want to, and if we feel like being in the nude like this, it's all right. And it'll be nobody's business but ours. If we want to make love in the kitchen, or the hallway, it's perfectly all right. Ever think about doing it standing up? Simplest thing in the world. I could make you a step that's just the right height for you to stand on and get our private parts matched up. 

"Roll over here to me for a minute. I want to try that leg in the air position for oral sex. I bet I can give you a real good orgasm that way. Let's give it a try."

That little experiment was just what we needed to close the deal. "If we live together, will you still get me off with your mouth?" she asked.

"The only question will be when and where. For example, how would you like me to do that while you're standing at the sink, peeling potatoes? Or if you're rinsing the dishes after supper, how about a rim job?"

The following Saturday morning we loaded up both of our cars and made our first trip to get her moved in. I already had a nice neat little wooden box all made, sanded smooth and varnished, to surprise her with. I asked her to stand on it, and when I stood up against her, she was just the right height for immediate entry. Then I had her step down, and I turned it around so she could see her name on it in shocking pink letters. She shoved the box back against the baseboard, stepped up on it, wrapped her arms around me, and stuck her tongue in my mouth. I said, "Hang on!" and she wrapped her legs around my waist so I could carry her over to the bed like that. From there on, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Afterward, she lay panting and then put her mouth to my ear to whisper, "For the next one, let's try it all the way on my new little step. I've never done it standing up. Maybe if we like it, I can be standing on it naked some day when you come home from work. How'd you like that?"

We had estimated the time for each trip, and calculated that we could have her all moved in by early afternoon. Trouble was, every time we hauled a load in from the cars, I got excited and we lost time while we did other things. For example, she would bend over and leave me looking at her cute round ass, and I'd get such a hardon that I couldn't walk back out to the car for the next load. Instead of an armful of Val's clothes, I'd wind up with my arms full of Val with no clothes. In the end, our early afternoon estimate turned out to be accurate, but it was Sunday afternoon, not Saturday.

By Tuesday night we had everything out of the boxes and carefully put away. We stood in the doorway of the second bedroom, which was to be her dressing room, and it looked perfect. We had our arms loosely draped around each other, and she turned and looked up at me with a smile. "It all went so smoothly, as if we're destined to live together. This must be what it feels like to be a married woman, standing here with my husband, in our home. It's not scary. It feels good, like something that was planned by God since before we were even born. Do you feel it?"

"Yes, and it surprises me. I know just the feeling you're talking about. It feels so good, so satisfying. We've done the right thing." 

MORE QUESTIONS, POLITE ONES THIS TIME

One of the smart things I'd done was take Val with me to see my lawyer and have him record our account of what out at the woods that day. Yeah, I know, it would have been smarter to call him before we did anything with the police, but it's hard to think of stuff like that when you're still high on adrenaline. Anyway, the police called me that week after we'd got Val moved in with me, and asked me to come to the station the next day. I told the officer on the phone to call my lawyer and see if it could be arranged. 

So that Friday afternoon, Val and I went with George, my lawyer, to the same interview room where the police captain and I had had our little chat. The captain came in with a detective. The detective's attitude seemed to be that this was just another day at the office, but a six year old kid could tell that the captain was pissed off coming into the room, before a single word was spoken. They sat down across from us and the captain said some snippy remark, I don't remember now what it was, and the detective stood up and said, "Please excuse us for a few minutes." Then he took the captain by the arm and practically dragged him out the door. They stood in the hallway and the door was still half open. They were talking softly and I couldn't make out the words, until the detective shouted, "I already told you, and I won't tell you again, if you screw up this case on me you'll be captain of the city dump, and don't think for a minute I can't do that. Now either stop acting like a little kid or go back to your office!"

The detective came back into the room alone, and held out his hand. "I'm Harry Peters, from the detective bureau. You must be Ken, and Val. George, I remember you from a case last year. The reason we asked you to come in is that we need your help. Now let me emphasize that you came here today of your own free will, and you're free to walk out that door if you want to. You aren't accused of doing anything wrong. Is that perfectly clear?"

George looked at us with his eyebrows cocked up, and then back at Harry Peters. "Yes, we understand that. Go on."

"The shooting that day in the woods and out by the railroad track was pretty straightforward, and we understand what happened. What we can't figure out is why it happened. No, wait a minute. Self defense is something we know all about, and we don't question the legitimacy of the shootings. But we don't know how the whole confrontation came about. You two weren't bothering anybody, having your picnic in that little clearing. If I were young again, I'd love to do the same thing. But why were you shot at, and what were the tall thin guy and the short fat guy doing out there in the woods that made them so defensive? We've come up empty. So we think maybe you could help us, if you want to."

"If you've investigated and found nothing, what can my clients do?"

"The only witness we have who was a party to what was going on is the man who had the rifle, Clyde Amery. And he won't talk. I thought maybe your clients could get something out of him. After all, George, the fat man was going to shoot Clyde until Val shot him first. She, or they, saved his life."

"Has Clyde asked for a lawyer?"

"No, and we don't want to get aggressive with him for fear that we'll never get anything out of him. If he tells us what was going on there he may implicate himself, and it could get complicated."

"What about immunity?"

"We're ready to offer that, and if we do he's going to need representation because he won't understand what it's all about unless he has counsel. But if we have your clients involved we hope to be able to tip the scales in our favor. So all that I want right now is a yes or no from you folks."

"We'd like to leave here for a few minutes and have a private conversation in my office. After that, I'll call you and give you our answer. May I have your card?"

And so after a few polite words of parting, we left and went back to George's office. George said, "I don't see any harm in helping with their investigation, but I'm going to get an agreement of immunity from prosecution for both of you as a condition of your cooperation. Does that sound all right to you?"

We both said it sounded all right. As an afterthought, I said, "Please include the condition that the Gestapo captain isn't part of it, or the deal's off. I'm ready to play the public spirited citizen, but not if that asshole is even remotely involved." 

A REUNION OF SORTS

"Do you remember us, Clyde?" Clyde blinked, looked at Val and me, then at George, then at his lawyer, a public defender named Charlie Nelson, at detective Harry Peters, and finally back at me.

"I remember you. You shot me in the arm. And I remember you, li'l gal. You shot Riley, my boss. But the rest of you I don't remember. Who are you?"

Charlie Nelson spoke up. "I'm your attorney. We talked in that room at the jail, remember? You agreed to give the police some information and in return they agreed not to prosecute you. Remember that?"

"And I had to sign that paper. But I did all that. What's this all about? What do all these people want now?"

"They need your help. Look, let's do this another way. You and these two young people can sit over here, at this end of the table. If everything goes all right I won't be needed in the conversation so I'll sit over here. If you need any help I'll jump right in. Then everybody else will sit way over there, by the wall. They're interested in what you can tell us, but they won't be asking you any questions. Get up and come over here and sit in this chair. Are you comfortable now?"

"Yeah, this chair's better'n that other'n."

"All right. Now this man's name is Ken. He'll sit right here. And this young lady is Val. Come over here, Val. Now just forget about all those other people and pay attention to Ken and Val. Okay?"

"Okay." There were chairs scraping as we all got rearranged, and then I started again.

"Clyde, when we were in the woods, you shot at us. Why did you do that?"

"Riley said to shoot off a warning shot, so that's what I did. Then I went to say that Riley wanted youall to get out of the woods."

"But Riley yelled for you to kill us, remember?"

"Yeah, but I didn't want to do it. Youall hadn't done nothin' to us. So I had to think what to do. That's when you shot me."

"Yes, but I just nicked you. I didn't want to kill you. Remember when we were out by the railroad track? Riley was going to shoot you and then me. That's what he said, and he was getting ready to do it."

"Yeah, but the li'l gal shot Riley first. Val, is that your name?"

"Yes. I killed Riley to save you and Ken."

"You sure did. One shot, right through the heart. You're a good shot, Val. I had me a gal who could shoot like that once. But she ain't around no more. I miss her."

"So do you want to thank Val for saving your life?"

"Sure do. Thank you, Val. Mebbe I can do sunthin' for you some time."

"Ken and I are planning to get married."

"That's a good idea. I shoulda done that with the gal that used to shoot so good. Only she's gone now."

"Look, Clyde, we never did figure out what was going on in the woods that Riley didn't want us to see. Val and I weren't there to do anything to him. Why was he so hot to kill us?"

"It was all about a hole. We went there an' he had a shovel an' he wanted me to dig a hole. Not jus' anywhere, but in one place. The hole had to be right where he said."

"Was there something buried there? Something he wanted you to dig up?"

"I guess so. He had a little thing with him. Sorta like a remote for a TV. He was tryin' to find where I oughta dig. So I was jus' awaitin' and standin' around while he tried to find the place to dig."

"Why did he tell you to warn us with a shot?"

"He heard youall comin' in the pickup. Then he got his glasses and seen youall layin' down in the woods."

"His glasses? You mean like reading glasses?"

"No. The big kind. Like a scope but two of 'em together."

"Like this?" I held my hands up in front of my eyes like holding binoculars.

"Yeah, that kind. He di'n't want nobody to know we was gonna dig a hole in the woods."

"Think hard, Clyde. Could you take me to the spot where Riley was looking around with the TV remote?"

"I guess so. He had some stuff wrote down, but I think I could find the place. It's like back home, when we'd finish runnin' off a load of shine, we'd bury the parts of the still. Then next season we'd have to go back an' dig 'em up. I'm good at findin' stuff like that. I know about woods. I grew up in the woods. It ain't just a bunch of trees. Ever' tree is differ'nt. You gotta know how to read the trees."

"Okay, that's all for now, Clyde. I hope I can work it out so you can take us to that place in the woods, because I'd like to see what Riley was looking for. I bet you'd like to see that, too, wouldn't you?"

"Sure would. Seemed funny to me, all of it."



Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 02



ILLOGIC PROBLEMS

Val and I were sitting with detective Harry Peters in his office at police headquarters downtown. He had gone over the responses Clyde had given to my questions in the interview room. "I'd like to go out to the woods with you two and get a better idea of what was going on where. Do you think you could find the clearing again where you went for your picnic?"

"I think so. No guarantees, though. What do you think, Val?"

"We had plastic wine glasses with us, the kind that the base snaps onto the stem, and we never got to use them. Later, when we got our stuff back from there, after it had been taped off as a crime scene, they weren't with the rest of it. All the stuff had been pawed through by the police, and I guess the wineglasses didn't get packed back in the backpack. Must have been dropped or whatever. I didn't worry about them because they weren't worth much, but they might still be out there in the woods, so if we come across them, they'd show that we're in the right place, wouldn't they?"

Harry was thinking. "What I want to find is the tree with the bullet in it. Not that there aren't other bullets in other trees from hunters, but this one was aimed to the north, and hunters know they aren't supposed to shoot in that direction, toward the railroad. So maybe that would be a sign. I don't know if we could read a direction from a bullet in a pine tree. It should have gone in a little way. Pine's soft compared to oak or maple, so itshouldn't be just a smeared bullet on the surface. If there's enough of a hole, we can get a direction from it."

That had me thinking. "Look, when the bullet hit, the sound of the shot came real quick. Not seconds, more like half a second. The bullet should have been going about three thousand feet a second. Hunters like three thousand because it gives them a pretty flat trajectory and if they've guessed the distance wrong, it won't make a lot of difference in the drop of the bullet. The sound would have been traveling at around eleven hundred, but we can round it off to a thousand for rough guesswork. Here, let me have some paper to figure this out. Every second that the bullet traveled, it got ahead of the sound wave by two thousand feet. And then the sound wave would take two seconds to catch up. But I think the sound wave caught up in half a second, which means that the bullet flew for only a quarter of a second. And in that time it would travel a quarter of three thousand, or 750 feet. So if you can find the direction from the tree, and you go that direction for 750 feet, you ought to be around where Clyde fired the warning shot. Sort of rough calculating, but it ought to give you a ballpark. Maybe if you can get the rifle and the ammo to your lab, they could measure the velocity accurately and come up with a closer approximation."

Harry stuck his head out of the office door. "Bruce, I've got a job for you." Bruce came into the office. "Go get the rifle that was used in the killing by the railroad, and the cartridges that were with it. Get them to the lab and have them measure the muzzle velocity with three shots, and let me know what they were. Right away."

Bruce sped away and Harry got onto the phone. "This is Harry Peters at headquarters. Who's the duty sergeant this afternoon?" Pause. "Steve, Harry Peters. Who led the search party out in the woods after the shooting by the railroad track? Okay, get him on the horn and have him call me at headquarters, or if he's near here, have him come to my office. Good. Thanks."

The phone rang almost as soon as Harry had come back to his seat at the conference table. "Peters." Pause. "Gordon, when you canvassed the woods, where did you go?" Pause. "Is that all? Who the hell told you to do that?" Pause. "I should've known. Thanks a lot."

"Your friend Captain Mueller had his men search from your picnic clearing to the railroad. In other words, they were nowhere near the spot where the action was taking place. The could have missed it by a quarter of a mile. If we go out there with a search party, we can look for a place where Riley left a shovel, some handheld instrument, and binoculars. That's where Clyde fired his warning shot, and there ought to be an empty case there from his rifle cartridge."

"Yes," I said, "but that's the wrong place for the hole he wanted Clyde to dig, because he was still looking when all this action started. So we'll know where Clyde fired the shot, but not the place where Riley's hole was supposed to be dug."

"Well, then we'll go in there with Clyde and see if he can really read the trees and the woods the way he said he can."

CAN'T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES

The unmarked police car came to pick us up at 6:30 in the morning. The driver, a detective named Hank, had brought coffee for both of us, which perked us up a bit. Val sipped hers and said, "This could be a good day after all."

Hank said, "We'll have a couple of the lab boys with us. Harry wants us to divide into two groups, you two with Clyde, to try to pump all the info out of him that you can. Maybe he'll like being out in the woods instead of in a jail cell, and that may get him to open up a little, volunteer something that he hasn't told us yet."

"Yeah, Val, maybe you can play on his ego a little, you know, the way you do with me when you want to manipulate me for something."

"Why, what ever can you mean by that? Surely a big strong man like you could never be manipulated by a poor, defenseless little girl like me. What an awful thought! You ought to be ashamed, you big brute, you."

"Yeah, like that. Like your full length leather coat, or the stereo for your car. That way."

"Oh, whatever must you think of me? I could never do a thing like that."

"At least today I can watch how you do it, so the next time you pull it on me I'll see it coming."

We were turning in off Miller Road and starting along the railroad right of way when I noticed cars up ahead. Looked like a pretty big deal. And all the cars except one were unmarked. "Is Captain Mueller going to be here?" I asked.

"No. You probably haven't heard. He's been reassigned. There's a woman captain running that station now. I think that's probably her over there in uniform." I could see a tall, blond woman with her back to us, and as we got closer I could see the twin bars on her collar. Whatever was going on, she was laughing at something that Harry Peters had just said.

"Where's Captain Mueller now?"

"I haven't heard. Maybe someplace where he can't do any damage. If they could ever find such a place."

"Who's going to be with us and Clyde?"

"I will, and one other detective, probably Bruce. No uniforms. That was Harry's decision."

"Hank, just exactly what is Harry's title?"

"Just Detective, First Class, but with seniority over everybody else in the bureau and the ear of the Chief of Detectives, the Chief of Police, plus everybody who matters in the city government, state police, prosecutor's office. Harry doesn't talk all that much, but when he does, people listen. In this job, that's more important than all the titles in the employee handbook."

LOOK AT THE TREES AND FORGET THE FOREST

Clyde was leading us into the woods by the route that he said he had taken with Riley. We went straight in, heading due south, until he found a tree that he said was special. I had to take his word for it; they all looked alike to me. Val was at my side, and Hank was behind us, dropping little yellow markers, like Hansel and Gretel with the bread crumbs. Up front with Clyde was Bruce, who seemed to be taking an interest in the trees that Clyde pointed out as we walked along. From the special tree we went southwest, and soon were in a slight dip in the terrain. We turned east at that point and followed the dip until Bruce exclaimed and ran forward. He picked up a long handled shovel and waved it over his head to show that we were at the point where Riley had been searching. The wrong place to dig, but a good place to search.

Clyde was looking all around on the ground, and finally found the handheld instrument, which he handed to Bruce. Hank walked past Val and me, and looked it over. Turned on, it merely emitted clicks at random intervals, maybe ten or twenty a minute. Hank held it up to his watch and it clicked rapidly. I turned to Val and exclaimed, "It's a Geiger counter! Hank's got a watch with a radium dial, to glow in the dark. We must be looking for something that's radioactive!"

Hank got on his gee-whiz radio and asked for the lab techs to join our party. He handed them the Geiger counter and explained that the thing we wanted to find was apparently radioactive. They began a coordinate search of the immediate area. Meanwhile I got Val talking with Clyde to see what we could draw out of him. "When Riley was searching for the place to dig, how did he know where to look?"

"He had stuff wrote down. I remember when he found this little swale here he was excited. He kept sayin' as it hadn't been buried all that long an' it oughta be easy to spot. I seen a coupla places like that but he di'n't want no conversation so I kep' my mouth shut."

"Where were these places you found? Around here?"

"Wull, yeah. Jus' over yonder, like." We walked over to a place where the thick mat of pine needles and aspen leaves was slightly rolled back. "See here, an' they's another'n over there." 

Bruce saw us looking at the ground and came over, still carrying the shovel. "Can we mark these spots, Bruce?" I asked. He dug into his coat pocket and pulled out two of the little yellow markers. I set them on the ground at the two places and started to look for more spots like them. 

Val joined Clyde in the search and soon she shouted, "Over here!" I looked at the three spots and noticed that they formed a right angle. Bruce noticed it as soon as I started to point it out to him, and soon we were drawing a crowd. The tech with the Geiger counter brought it to the midpoint of a line connecting the two most widely separated points, and moved it around. Suddenly the clicking became a buzz, and then at one particular spot, a screech. Clyde reached for the shovel and started to dig. He had removed three shovels full of dirt and was pushing the shovel down into the ground farther when he hit something. Hank handed him a small trowel and he got down on his knees and carefully dug around a small object, like a box. Eventually it came loose, and he could lift it out of the hole. The Geiger counter went crazy when it was pointed at the object. We all stepped back and looked at it lying there on the ground, as if it were alive.

Harry Peters walked up to the crowd, with the blond captain at his side. They listened to the explanations from Bruce and the senior lab tech, and spoke together quietly for about a minute. Then Harry spoke up in a normal voice. "For those of you who have not had the pleasure, I'd like to introduce Captain Bobby Winston, the commander of the fifth precinct. She's going to tell you how we'll handle this new twist in the case.

"Thank you, Harry. We'll cordon off the area with crime scene tape, and mark the trail from here out to the railroad right of way. As we're leaving the site, uniformed officers will guard the area until the Department of Energy can take it over. After they have examined the radioactive object we will meet with them to decide whose case this will be and what direction the investigation will take from that point on. Thank you all for your help in finding this, whatever it is."

As Harry and the captain turned to head back out of the woods, Harry indicated Val and me with a wave of his hand, and she walked over to us. "I wish to thank you personally for all you two have done for us. You helped us find this mysterious treasure, and you managed to get our only inside witness to cooperate. But besides that, the wording of your agreement to help in exchange for immunity was the nudge that got the department to remove Captain Mueller from his command, a necessary move that had been postponed far too long."

Val was all smiles. "We're very happy about the change of management, and we're glad to meet you. Congratulations on your new command. It was fun helping out. Please, Captiain, be gentle with Clyde. He's really not an evil person, and he needs a little help to understand what's happening."

"I understand. Harry tells me that you two just moved in together. That's a big move. It's a long time since I was at that stage of my life, and I wish you the best of luck."

Val gave my hand a squeeze, and I said, "Thank you, ma'am. We wish you luck too, with a precinct to make over in your image. If there's any other way that we can help you, just ask."

"I've already been thinking about that. Please call and make an appointment for both of you to come and see me next week, whenever it's convenient. There's something I'd like to talk over with you."

FORGET RADIOACTIVITY, HERE'S A REAL CRISIS!

We got home to our little castle on Walnut Street, walking on a cloud. That metaphor was reinforced because we left the weight of our muddy hiking boots at the door and proceeded in our socks. We were talking about what a difference it makes to have the right person in command of the precinct. Our egos were puffed up and we were thinking all the best of thoughts, right up until we turned the corner in the hallway and cold water soaked through to our feet. Might as well say to our souls. Every step brought a fresh squishing sensation. Each sock became totally saturated as the foot was raised up, and then the water was squeezed out between our toes as we stepped down on that foot again. What a mess!

We soon learned that there was too much water on the floor to soak up if we put every towel in the house down on the floor. Our natural impulse was to go into the guest bathroom to plan our next step, but the water was just as deep there as in the hallway. We took off our sodden socks and tossed them into the bathtub, which allowed us to feel our wet pantlegs slapping against our shins with every step. So we took our jeans off and hung them on the clothes hook. I went to the mudroom, where the wet and dry shop vacuum cleaner was sitting, and then realized that I'd have to open it up and clean out the dirt inside before using it to suck up water. That meant taking it out to the back yard in my wet, bare feet. By the time I was coming back in, I was leaving muddy footprints with every step. At least I was using the mudroom for its intended purpose. "Val, I need a towel to wipe my feet."

"I can't bring you one without leaving more wet footprints across the living room carpet."

"Wait a minute till I can get outside the bathroom window and you can hand one out to me."

Ever walk barefoot across your back yard? For the first twenty feet, the lush grass felt good, but then I got to the gravelly part and every step was a fresh discomfort. But I was heroic, got the towel Val threw to me, and got back to the mudroom where I wiped my feet sort of clean. Then, carrying the big vacuum cleaner to keep it up off the carpet, I got it to the hallway and plugged its power cord in alongside the washing machine plug. 

As soon as the vac was turned on, it started to suck up the water. Very encouraging. But once it was full, it shut itself off and had to be emptied. Simplest thing in the world, except that the tank holds about ten gallons of water, which weighs about eighty pounds, and you can add fifteen for the vacuum cleaner. Lifting that up gently to pour the water into the toilet, without dumping half of it back onto the floor, isn't as much fun as it might seem. We settled for lifting the whole thing into the bathtub and tipping it over. Then we got back to the floor, which looked just as wet as it had before we started. It took six trips to the bathtub before we had got up all the water that the vacuum cleaner would pick up, which left water still covering the floor, just not very deep.

Naturally, the water had soaked into the living room and bedroom carpets from the underside, where it doesn't dry. We were exhausted from wrestling with the vac, and we hadn't got the hall and bathroom floors really dry yet, and had soggy carpet in the living room and both bedrooms. Do I have to mention that we still had no idea what went wrong to put all that water onto the floor in the first place?

"That's it! I'm going out on the back patio to sit for a minute." First I called our insurance agent, who promised an adjuster before nightfall. Then I called Val's mother, who as always was a voice of sanity amid the confusion. "Look, the adjuster will know the people who clean up this sort of stuff. When they come to get things dried up, they'll bring big blowers that sound like airplanes taking off. The whole house is going to be affected, and you still don't know about your drywall or what made the water leak all over. If it's some major thing with your washing machine, you're probably as well off to buy a new one as to fix the old one. Let's have you come here tonight, to have supper and sleep over. Then tomorrow I'll go back there with you and help you make sense of it all. Okay?"

"Absolutely! No argument from me. Thanks for the invitation and your help. Here, Val wants to say something."

"Oh, Mom, this is just awful! I've been trying to be so brave about it all, but I know once I see you I'll just bawl my eyes out." Pause. Then, unexpectedly, a chuckle. "Oh, you're right. Thanks, Mom. See you later."

"What was that all about?"

"She's so wonderful. She said, 'At least it's just water. Suppose it was all molasses.' That sort of restored my perspective and I felt better. She's right. It's just water. Let's relax and have a beer."

The adjuster came an hour later, and an hour after that we had people all over our house who specialize in cleaning up water damage. An hour after that, carpets were turned back to expose the wet padding underneath, blowers were howling, and a man was punching holes in our walls to determine how much of the drywall would have to be replaced. A washing machine repairman showed up then, to diagnose the cause of the problem.

By the time we left to go to Val's parents' house, the repairman had replaced the discharge hose that had failed; the blowers were howling away and would continue all night long; every window in the house was open; the extent of the damage had been determined and the cost estimate had been sent to the insurance adjuster; we had gathered up enough stuff for an overnight stay; the house was locked up; the police had been alerted to the fact that our windows were open, and we were off for a good dinner and a chance to get away from it all.

A FRIENDLY SURPRISE

Late Wednesday afternoon Val and I were in Captain Winston's office. The captain had excused herself to go into her private bathroom, and soon reappeared, dressed in comfortable slacks and a loose sweatshirt. She pulled her desk chair around the end of the desk so she could sit without any furniture coming between us. This was a nice touch, and showed that she wanted us to be on the same social level for our conversation. What in the world would be this important? Val and I were holding hands, and she gave me a squeeze as we waited for the other shoe to drop.

"I envy you two, obviously so much in love, your whole lives ahead of you. I vaguely remember what life was like when I was your age, and it was marvelous. It was a time when I had everything going for me, and the full weight of responsibility hadn't come down on me yet. I was in touch with the world on a personal level, seeing how everything and everybody functioned and interacted, and feeling a part of it all. It was a glorious feeling.

"Now I have to shoulder the responsibility for a whole precinct of policemen and women and the maintenance of law and order in a large area of the city, plus all our interactions with other parts of the city government and other law enforcement agencies, plus the prosecutors and the courts. It's true that I love every minute of it, but I'm so busy running everything from the inside out, that I don't have the luxury of seeing how it looks from the outside looking in. Do you see what I mean?"




Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 02



We nodded and made little affirmative noises, still wondering what was coming and glad to be a part of it but cautious about what this was going to cost us.

"When I got here and met all the people in this command, I was surprised to find that they were all middle aged. The reason is simple. That idiot Mueller had made it so hard for everybody that all the younger guys who had their careers ahead of them took off like rats leaving a sinking ship, and went where they could work under a commander who would do their careers some good. Mueller should never have been put in a position of command. Now I've got to unscramble it all, fix it up so this is a functional precinct again. 

"A big priority for me is to get in touch with the kids, high school age and younger. If we don't make a positive impression on them now, we'll never have their cooperation when they get older, running businesses, owning property, joining civic organizations, raising kids of their own. Normally it's a snap to get kids interested in the police department, but they tend to trust people younger than their parents, and all my people are older than their parents, maybe even the age of their grandparents.

"Now because of the way Mueller screwed this place up, and you don't know the half of it, I've got a free hand to make almost every change I want to make. In fact, my bosses are holding their breaths waiting for me to tell them the wonderful, way out things that I want to do to fix the place. And the people who work here feel the same way. I've never been in this sort of a situation before, with so many people eager to hear what I want to change. But I can't do it alone. I have lieutenants who are wonderful, and sergeants who can't do enough for me, but I need to know what the world looks like from the eyes of younger people who live around here.

"So I want to offer you both jobs in the police department. I want to hire you as police cadets, let you get to know our people, ride along on patrols, work all shifts, get to know the people in the schools, and the boys and girls clubs, and then with that as background, attend the police academy and come out as full fledged police officers. You'd do regular police work, and when the opportunity arose for contact with kids, you'd be thrust into it, usually along with more experienced officers. The idea is to let young people know that their interests and our interests are the same, that we're trying to build a world for them that they can trust and feel safe in. And it's just as important to find out what they think, and what it will take to make them feel comfortable. Take a minute to think about that and tell me what you think."

Val said it first, and she spoke for both of us. "Wow!"

I took a deep breath and tried to collect my thoughts. "Look, Captain," and that's all I got out before I was silenced with a wave of her hand.

"You see that uniform hanging over there. When I have that on, I'm Captain Winston and I expect to be addressed that way. When I'm in these clothes with a few friends, my name if Bobby."

"Okay, Bobby, first I want to say that you're far above and beyond any authority figure we've ever met. I don't know much about the police department but I'm sure that with your clear view of the world around you, you'll go a long way beyond captain. I think it would be exciting to work for you, be involved in what you think is important, and do whatever we could to help your career along. My impulse is to jump in with both feet and do whatever you think is best. Val, what do you think?"

"Amen. Look, it's simple. Suppose we do this and it turns out to be a mistake. No big deal. We're young. We've got years and years to recover from it. But even though we don't have any details yet, I don't see how we could possibly make a career move that would be as wonderful as this. Count me in." And she gave my hand her special squeeze.

"All right. You don't have details yet because we haven't worked them out yet. In the days to come you'll be given papers to fill out and have interviews and all that. But all of it will be pre-cooked because everybody wants to help me make changes. So don't sweat the administrative chores, just ride with them and know that it's all going to come out all right.

"I want you to know that we can and will be good for each other. This place will be a good place to work again, and people will enjoy coming to work here. You've seen me on the job, talking with my fellow officers. Everybody smiling. The detectives sharing a laugh with me. They don't work for me, you know. They're in the detective bureau, with their own command structure. But you can see how we all get along. We have to work for a living but I believe it ought to be fun, too.

But on a more personal note, you'll be doing me an immense favor to take these jobs that I'm offering you. You will be the first people in the whole precinct that I have personally brought in here. I've never forgotten one single person who helped me since I came into this department as a cadet many years ago. And they've never forgotten me. In police work, you quickly come to know your enemies. But what makes it all work, year after year, case after case, is knowing your friends."

That sounded to me like a benediction line, so I was prepared to stand when she did. I reached over and took Val's right hand in mine, and then reached for Bobby's hand. "Friends," I said as we did a three way handshake.

"Friends," repeated Val.

"Friends," said Bobby.

SPIFFING UP OUR PAD AND OUR LIVES

The insurance company was very helpful, directing us to people and companies they'd done business with in the past, and our home was gradually getting back to normal. The carpeting was so messed up that it finally was all taken out and replaced. The amount of dirt that was in it, just the normal accumulation over the many years it had been getting walked on, was astounding, and we were glad to get it out of the house. Drywall was cut off three feet up from the floor, and everything below that was replaced. That meant repainting the rooms and hallway. It seemed that every day some room or rooms had all their furniture taken out and stacked somewhere else, while repairs were made. But finally it was all done and the place looked almost like new. 

We had filled out enough Police Department paper to fill a file cabinet drawer, and yet every few days another form came along. We had both given notice at our jobs and would be starting at the police station the following Monday. We both knew that our lives would never be the same again, but for once we were pursuing careers, not just changing jobs, and that sense of building toward something permanent felt good.

The freshening up of our house came at a good time. From now on we would make fairly good money, but we would be faced with working overtime, sometimes on a moment's notice, and there would be other demands on our free time that a lot of so-called "civilians" never have to put up with. In all likelihood, we would take night school courses to increase our knowledge of the art and science of law enforcement. So having the house in good shape would make it easier to concentrate on learning to be cops.

Officially, our career goals were identical: to be the youngest police chief in the city's history. So much for what we wrote down on the forms. Privately, we thought about the future a little differently. I really did want to become police chief some day. Val wanted to work hard to be a good cop for fifteen years, into her mid thirties, and then take an extended break to bear and raise kids, possibly going back to work when they got out of high school, either in the Police Department or in some some related field.

You may be thinking that these are pretty fancy plans for a couple of kids who had no interest in police work a week earlier. We'd have to answer that there's nothing wrong with aiming high. Compared to some of the kids we'd known in school, just the idea of working steadily was a great leap forward. We were a couple of middle class kids, pursuing the traditional middle class dream of getting into a field that we could gradually work our way up in, and selecting an employer who would be there over the long haul. With the economy in turmoil those employers were hard to find. But going beyond that practical reasoning, we were glad to get into something that was good for our city and the people around us, and we were just idealistic enough to make that an important part of our decision.

We spent hours talking about this sort of thing, exploring every aspect of law enforcement as we went over literature we'd been given, and chewed over what-if scenarios to make sure we hadn't missed anything. What it all brought out in my mind was how serious we both were, how much we'd grown beyond the beer drinking, party going, sex crazed scene we'd been part of just a few months earlier. Val expressed it one night when we were lying in bed. "Ken, remember that conversation before I moved in with you? Remember how I was resisting becoming a real adult, like my parents? What happened to me? I'm becoming my parents, and it's not scary at all. I'm proud of it. The things that seemed important to me back then already seem shallow and unimportant. Is this really me? Do you still love me as much as you did then?"

"Sweetie, I'm proud of the transition we've made. Of course I still love you, in fact more than ever. I dreamed of having you beside me all my life, and now that we're looking at everything in a more adult way, I can see that you're the perfect girl for me."

ALWAYS SOMETHING ELSE TO LEARN

Police work can be intense at times, and you can never be too good at it. Our lives became dominated by non-stop training of one sort or another. We were assigned to Training Officers, who took us under their wings and taught us the basic moves of the trade. We had it pounded into our heads that doing the right thing the right way at the right time had to become absolutely automatic, as much a part of our lives as heartbeats and reflexes. When we had learned the lessons that our first TO's had taught us, we switched TO's and learned from a different viewpoint. We had checklists to memorize, and we tested each other on them. Then when we were starting to get a little confident, we went off to the academy, and found out all over again how little we knew and how much more there was to learn.

We became somewhat obsessed with becoming expert with our weapons and hand to hand combat. We practiced at the gym, at the range, and even at home. One idea had been in the back of my head from the beginning, that I would learn to do everything that would make me a survivor, not for me but for Val, so that I'd always be there for her, a real helpmate instead of a stone in a cemetery.

Gradually, we were looking like star pupils in our academy class, not always the best but always pretty close. It didn't seem to me that we were smarter than our classmates, but we were highly motivated and genuinely interested in the lessons we were being taught by veteran police officers. And we were learning that it felt good to excel. We made friends with our classmates and their wives and girlfriends, and a few times we entertained at cookouts in our backyard. These were the people who would be staffing police agencies all over the state, and we'd be running into them over and over for years to come. They would become part of our network of friends who would look out for each other, and at times they might be as valuable to us as our families. From our TO's, from our supervisors, from our academy instructors, and from other rank and file officers, we kept hearing one message over and over: "You can't do it alone!"

Finally, on graduation day, we were given another ominous bit of advice: "You have now scratched the surface of what you will need to learn. As you go out to take your place as an academy graduate, understand that you have been prepared to start learning on the job to be professional police officers. Be prepared to keep learning all your life, to stay constantly alert to what your surroundings can tell you, to learn something new every day from now until you retire."

Val and I had been wondering which of us would outscore the other, so it struck us as funny when all the grades were averaged and rounded off, and we came out in a dead tie for third place in our class of 24 graduates. In the practical exercises, we were neck and neck. Val was better than I was at driving on the skid pad. I credited that to her superior sense of timing, which I had noticed a long time earlier on the dance floor. She excelled at waiting until just the perfect millisecond to apply brakes or power or twist the wheel, while I was just a little more impatient. I guess you'd say that I was very good, but she was excellent, in fact the best in the class. At the range, I scored better with the pistol and shotgun, while she did better with a rifle. If Riley were still around he could say "I told you so!" I had better upper body strength, being a whole lot bigger than Val, and that made me better at most unarmed combat. But in tactics that depended on speed and coordination, Val did better than I did. I had trouble accepting that anybody, man or woman, large or small, could be as quick as she was!

Back at the precinct, we were assigned experienced partners and started in as patrol officers. Before going off to the academy, we'd made friends at the precinct, and once we were back there to work our circle of friends grew wider, and the friendships deepened. At least twice a month, when the weather was good, we had a cookout in the backyard for as many guests as we could squeeze in. These affairs weren't all shop talk, but we kept up on the rumors that fly so fast at any police station, and there wasn't much going on that we didn't know about. Part of the reason that rumors were so important had to do with the absolute dread of surprises that is a natural product of fighting crime. Val and I compared notes every night, and if I hadn't heard a juicy bit of news she'd tell me about it, and vice versa. We batted almost a thousand at knowing every move the department made before it was announced.

Occasionally we would go with our partners to a school function or a community function that was heavily slanted toward young people. Then there were craft shows and carnivals and street fairs, at which the department always had at least one booth. We were regulars at those affairs, and our pictures were often in the paper, showing us setting up our booth or helping to staff it. The department wanted us to be highly visible, and the community was getting to know us. High school kids knew our names, and we couldn't walk into a supermarket in uniform without getting greetings by name from people we didn't even know. 

We got mail from strangers, too. Unfortunately it wasn't all fan mail. One day I got back to the station house a few minutes early, and had time to go over the stuff from my mailbox before the end-of-shift meeting. There were a couple of memos announcing changes in policy, a notice of a picnic planned by the PBA, reminders of this and that, and then three letters. One was thanks for helping to man the booth at a carnival a week earlier, but the other two were a little harder to understand.

In large capital letters, drawn carefully by hand in pencil, one said, "Watch your back." That was all. Then I opened the other one and saw a crude ink sketch of a police cruiser exploding, with flames and smoke coming out.

I collected the letters and their envelopes and took them to my shift supervisor. He immediately went to the mailboxes and checked Val's box, where he found envelopes that matched mine. Val came in right then, and Sergeant Johnson simply asked us both to stick around after the meeting. As the officers were filing into the meeting room, the sergeant pulled Adam Myers, the senior man on the shift, aside and spoke with him quickly, gesturing with my mail in his hand.

The meeting was entirely routine, with nothing unusual to report. At the end, as usual, some guys were anxious to get out and go home, while others were talking with friends for a minute. Adam was over near the door, saying just a few words to each one as they left, without making it look staged or artificial. Then Adam, Val, and I sat down for a quick conversation with Sergeant Johnson. He advised us to handle each envelope we received by the edges, to avoid smudging fingerprints. Adam explained that this is not a new thing, and every officer receives some hate mail some time in his career. The mail would be turned over to Captain Winston, who would pass it on to the lab for detailed examination.

Adam said, "I know this is hard to take when it first happens to you, but try not to let it worry you. People try to rattle you with mail like this. If they wanted to blow you up, it would have happened by now. A picture can't hurt you.

At home that night, we talked the whole thing to death. At the end of the conversation, we decided that we should have a chain link fence around our property, and that our cars should be locked up in the garage every night. At work we would get there early and park right up against the building. But when we got there next morning, Sergeant Johnson took Val's car keys and said the car would be ready for her at the end of the shift. I asked what he was going to do with it, but he acted as if he hadn't heard the question.

Val's car was a two door sport sedan, which is a polite name for a coupe. It had a back seat that was really just a small shelf to park grocery bags on, and not very many at that. It was a good little car, but there wasn't much that they could do to it, so neither one of us gave it much of a thought all day. We were both pretty busy anyway. My partner and I were working on a string of burglaries that had been happening over the last two months. The things that were being stolen were just trinkets, nothing of very much value, and we suspected that the thefts were being pulled by kids, just seeking the thrill of getting away with something. Val was across town, helping her partner to evaluate the plan for a new security system for a small shopping mall. So we both had enough details at hand to occupy our minds, and we forgot all about the mystery of what was happening to her car.

We both were called in the afternoon and asked to report in a few minutes before the end-of-shift meeting. When we got there, Sergeant Johnson was at Val's car with Max, the head electronic tech from the police garage. The car was where we had left it except parked facing out. Max was wiping an imaginary smudge off the driver's door and looking smug. "Hey, Val, here are your car keys. You'll notice that you've got a new little key fob. From now on, that's what you use to lock and unlock your car. Right now it's unlocked, so go ahead and lock it up, with that little padlock button." The car gave a little beep. "Good. Now you're coming back to your car from the supermarket, so you unlock it with the open padlock button." Val did and we could hear the door locks click. "Okay. But suppose that while you were shopping somebody messed with your car. Hold on and I'll simulate that. All right. Now push the unlock button." There were three quick beeps. "Look at the key fob. Notice anything?"

"It vibrated in my hand and now there's a little red light showing."

"That means you're in danger. Somebody's been messing around. What you do now is get far away from the car and call the duty officer because until it's been swept and cleared, your car's a job for the bomb squad."

"Wow! Pretty fancy! What's this going to cost me?"

"Not a penny," said a familiar voice from the doorway. Captain Winston came out and waved both hands at all the officers milling around the parking area, to gather around. "These two kids have been getting a lot of exposure recently, as part of a public relations effort aimed at teenagers and their families. It's been effective, but like a lot of medicines, it can have unwanted side effects. The threats they've received indicate that they've been noticed by some unfriendly residents, too. The reason I'm telling all of you about this is that it could happen to any of us, so it's nice to know that the department takes care of its own. This security system is the same as the ones we've installed on the chief's personal cars. So if any of you get any unwanted attention, let us know and we'll do what we can for you, too."




Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 02



"Now Val, tomorrow you drive this car to work but Ken, you bring your truck, too. Max tells me that putting this system on your truck is a bigger job so you'll have to leave it overnight." With a wry smile she added, "I'm sure you can find a ride home without any trouble."



Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 03



Val and I had been thinking of each other as our one and only for so long that in our minds we were already husband and wife. Our coworkers saw us that way too, and yet we were legally single. That might seem like a trivial detail, but there's a lot of truth in the saying that the devil's in the details. Whenever we decided to get officially married, with a license and all that, we'd have to be split up because the department had a rule against married couples working under the same commander. Neither one of us wanted that, and neither did Captain Winston, so it was a good time for a long engagement. 

The patrol officers we worked with were all old enough that they were like parental figures to us. In the beginning we'd wondered if they'd regard us as wise young kids and resent the attention we got from the press, but it turned out exactly the opposite. They'd taken us on as a joint project, to perfect, polish, and protect, with the expectation that if they poured enough of their wisdom into us we might get onto a fast track for promotion. 

We weren't the only members of the precinct who thought highly of Captain Winston. The whole precinct had become a cohesive unit under her leadership, and we occasionally joked that we weren't just a precinct, we were more like a family. We were quick to help each other, we watched each other's backs, and in general enjoyed spending time together. When one of the guys did something extra special and got an attaboy for it, everybody would crowd around and add their personal congratulations. With that kind of family atmosphere at work, we were generally a cheerful bunch, and our attitude showed in the quality of our work.

One Saturday afternoon a bunch of us were sitting in our back yard, enjoying a stretch of perfect June weather that was just made for lawn chairs and cold beer. The guys had brought their wives along, and two of the couples had little grandchildren in tow. It was nice to hear the kids' voices exclaiming over the wonders of a kiddy pool as they splashed water generously over the lawn and the adjacent sandbox. My partner, Aaron Brewster, had been giving me some pointers during the past week on the fine art of foot patrol, or being a beat cop, as it used to be called. He was in a reflective mood, and was talking about the change in the precinct since Captain Mueller had been pushed aside and Captain Winston had taken his place. "It's a good place to work again," he said, "and it's a pleasure to be part of a precinct we can take personal pride in again."

Sid Schwartz chimed in, "That's what we ought to tell people, that we work in the Proud Precinct."

Somebody agreed, and pretty soon everybody was turning the words over and saying how much they liked that. We got up as a group and went over to the kiddy pool to tell the ladies that their husbands were part of the Proud Precinct. One of the ladies asked, "Why don't you get some T shirts made with that on them?" Sarah Kelly, who had been a commercial artist before becoming a wife and mother, went in the house with Val to get paper and pencil, and came out pretty soon with a sketch of a T shirt with the police department logo and a big numeral 5 superimposed on it for the front, and across the back our new motto, The Proud Precinct.

The PBA picnic was coming up on the Fourth of July weekend, and somebody said what a great idea it would be to have us all, and our wives, too, wearing those T shirts at the picnic. Tom Kelly suggested that we run the idea past Captain Winston before we jumped into it with both feet, and there was general agreement, but everybody was looking for somebody else to tackle her on it. Val said nothing and went back into the house. She came back out inside of five minutes, and said, "She's on her way here now."

The looks of astonishment were almost comical, on the faces of guys who had worked for more Muellers than Winstons in their careers, and somebody said, "You're kidding, right?"

"Not for a minute. I gave her the ten cent summary and asked her if she'd like to see the sketch, here in our back yard on our own time, so she could stomp it out if she doesn't like it and nobody would know but us conspirators. She said she'd be here in a, wait a second, I hear a car now, I bet that's her." Val went to the gate and looked out as tires crunched into the driveway and a car door slammed. "Come on in this way, Captain. Ken, see if you can find a cold beer for the boss."

Bobby came in and greeted all the guys by name, and was introduced to their wives. She was dressed the same as everybody else, in shorts, a light shirt, and a baseball cap with her blond pony tail sticking out the back. She went over and squatted down and made a fuss over the little kids, who seemed to take to her immediately. Then she came back over to the patio and asked, "Now what's this wild scheme you're trying to involve me in?"

Everybody spoke at once, and Sarah laid the sketches of the front and back on the picnic table. "Ooh, I love it! Sarah, how about doing this on pale blue shirts, with the art work all in Navy blue, maybe with a swipe of white as a background for the words? Or do you think it needs a touch of bright color somewhere?"

"How about some red on the 5 in front, across the police logo?"

"Terrific! Does anybody have any connection to a T shirt place that can make them up?"

Tom said, "I took care of getting the shirts for our Little League teams last year. I can make some calls and see what I can come up with."

"Okay, get this firmed up as fast as you can, and say Wednesday let's have order forms for all the guys and their wives, too. Tell them we want premium quality shirts, not cheapies. Don't put any prices on the order forms. I'll take care of the expense from the Health and Welfare fund, or if that's running low I'll pay it all out of my own pocket. Oh, see if they can do some extra long ones for nightgowns, too. At the picnic I'm going to give the chief a shirt. I doubt that he'll wear it, but I'm sure he'll take it home with him."

Aaron lifted his beer can up in the air. "I propose a toast, to the Proud Precinct!"

"The Proud Precinct," everybody repeated, and we took a swig, everybody smiling. Smiling how? Why, Proudly, of course!

"Now I want you all to tell your friends all over the department that this was your idea, not mine. Then that will go out across the whole city. I don't want any of the other commanders starting the rumor that this is something I invented to toot my own horn. Look, seriously, I'm glad you're proud of our precinct, but you're only about half as proud as I am of all of you, and the way you've pulled this outfit together. We've got everything going for us: experienced cops, a strong work ethic, real teamwork across the board, and even our own youth movement. We can set an example for the whole department. This is how great it can be to produce excellent results by working as a team."

Somebody said, in a small voice, "Should we give a shirt to Captain Mueller?"

"That'd be the day!" exclaimed Bobby. "That man nearly destroyed this precinct to the point where it never could have recovered. But maybe I do owe him something, because he was so bad that he makes me look good." She drained her beer. "Hey, I've gotta run, but thanks for all this. Now I can't wait for the picnic!" She tossed her empty can ten feet into the trash barrel, just like a three pointer, and with a wave to everybody, she was gone. 

PROPERLY PREPARED POLICE PROFESSIONALS PROVIDE PEERLESS PERSONAL PROTECTION

A memo from the Captain was in everybody's mailbox one Monday morning. It was short and to the point. A team of elite officers was being assembled to provide personal protection for VIP's. Special training would be provided for the officers who volunteered for this duty. At the work call Sergeant Johnson made sure we all had seen the memo, and mentioned that he would be collecting names of volunteers during the week, and there would be a meeting on Thursday at the end of the shift to answer questions.

This was an exceptional memo in that we had no inkling about it in advance. Val took me by the sleeve as the work call meeting broke up, and we both nodded to each other. I asked Sergeant Johnson to put our names down. He made a show of flapping some papers back on this clipboard, and looking closely at a sheet that probably was blank. "Oh, yes, your names are already on the list. Now how could that have happened?"

The personal protection detail was at the top of everybody's discussion agenda that day. I couldn't tell from the conversation which guys were likely to volunteer and which ones wanted nothing to do with it. Probably they still wanted to think about it, and talk it over with their families.

Thursday afternoon's meeting held a surprise for me, although it shouldn't have been. Sergeant Johnson started to say something, and got choked up. He stopped and took a sip from his water bottle. Then he started again, and it was still hard for him. "I've talked with everybody in the precinct, and I have several categories. First, we have some guys who have wives or other dependents with serious illnesses. They asked to be left out of this duty unless we really need them to fill out the roster. This group included our oldest officers. The next group said that they'd be glad to volunteer, but they considered that they were seriously out of shape. In order to be effective at this sort of duty they thought they'd have to get into better shape first, so maybe they ought to be added later, after they'd lost some weight and done some strength training. Again, many of these guys are our older men, but even though we'd normally not ask them to pull this duty, their attitude is that if we need them, they'll make personal sacrifices to do what's needed. Now we get to men who question whether they'd be good at this sort of duty, but did not hesitate to volunteer. And finally, we have some of our finest younger men, and a very fine young woman, who volunteered without reservation.

"Let me make this clear: in one group or another, my list has every name in this precinct. That T shirt slogan really fits here. This is the Proud Precinct, and I'm proud to be in it with you."

Sergeant Johnson paused to take another drink of water, and Tom Kelly took the opportunity to ask, "What happens now, Sarge?"

"Captain Winston will review the list and select the people she wants to talk with, in groups and in some cases, as individuals. Those conversations will take place next week. Our roster will be completed by Friday next week." He shook his head. "In all my years in this business, I never saw a bunch of cops like you guys. Thank you all for your interest and cooperation." 

TRAINING TO QUALIFY FOR MORE TRAINING

The final roster from our precinct for personal protection numbered eight. The ideal was to go into special training at the Police Academy with that number, and later select some number from that group for additional training by the Secret Service.

Val and I were on the list, and we had no doubt that we would make the final cut and go on for the Secret Service training. But the more we chewed it over, the more we felt there were too many open questions about this program, and we stayed behind after the day shift left, so we could have a word with Bobby. We walked over to her office, and found that nobody else was around. While we were wondering whether to knock on her door or call her on the phone, the door opened and there she was, apparently ready to call it a day.

I asked her if she had any free time that evening, because we'd like to talk with her for a half hour. "Would you like to come in and we can talk right now?"

"No, I had in mind something less formal, somewhere else. Could you stop by our house?"

"Well, I've got to eat. How about if we meet at a restaurant and talk over dinner? I'll even treat."

"Sounds too good to refuse. Where, and what time?"

"Seven thirty, at the Colonial House on Maple Street. Okay?"

"Great."

We were right on time, and Bobby was already there. We were all dressed casually, jeans and short sleeved shirts, and certainly didn't look like representatives of a police department, which was just fine with us.

She greeted us and said she'd already ordered appetizers for us to munch on for a while, before we had to get serious about our entrees. "What's on your minds?"

"The personal protection detail. We don't understand the need for it, and so far it's too mysterious for us to understand anything about it. The training concept is clear enough, but the purpose of it is obscure."

"Well, the idea is to have our own bodyguard force, independent of any organization outside the city."

"Why? Who needs all this guarding, and what have they been doing up until now?"

"If we need a security detail to protect someone or something, we've been able to get help from the state. That's going away. The state has said that we'll have to protect our own interests."

"Is it in the interests of the state government for every city and county to have its own little elite force of security guards?"

"It is, if the state hasn't the money to pay for taking the job off our hands, as they have in the past."

"And where are we going to get that money?"

"By using existing officers, the city expects to cover it out of existing budgets."

"But if we take officers off the streets, what happens to the streets?"

"The thought is that these personal protection details wouldn't happen very often or last very long."

"Then to do that level of thinking, someone must have a good idea of who's going to be guarded, and when, and how long, and why."

"Yes, so it would seem."

"Is this same recruitment of volunteer members of the security detail going on in every one of the other precincts?"

"I've been told that it is."

"How many people are they trying to get together to do this job?"

"I don't know. There are eight precincts, plus the detective bureau, plus other smaller groups. If we look only at the precincts and the bureau, and if they are raising the same size force that we are, there will be 72 people being trained by the Police Academy, and probably 36 of them will go on to be trained by the Secret Service."

"So the working force is 36 heads. Normally, a third are held in reserve, so 24 heads will be guarding unknown persons for unknown durations at unknown frequency. These things usually go on around the clock, so we'd be talking an average of eight people per shift. That's a pretty big force. After all, if the President comes to town, he brings his own bodyguards with him. Are you comfortable with this?"

"Oh, now you're getting down to what I feel, not what I know or can estimate. That's different."

"And what about the question?"

"Am I comfortable with it? No, not totally."

"All right. Who's pushing this? Or should I ask who's pulling the strings?"

Bobby obviously didn't want to answer, or didn't want to think about the answer, or didn't want to admit that she didn't know the answer. Instead, she said, "Stop with the questions for a few minutes and let's order our dinners. Everything on the menu is good, and I hope you're as hungry for food as you are for inside information. I'm ordering the surf and turf."

I scanned the menu briefly and announced, "I'll have the same thing you're having. Why pass up advice from an expert?"

Val settled on a seafood sampler. Then we got back to the matter of the personal protection detail. Val looked across at Bobby's face, which looked tired. "Look, Bobby," she said, "you know that we trust you with our lives, but we don't really know much about the rest of the department brass, or the city government either. At the academy we heard all sorts of horror stories from our classmates about things that local politicians did that were anywhere from self-serving to immoral to downright criminal. We believe in you strongly enough so that if you said, 'Trust me,' we'd do whatever you told us to. But we haven't any reason to think of city hall people that way, so we're a little nervous about this whole deal. We became police officers because of you. The other members of our precinct feel the same way that we do about following you, but they don't have a lot of love for a department that dropped Captain Mueller into their laps for years to make their lives miserable."

I put in one more remark to help explain our level of discomfort. "In Afghanistan I saw a whole lot of little elite squads put together by what we'd call small town politicians here. There they were more like two-bit warlords. We actually didn't know who could be trusted, because instead of a homogeneous group loyalty to a central command, there were guys walking around all over, armed to the teeth, ready to kill at any moment to follow some bozo's hidden agenda. So we want to know what's going on, and we're pretty nervous about being in the dark."

"All right, I see what you're nervous about. Let's enjoy a good meal and I'll try to explain what I know. I think, note the verb, that you're unduly alarmed. I don't have all the answers, but I have some ideas about how we can find out more.

"First of all, this started out because the state is cutting back the budget of the state police, as I mentioned in the beginning. The suggestion that local departments set up their own personal protection teams came from the state police, and I was well enough informed to have total confidence in the people who suggested it. We used the state police six times last year and five times the year before, for personal protection details. There's nothing wrong with having the state provide the specially trained people for those occasions, and there's nothing wrong with doing it with specially trained people in our own department, either. In a way, this could be a good thing at a time when budgets are being slashed all over. Taking on another responsibility can be a good argument against cutting our department's funds. So anyway, that was the beginning of it.

"The next step was that the mayor's office looked into the matter. What you may not realize is that the mayor has a bunch of staff assistants who do whatever he tells them to do. Two are lawyers, and at least one is an accountant. A couple are just errand boys. Two are public relations people, writing news releases for the press and generally making the mayor look good enough to get re-elected when his term is up. He assigned two of those people, one lawyer and one errand boy, to investigate the ways that personal protection details could be handled with the state bowing out of the job. One approach was to hire private security people whenever bodyguards are going to be needed. Two problems there: they'd need to have pretty good advance warning, and those people are expensive. A third problem that they didn't talk about outside their own turf is that private security people can't be controlled. You sign their contract, with all their own clauses in it, and then they take total control of everything until the threat is past. The mayor and his assistants don't hand over their power willingly. If they weren't control freaks they wouldn't be in politics in the first place.

"So the only other possibility worth considering was to do the job with our own cops. Now here's where I'm not sure that I feel real good about this. When it was discussed with the chief, he said okay but he'll promote or hire an assistant chief to handle this whole bodyguard unit, and instead the mayor said no, that he'd turn that responsibility over to one of his assistants. He picked Terry Gardner for the job. Terry is a lawyer. He worked for a while in the White House, and he dealt with the personal protection people in the Secret Service, so he's not totally green at this, but that doesn't make him a security expert, either. So there you have the picture. To put it in terms of your wartime experience, our warlord is Terry Gardner, and we suppose that his loyalty is to the mayor."




Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 03



We ate without talking more than a few words. The lobster tail was full of flavor, with just that touch of sweetness that you get from fresh lobster. The steak could have melted in my mouth. Everything was exactly perfect. Even the steamed asparagus was good.

Val broke the silence. "Bobby, how can we get more information? How can we find out more about Terry Gardner, enough to know if we can trust him?"

"That's what I've been wondering all week. There's one person whose opinions I trust, and who might help us out on this."

"Wait," I said. Let me write down a name first." I took out a business card and wrote on the back of it, then passed it to Val. She peeked at it and chuckled. I said to Bobby, "All right, now who is your caped crusader?"

"Harry Peters. Surprised?" I passed her the card and turned it over so she could see that I had written the same name. "Well, then we're on the same page. When I see Harry I'll tell him about our conversation and give him this card. That ought to give him a chuckle."

Over coffee we talked about various lightweight topics and shared a few laughs. As we left we thanked Bobby for the dinner and for addressing our concerns, and she promised to keep us up to speed on her inquiries.

AND NOW FOR AN ITEM OF OLD BUSINESS

Our lives had been too full to let us dwell on past mysteries, but the mention of Harry Peters had reminded us that we never did hear any more about the little radioactive box that was dug up out in the woods. It never would have been found if we hadn't won Clyde's confidence so he'd lead us out there, and while our contribution was peripheral to the case, there wouldn't have been any case without us. So we were curious, and Val made a call to Hank, one of the detectives who accompanied us when we followed Clyde into the woods. The call did nothing to satisfy her curiosity, and actually left her feeling slighted.

"Ken, Hank sounded sort of, I don't know, guarded when I called him. It was as if he had somebody listening to what he was saying. He wanted to know why I was asking, and then he said that he didn't know anything more about it, and it was out of his hands now that the energy people were handling it. Then he said to say hi to you, and he hung up. I wonder why he sounded so, oh, strange."

"Must be something going on that people are worried about. Things that make Geiger counters take off like that aren't supposed to be buried out in the woods. In fact, they're not supposed to be anywhere out in the open. They're supposed to be in laboratories behind locked doors."

"So I guess we'll never know what it was all about. How bizarre. One minute we're right there in the center of the search, looking at the thing, feeling proud that we helped find it, and then we're shut out on the doorstep of some government agency and we can't even find out what the thing is called, or what makes it important."

"Well, we're lucky that we have a lot going on every day to keep us busy, so we don't need the mystery box for excitement."

"I guess you're right, but I still feel that something that was important to us has been, oh, taken away from us without even a 'pardon me.' And we don't even know why."

All that happened on a Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday evening, we were just cleaning up the kitchen after supper when my cell phone rang. I answered and heard the voice of Hank, the detective who had left Val dangling in midair.

"Ken, can you and Val meet me for a beer? I'll be at Jimmy's Pub, on Baker street, in the rear booth. Say eight?"

"Sure. We'll be there."

Jimmy's looked like the sort of dive that your mother made you promise you'd never walk into. As I stepped out of the pickup I was glad to feel the weight in the pocket of my leather jacket, where I carry what I called a Saint Christopher Medal, of the 38 Special variety. I knew Val had a lump under the baggy sweatshirt she wore, a 9mm lump. 

I opened the door of the pub and led the way. To get to the booths in the back we had to pass by the bar, along a narrow walking space between the barstools and the wall, and the way was partially choked with people standing, chatting, drinking, and generally taking up space. As I started into the confined passage, a man who had been leaning against the wall took a step forward and turned to face me, blocking our way about six feet ahead. I turned my head halfway over my right shoulder and asked, "Ready?" In reply I got a poke in my back from Val, and instead of walking up to the human obstacle I ran at him full speed with my arms across my chest and my elbows high, like a blocking back.

Val, meanwhile, had flattened herself against the wall and was sidling along, close to me but leaving me room to swing an elbow around without hitting her in the head. The guy who had decided to block our way was looking right at me with a look of shock, and his expression didn't change until my left elbow flattened his nose against his face. He dropped like a rock and I pushed him aside with my foot as I hurried past. His departure from the walkway left a space between bodies, and I stepped into it and spread out my elbows. I shoved a man on my left back against the bar, wedged between two stools, and shoved a man on my right back against the wall. I took two steps slowly and deliberately, and felt Val's shoulder against the middle of my back. From there it was just one plodding step after another, clearing people out of the way with both hands. At some point I felt a quick movement against my back, as Val did something that produced a sharp cry of pain from over against the wall. And then we were in the clear, proceeding without further challenges to the back booth where Hank had been watching the show. He stood up, with a handshake for me and a hug for Val. "Good work, you two. Ken, I was going to walk up there and help you clear the way for Val, but then I could see your head going forward and bodies bouncing out of your way. There are two guys still on the floor, and some of our friends in uniform will be coming to haul them away.

"You can see the kind of a place this is. Nobody'd ever expect national security to be discussed in here. Maybe somebody putting a contract out on a spouse, or lining up side men for a bank job, or fixing the point spread on a basketball game, but nothing more than that. It's just the perfect spot for us.

"Val, I'm sorry I couldn't talk yesterday. I can understand why you'd be curious about what our friend Clyde dug up out there. I'm here to tell you the story, but it's long and complicated, so sip your beer and make yourselves comfortable.

"It began in a research lab in a university. A researcher there, a graduate student, was working on a project that used a radioactive substance to irradiate some stuff. The radioactive substance was special, somehow, not just some run of the mill hot stuff, and very valuable as a result. I got the impression that to replace it would take years, so if you needed the stuff and you could steal it, you'd be years ahead in whatever your project was. The grad student was approached by some foreign outfit that would pay a lot of money if he could steal it for them. That's the end of act one.

"Act two begins with the grad student stealing the radioactive substance. He timed the theft so that the loss wouldn't be discovered for a couple of weeks, which was the next time that his project was scheduled to use it. Until then it was supposed to be locked up securely. Knowing that all hell would break loose when it wasn't there, he took it way out into the woods and buried it, writing down the instructions for how to find the hiding place. He was alone on this trip to the woods, so only he knew how to find the thing. 

"Act three. Before the theft was discovered, the grad student went to meet the foreign buyer, but he was afraid that he'd be captured and tortured until he told the foreign guy where to find it, and then murdered. So he hired a bodyguard. This was a career criminal with a resume that included armed robbery, assaults of various types, and a murder charge that was dropped for lack of evidence. His name was Gregory Riley. You both met him, and Val, you saved the state of New Mexico a lot of money. They were going to put him on trial for something or other if they could ever find him. Riley went to the meet with the grad student, who negotiated a deal that would let him retire in luxury.

"Act four. Riley agrees to accompany the grad student out to the woods to dig up the radioactive package. He sees the grad student referring to his written directions and decides that he can play that game, too. So he murders the grad student, stashes his body in the woods, and takes the directions. But he doesn't find anything that looks to him like a recent burial of anything. Now Riley's a big city guy. He knows the streets. He decides he needs somebody who knows the woods, so he recruits Clyde. What he plans to do is get Clyde to help him search and dig the hole, and then he'll kill Clyde and make off with the package. But even with Riley reading the directions and Clyde reading the clues on the ground, they can't find the right spot. So for the second time Riley aborts his recovery mission, and he's getting pretty frustrated.

"Act five starts when Riley has another meeting with the foreign buyer. He explains that the grad student has dropped out of the deal and the foreign guy will have to deal with Riley from then on. He wants two things. First, the price is doubled. Second, he needs to be able to detect radioactivity to find the right place to dig. The foreign guy agrees to supply a Geiger counter, and later has one delivered to Riley. Now Riley and Clyde head out into the woods again. What Riley doesn't realize is that he has to get pretty close to the right location before the Geiger counter will do him much good. The undisturbed, packed earth with a fair moisture content is pretty good at blocking the radiation, while the loose dirt that was dumped on top of the package lets a stream of radiation through, like a beam going straight up. So we end act five with the two of them out there, Riley going nuts with his Geiger counter and Clyde waiting to be told where to dig.

"And now we come to act six, which starts when you two go into the woods to have your picnic. You know how that went, so I don't have to tell you."

I'd been taking little shallow breaths as the story unwound, and at the end of act six I let out a big sigh. "So that's how the story ends, with Clyde wounded and Riley dead. That's quite a tale."

Val agreed. "And now, at last, it's all over. Just think, it got us started on our police career. All that's left now is for us to live happily ever after, right?"

Hank took a deep breath. "I'd like to agree, but in fact it's not over. We thought it was, but the feds have told us otherwise, and that's what had things so tense at our office that I couldn't talk with you yesterday."

"But what else is there? The crime is solved, all the perps are accounted for, and the feds have the stuff. How could there be more?"

"This is where the story gets mysterious. What I told you so far is well established. The original foreign buyer was a known spy, who was being closely monitored all the time. The feds probably knew what he ate for breakfast. So when he first contacted our grad student, they knew all about it. He was arrested, and all the rest of the grad student's dealings were with an undercover federal agent. That's where we got most of the story. The rest was put together from remarks by Clyde, plus plain old detective work, fitting the pieces of the puzzle together until they made a picture. So it's not just some yarn that we've made up out of thin air.

"When the feds got the radioactive box back to their lab, they put it into storage until they could check it out thoroughly. It represented a solved crime, it wasn't needed for evidence in any court trial, and they didn't need to use it right then, so it sat. Then last week they got it out. At that point, nobody had opened the box since they picked it up off the ground in the woods. It had been properly identified and the normal paperwork was executed, no slipups anywhere. The chain of custody was airtight. The box was still sealed up, and the dirt was still on it from being buried. Got the picture? It was a totally known object."

"Is there a 'but' coming up?" asked Val.

"Yes, and the 'but' is a beaut! In the lab they examined the box with a lot of tests, even before they opened it up. And even without looking inside they detected that it was the wrong stuff! It was radioactive, all right, and the strength of the radiation was what it should be, but it was the wrong element or compound or whatever. I don't know much about this stuff, but the radiation was the wrong flavor. The wrong Greek letters, you know, alpha and beta and gamma and all that. So even with the box still sealed up, they got all their own experts in there and they agreed that it was wrong, and to cover their asses they got independent consultants to check it out and they agreed. Right now, all they've found out is what the stuff actually is, and they're trying to establish a trail to show where it came from and where it's been, because they have no idea where the wrong stuff came from or where the right stuff went. Trying to establish a trail has been very frustrating, because they don't have enough information. So everybody is frustrated and frantic.

"I told you that these federal Department of Energy guys are pretty good to work with. A little eccentric, totally dedicated, and so brilliant that they could probably finish every sentence that you were about to say. They take nothing for granted, but once a thing is established as fact they don't waste time second guessing, they just leap to the next issue. Well, they can laugh, too. To simplify our conversations with them, they started to call the radioactive substance that was supposed to be in the package, 'the real McCoy.' Then somebody said the other stuff, that was dug up in to the woods, must be 'Hatfield' as in the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys back in the eighteen hundreds.

"They've put together several scenarios that might explain what happened. The one they call Scenario A is that the switch was made when McCoy was still in federal custody. Somebody took it and put Hatfield in its place, so that when they shipped something to the university lab, it was already Hatfield. Several series of experiments have been performed with the stuff, and some of the results could be interpreted to mean that it was really McCoy, but they're inconclusive, so this scenario is kept on the table as being possible. It doesn't tell us who made the switch, where Hatfield came from, or how they got McCoy out of federal custody. Security at the DOE is very tight, making the probability of this scenario very low.

"Scenario B has the switch being made while the stuff was in transit. There seem to be so many ways that this could have happened that this one is my personal favorite.

"C has to be that the switch was made at the university, early in its string of experiments. Some of the experimental data can be interpreted to show that the first tests were made using McCoy, and later tests used Hatfield. Some of the tests are relatively insensitive to the radioactive source, while others should show different results depending on which source was used. The data from the latest tests, made by the grad student who was killed by Riley, are still being reduced, but might indicate that the switch had already been made and he was actually using Hatfield. So there is some reason to keep C as an active investigation.

"D says that the stuff in the lab was McCoy all through the entire series of tests. Then some unknown person stole it and put Hatfield in its place, after the last tests but before our grad student stole it. We have no reason to believe or disbelieve this scenario.

"E says that our grad student stole McCoy and buried it, but we found the wrong place to dig, and dug up Hatfield by mistake. It does not offer any explanation of how Hatfield happened to be there, but it does offer the possibility that McCoy is still buried out there somewhere. If we find McCoy in the woods, it pretty much proves this scenario, although it would leave a lot of questions unanswered.

"F says that our grad student stole McCoy, but made a switch and buried Hatfield. This doesn't make any sense to me, and it offers no reasonable explanation why he would even bother to bury Hatfield at all.

"Then we come to G, which says that under the noses of dozens of witnesses of proven character, somebody in the search party that included you two, Clyde, Bruce, me, and the police lab techs, made the switch. This is so improbable that it seems completely ridiculous, but it's still on the table, and all of us, even Harry Peters and Captain Winston, are being actively investigated right now by the FBI."

Talk about a conversation stopper! This ranked right up there with the proverbial turd in the punchbowl. Val was the first to recover enough to say anything. "Now I'm sorry that I even called you to ask about the case. If they're watching us, you're in trouble for sticking your neck out to meet with us, and we are too, for asking about it to start with. Honest, Hank we never dreamed we'd be getting you in trouble. Or ourselves, either."

It was Hank's turn to take a deep breath. "Look, it's really all right. After you called me, I had to tell the FBI agent who's planted in our office. They had the phone tapped anyway, so it was better to tell him everything I knew about the call than to force him to spends hours trying to figure it out and piss him off in the process. They know about this meeting, in fact they set it up. They've got the whole thing recorded, audio and video. I knew you were innocent so meeting like this couldn't do you any harm, and you're being investigated anyway, right along with the rest of us. Incidentally, you were supposed to be frisked coming in, but it didn't work out all that well. That guy whose nose you smashed all over his face, Ken, is really a bad guy who got what he deserved, but the one you kicked in the balls, Val, is on loan from the FBI office in Wichita. It'll be a while before he'll sing baritone again. Maybe I should've warned him. Everybody who was at the academy with you two has spread the word about how fast and deadly you can be, but apparently nobody told him."

I had to smile at that. I'd taken my licks from her in practice. But there was something I had to get off my chest. "Look, Hank, here's what I'd like to do, and maybe you can help make it happen. I don't want to put the FBI through the routine of getting a search warrant, and then have a dozen agents with FBI in big letters across their backs, acting suspicious while they try to find evidence against us. We're totally innocent of any crimes, even a parking ticket, and we've got nothing to hide. I'd like to meet with your head FBI agent and give him written permission to search our house, grounds, cars, even our lockers at work, for evidence related to this investigation. In return, I'd ask that the searching be done by people in plain clothes, maybe in the guise of housecleaning and lawn maintenance or some such thing, simply to keep the neighbors out of it. They can take Val's car and my truck to wherever they want to look at them, even take them apart if necessary, as long as they return them to us in as good shape as they found them. I'd like them to supply us some other wheels to use in the meantime. What I'm trying to say, I guess, is that we hate to be under suspicion, resent it even, and yet we're willing to bend over backward to cooperate with the agents who have to investigate us. Naturally, we'd like to be out from under this cloud as soon as we can, but besides that, we'd like to make the FBI's job easy so they can spend their manpower on leads that will help solve this case."




Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 03



"That's funny. That's just what I told him you'd say. If the FBI wants to take you up on your offer, somebody will get in touch. But don't worry about it.

"Well, let's adjourn this meeting and go on home. Give a wave to Mickey, the bartender. He's out of the Oklahoma City office. Oh, the beers are on the house, courtesy of Uncle Sam."



Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 04



WARLORDS AND OTHER NOBLEMEN

On Monday morning Val and I each got a note that was folded double and stapled that way, which was unusual. Mine asked me to stop in the captain's office before going home that night. Val turned to me with hers in her hand and raised her eyebrows. I nodded. Then I laughed out loud at how easy and natural our non-verbal communication seemed. Closeness and sincere love seemed to overcome all difficulties. I put an arm around Val's shoulders and added a little squeeze as we headed to the briefing room for the early morning work call.

I didn't see Val when I got in from the shift. She came in after I was already in the crowd for the end-of-shift meeting, and we stood on opposite sides of the room. So after everybody started to filter out and head for home, I caught up with her out by the mailboxes and we went to the boss's office together. The door was open and we could see Bobby on the phone. She waved us in and we got comfortable while we waited for her to finish the phone call. She had the softest chairs in the whole place, and I was thinking that when I get to be captain I'll need to get some just like them. Val shot me an elbow to bring me back to the real world as Bobby hung up the phone and turned back around to face us. She looked up and looked over our heads and said to somebody, "Come on in and close the door." I looked around to see Harry Peters, and slid my chair over to make more room for him.

Bobby said, "Harry has some things to tell us, so we'll let him get into it."

Harry chuckled, and said, "I'm fine, thanks for asking, and how are you?" We all laughed, and then he went on, "The Personal Protection Squad, as if is officially designated, has been given the nickname Semi Secret Service. Has a nice ring to it, SSS. The mayor picked Terry Gardner to head it up, because Terry was instrumental in assembling the details of how it would be set up, and also because the mayor trusts Terry, probably more than all the rest of his staff. 

"Once I got to that point, I left Terry alone for a few days and did some in-depth checking on the mayor, figuring that they must share some values and beliefs. I was able to get some help from people I've known forever, and I can tell you that he seems to be on the up and up. He's a dedicated family man, and he's fired people in the past for screwing around on their wives. 

"Usually a good way to get an instant snapshot of a politician is to look at his kids, so I did that, and I'd be delighted to have them as my own. Wife keeps the family together despite the demands on the mayor's time, and there are no handsome tennis instructors or empty whiskey bottles around her. The mayor seems really dedicated to getting sensible advance planning going, looking ahead ten years, to see that the city develops in a rational manner and doesn't back itself into a corner. Aside from his family and the city, his interest is re-election, just like every other politician. From what I can see, he looks a lot better for the city than any of the likely contenders for his throne.

"Terry's last job before coming here was in Oklahoma City, so I checned with a couple of friends there. They had no bad things to say about him, and thought he had potential. That didn't tell me much, so I asked some insiders here about two special studies he did for the mayor, and their consensus is that he acquires facts quickly, connects the dots well, and has no apparent ambitions except to do a good job for the mayor.

"Now for the cruncher. Ever since Terry was assigned to head up the SSS, he's been going to the gym and getting himself in shape. He figures that the police men and women who make up the squad will be in tip top shape, and he doesn't want to be a fat, out of shape blob who will be an insult to his troops. He intends to go through both phases of training with the rest of you. The mayor tried to talk him out of that, but he said that he has to have a realistic idea of what people can really do, when and if the chips are down.

"Any questions?"

Bobby shook her head. Val looked up and said, "Just one, Harry. Now that you've done all this digging, what do you think of the whole SSS project? Is this going to be a good thing or is it just going to fizzle out?"

"Well, of course I'm not an expert on this sort of duty, but I've given it a lot of thought and I think it's going to be a good thing for the city. There are a few things to watch out for, though. First, it could be real good while Terry's here running it, and then turn to crap when he leaves to become a city manager somewhere else. Second, the present mayor is pushing it, and will probably make it a jewel in his crown when he runs for re-election. That could be the kiss of death when he gets defeated or retires, and his successor will try to let it turn to crap because it doesn't have his name on it. And third, Terry is going to be the hero of the month for a while, which can invite jealousy among his fellow staffers, and they might find ways to cut him off at the knees. Or for that matter, he might get torpedoed by people in the police department who feel left out of the picture. So jealousy is jealousy, and it can come from anywhere, or from several directions at once. All in all, I'd rather see it run out of some other place than the mayor's office."

I thought about the mixed message we'd just received, and thought it could go either way, and we'd better stick with it and wait to see what developed. But Bobby had been unusually quiet, and Val picked up on that. "What about you, Captain? Are you ready to share your opinion with us?"

"Val, you now know as much about it as I do. I'm eager to see it succeed for the good of the city, but I also have to watch out for my people who will be involved. So my biggest fear has been that we would pick our best and brightest and push them into an effort that's destined to fail. If that were to happen, it would have a terrible effect on their attitudes, their careers, and ultimately the whole police force, because they, well you two for example, are the people who are looked at as leaders by your peers. The best news I've heard is that Terry is going through the training with you guys. He'll be sweating it out with everybody else, which is a good move for a leader. So, based on what little I know, I'll give the SSS my support. You know I'll still have your backs, same as always, and I'm not going to lose interest in this as long as my people are involved. What about you, Harry?"

"Same here. You know I'll keep my ear to the ground, and if I find out anything of importance, I'll let you know.

I waited and no other comments seemed ready to roll off anybody's lips, so I looked around and asked, "Would it be all right if I bring up a matter that doesn't relate directly to the SSS?"

Bobby laughed. "Ken, you just can't stop being Ken, can you? Go ahead."

"Remember that my earliest contact with this department was with Captain Mueller. Then I met you, Harry, and saw another side of the police business. And then I met Hank and Bruce, and that same day I met you, Captain. As I learned more about how the department ran, I saw that there are some very good, very smart, very dedicated people in it who keep it going, no matter what. This meeting is an example of what I mean. It's almost like a management team operating below the surface. Am I getting a wrong impression or is that how it really is?"

Harry took a deep breath. "Kid, you're only how old? Twenty something? And Val, look at you, almost choking to death to try not to laugh, and you're even younger, aren't you? Now I'm going to tell you something, and then Bobby may want to comment on it, too. First off, you've got us pegged. Bobby and I are sort of foot soldiers in an invisible, informal group of friends who try to keep law and order maintained in this town, and keep the police department a real force for good around here. We're not the only ones, of course. 

"One important lesson about organizations is that they cannot operate just from the top down. The people at the top have to make the decisions that set the direction for the department. But the push, to make it move and keep moving in that direction, has to come from the bottom up.

"What you didn't ask, but probably want to know, is how do you two fit into this, and how do you get to be on this team of invisible prime movers? The answer is simple. You already are. Both of you. Walk into any precinct in the city and somebody will greet you by name. You wouldn't be in this position without the endorsement of people like Bobby and me and others, and we pick and choose our friends very carefully. So the best answer I can give you is welcome aboard."

Bobby smiled at us. "You two, and others like you, make it a pleasure to come to work here every day.

"Oh, Harry, should you mention the FBI thing?"

"Yeah, glad you reminded me. Val, the guy you crippled up that night in the saloon had to go to the hospital. When he came out he was sent straight home with a very critical writeup in his personnel file for his poor judgment. The FBI agent in charge of the Hatfield and McCoy investigation was appalled by the guy's lack of professionalism, and amazed at how well you handled him. Between that and what you said, Ken, about cooperating in the investigation, the chances are the FBI will give you two a once over lightly and let it go at that."

Bobby, still smiling, suppressed a giggle and said, "Well, that wraps it up. Harry, thanks for your help. Let's call it a day."

THE WARLORD SPEAKS

I got a message to report to Terry Gardner's office, so Aaron dropped me off at city hall. I found the office and was ushered in by a secretary. Mr. Gardner offered me a chair and came right to the point. "I'm glad to meet you. You'll be one of the youngest members of the Personal Protection Squad, and I've heard good things about you. You are one of the few members of our police department to have ever killed a person in the line of duty, and I think that could be very valuable experience in this line of work. I keep hearing about situations in which the right thing would have been to pull the trigger, but the agent or officer hesitated because he'd never done that before. So I think of you as an important member of the squad.

"But there's another thing that has come to my attention that I wanted to ask you about. It seems that my background has been investigated since it was announced that I would be heading up the squad, and I heard your name connected to the rumor. Do you know anything about that?"

"I may, sir. Naturally I don't know exactly what investigation you may have heard about, but I can tell you what I do know. When this Personal Protection Squad was first announced, the response in our precinct was unbelievable. Even our oldest officers, volunteered to participate if they were needed. Naturally, I volunteered. In fact my name was at the top of the list. We all supposed that this would be a police department function, and that it would be headed up by a high ranking officer. There was speculation that a command position would be created to run this squad and the SWAT team. Then when we heard that it would be commanded by someone outside the department, it caused a considerable amount of confusion. Everybody knows that you've been handling some difficult jobs for the mayor, but aside from that you're unknown to the rank and file police officers, so many people started to ask questions about your background and qualifications, and I was one of the people asking the questions.

"The department rumor mill operates quite fast and we usually get good answers. That happens for two reasons. Policemen dread surprises. Put yourself in their shoes and you can see why. But when questions are buzzing around the department, I believe that some of our high ranking people try to inject some correct answers into the mill, so that we'll stop worrying and get on with our business. Of course that's just my belief.

"What we heard back is that you were highly thought of in DC and in Oklahoma City, and that made people feel better. Then we also heard that you are going to go through the same training as the rest of us, and have even started to work out to get in shape for it. That was the icing on the cake. I realize that those answers were unofficial, but after seeing the effect that they had on the officers in my precinct, I can only say that I hope they're true.

"Does that answer your question, sir?"

"It seems to, and it makes a lot more sense than I expected. Now there's another issue I wanted to check on. It has come to my attention that you are being investigated by the FBI in connection with what they are calling the Hatfield and McCoy case. Why is the FBI considering you a suspect?"

"Sir, do you know anything about that case?"

"No. This has just come to my notice and I had not heard a thing about it before."

"I'll give you a quick summary. A valuable piece of government property was stolen and buried in the woods by the thieves. Later it was dug up. I was involved in finding it. This was before I was a policeman, and my fiancee and I were just helping the police. When it was dug up, it lay on the ground, guarded day and night, until the federal DOE people could take it. In all that time, it was in plain view of many people, but none of them were federal agents. Later, in a government lab, it was discovered that the object in their hands was not what they thought it was, and they've concocted various theories, I believe seven of them, to explain how their property might have been switched for something else. Of these, the least probable is that the switch happened in the woods after the thing was dug up. But because the federal agents always have to check minutely everybody who is not a federal agent, there are dozens of people here, and I'm one of them, who are subject to investigation. I dispute the use of the word suspect, as applied to any of us. I don't think I am really suspected of anything, and I've offered my full cooperation to the agents in their inquiry.

"If you want more information, I suggest that you contact Detective Harry Peters."

"Will the FBI investigation prevent you from being trained by the Secret Service?"

"I really don't know, sir. Nobody I've talked with has much of an understanding of how, or even whether, government agencies interact. If you'd like to have the FBI expedite their investigation of me or any of the others on your roster, it seems reasonable that they might do it to help you out. I'd sure like to get it over with."

"I'm told that Captain Mueller thought at one time that you might be involved in criminal behavior. Do you wish to comment on that?"

"Sir, that's one of the best things that anybody can ever say about me. Captain Mueller is an absolute fool. He tried to play detective and he can't even spell the word. The feeble steps he took to investigate the incident were an absolute fiasco. Sir, given your privileged position, my record with the police department is an open book to you, and I invite you to read every word in it. My contact with Captain Mueller was before I was a member of the department and if he had stayed in his position commanding the fifth precinct, I never would have applied. If he were standing here right now, I'd repeat exactly what I just said, every word, right to his face.

"Incidentally, if you do have the time to read through personnel folders, you ought to take a look at Captain Mueller's."

"Well! You've certainly stated your position on that subject very clearly. I think that's all that I needed to know. Is there anything else, before you leave?"

"Only this, sir. I volunteered for the personal protection duty. I'm not going to withdraw my name from the list of volunteers because I'm still willing to participate. Apparently it's your show. It you decide you don't want me on your squad, please write a request to my captain and she'll take care of it."

THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING HAPPENING

The next day after my conversation with Terry I was out on patrol with my partner, Aaron Brewster. We shared the driving duty, and it was my turn at the wheel when we got an urgent call on the radio. I turned on all the flashing lights and selected the high warble on the siren. Then I pulled a U turn in the middle of a busy block and laid down smoking rubber as we headed for trouble. The call was for a bank robbery with three gunshot victims, one thought to be dead and the other two seriously wounded. As we got closer to the scene we could hear sirens coming from every direction, but by a quirk of fate we got there first. Two other cruisers pulled up before we were even out of the car, and an ambulance came next.

Two people were lying on the sidewalk in front of the bank, and the ambulance driver backed up to the curb near to them, taking up the space between two parked cars, and stopped with the rear bumper of the ambulance roughly even with the curb. I had one foot on the pavement and the other in the patrol car, sizing up the situation while I was grabbing for the shotgun that rides vertically between the driver and his partner. Aaron was looking around, too, and he yelled, "Duck, kid!" just before the driver of the car blocked in by the ambulance started shooting. Aaron got down by the right front fender and drew his pistol. I felt the shotgun pull free of its mounting clip just as I got down to a crouch, and I pulled it around to my shoulder as I was scanning the backstop: that is, the area beyond the shooter. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the ambulance driver go down, with blood splattering from some wound. I focused on the shooter, who was standing by the open driver's door, with his left side facing toward me. As he got off two more shots at the ambulance, I let him have a load of buckshot in his left side, somewhere between his waist and shoulder. It hit him squarely and he flew back into the driver's seat while his gun bounced off his open door and skittered across the pavement. The semiautomatic shotgun went back into battery with another round in the chamber, and I felt the little lurch that it always gives as the bolt slams home on the fresh round. As fast as it was ready, I was ready, aiming at a second robber who was standing on the sidewalk on the far side of the getaway car, holding a pistol as he pivoted to face me. A fraction of of a second before I was in his sights, I got off a shot that sent buckshot skimming across the car roof and right into his face. He disappeared from my view, but I saw his pistol fly up in the air, spinning as it went, clearly beyond his control. Behind me and slightly to my right, I heard Aaron's pistol fire three shots, pause, and then three more. That told me that we were in real trouble, because Aaron learned his trade when cops carried revolvers with only six shots, and they were taught to fire two and evaluate. When I turned slightly I could see what it was all about. Another bank robber was crouching near the rear of the getaway car, trying to shoot at us over the trunk. Every time he lifted his head enough to see what he was aiming at, Aaron sent a few shots his way and he ducked down again without shooting. While Aaron kept him occupied, I made a dash for the small space between the front of the car and the ambulance, and squeezed through to aim the shotgun at the suspect who was dodging Aaron's bullets. "Drop the gun!" I yelled, with the shotgun already at my shoulder. The gunman spun toward me, and I was watching his pistol swinging toward my head as I fired. The buckshot took him down, and stray pellets took out the front tire of a car parked at the curb just beyond him, with a loud "Poof!"

Then suddenly, all was quiet. I could hear the ambulance driver moaning behind me, as his partner tended his wound. Then, as my hearing started to recover from the temporary effects of the shotgun blasts, I heard the scraping and thudding of feet on blacktop as four police officers came surging up to where the action had been.




Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 04



A hand grabbed my left shoulder as a voice in my ear asked, "You okay, kid?" 

I turned to look into the eyes of Sam Pierce from the third precinct. "Yeah, I'm fine, Sam. Sort of shaky, though, now that it's over. Here, have a shotgun." I handed it to him and stood up, a little surprised to find that I had been kneeling when I shot that last robber. Two more ambulances were approaching. I could hear their sirens, slightly lower pitched than the ones on police vehicles. And then there were sounds of more feet, as I don't know how many men in blue uniforms flooded into the area in front of the bank. Aaron came up on my right side. "Kid, that was some shootin'. Three perps, three shots, three bodies. I'm gonna love to write up that report.

Behind me I heard the booming voice of Sid Schwartz saying, "Hey, Aaron, when you get sick of puttin' up with that rookie, he can ride with me any time." Finally I wiggled my hips enough to get the stiffness out of my midsection and I took a deep breath and leaned back against what was supposed to be the getaway car. 

Harvey Brown from the second precinct came up from where he had parked down the street. "This kid deserves a medal and a big kiss from Aaron's wife. I had a good view of it all, and that last guy was determined to make her a widow. Aaron, you got a lotta guts to stick with it like that. You guys are somethin' else, lemme tell you! All you needed to make this a TV western shootout is a saloon where the bank is."

Aaron was shaking his hand. "My gun got so hot that I burned my hand puttin' it back in the holster."

Somebody walking up on my left side said, "That gun saved us all from gettin' shot. Holster be damned. It ought to go up on the wall."

Then in the distance I heard another siren, droning in the clear stretches and warbling at the intersections. The car came to a stop at the end of the block and the siren shut off abruptly as car doors slammed. And then there were two pairs of women's feet, running toward me. Val got to me first, and threw her arms around my neck. "Oh, thank God you're all right. We heard all the cars calling in about you and Aaron and the ambulance driver, and I wasn't sure you weren't wounded until I got right up to you." Then Bobby was there, her hand on Aaron's shoulder.

"I straightened up and said, "Look. I had the shotgun and I shot the three guys with it. That's what we carry it for. But Aaron was the real hero of this piece, keeping that last guy pinned down with pistol fire so he couldn't get off a decent shot at any of us. These robbers were tough. Any normal guy would just give up, with their getaway car wedged in like this, and half the cops in the city showing up. But they were ready to take us all down with them. We all owe Aaron a great big thank you for saving us from getting shot. Ask Harvey, he saw it all."

Bobby said, "You all deserve our thanks. You got to a shootout and you went into danger, not away. You were all here to support each other. No cowards in this bunch. When you all get your reports in, I'll go over them with your commanders, and we'll issue a joint commendation that will go into all your files, and to the news services, too. And speaking of the news services, here they come!" I looked around and saw the three vans from the TV stations, with their masts extended, and then reporters with microphones and cameramen with hand held minicams came jogging toward us.

Later Aaron and I were back at the station house finishing up our reports when Val came in. I stopped what I was doing and gave her my full attention. "We got separated at the crime scene and I didn't see you any more. Where'd you go?"

"Well, when the shootout started I was over at the Woodside school. I had just come out after reviewing their evacuation plan and their security package. I had my own car there, and I was on the sidewalk in front of the school when Bobby came by with her siren screaming. She opened the passenger door and yelled, 'Get in, quick,' and away we went. Then I started to find out what was happening as we were on our way. She just said, 'Big shootout downtown,' and I was getting the rest of it from the radio. Oh, Ken, I was so scared. Tonight on the way home let's pick up some takeout stuff for supper so we can sit and hold each other all night. But to finish the story, back at the crime scene, Bobby said, 'Let's go,' and she took me back to get my car, which was nice of her. But of course, it meant that I had to leave when she left, and she didn't hang around long after the robbery boys took over."

"Val, you would have been proud of me, the way I drove to get there. Big U turn in the middle of the block for a start. It was almost as good as you can do it. Whizzing around cars, sliding around corners, all sorts of hotshot driving. Wish you'd been there to watch. And advise. Aaron's knuckles were white. I bet he embossed his fingerprints right into the padding on the dashboard." I flashed back to the picture of him keeping the robber's head down. "Let me tell you, old Aaron can really shoot. Brave? Must have ice water in his veins." 

That evening, Val and I were sitting on the sofa. The TV was on but we weren't paying any attention to it, just the way we used to do, back before she moved in with me. We'd eaten our supper right there on the sofa, and the take out containers were still on the coffee table. About eight the doorbell rang, and I put on the porch light, picked up my pistol, and looked through the peephole. It was Bobby! I opened the door and let her in, and she started to apologize for barging in on us like this. Val offered her a beer, and when she accepted I went and got three cans. Then, settled down with our brews, we waited to hear what brought her out at this time of night.

"Ken, I didn't get to go through my mail at work, what with the interruption of the shootout and all the reports on it, so I grabbed it up and took it home with me. This was in it. What's going on?"

The "this" that she handed me was a memo from Terry Gardner. The body of it read, "Since Officer Ken Walters is currently being investigated for possible involvement in a federal crime, it would be inappropriate to allow him to participate as a member of the Personal Protection Squad. Please terminate his membership in that squad immediately."

"Well, that says that Terry is willing to get away from pointed questions and come out with what's on his mind. He had me in his office yesterday and asked me about the investigation into his background. I told him that there had been a bunch of questions about his suitability to lead the squad, and that we had picked up a rumor that he had done well in DC and OC, and that he was going to go through the training with us, which seemed to satisfy everybody who'd been asking questions.

"Then he asked about the FBI investigating me for the switch of Hatfield for McCoy, and I told him that I was one of many who were being investigated, but that it was just something the FBI had to do, since we weren't feds, and I wasn't even a cop at the time.

"Finally he asked me about my dealings with Mueller, and I politely told him that Mueller is an asshole, but not in those words.

"I suspected that he was trying to pressure me to quit the squad, and I told him that I wouldn't, and if he wanted me off it he should send you a written request. So I'd say that so far, he's doing just what I hoped he'd do. To use an old country expression, he's just put both feet in a pile of manure, and I can't wait to see how he'll try to pull them out."

"So what do I do now?"

"Get a list of all the people the FBI is supposed to investigate as part of scenario G. There ought to be a dozen names, I guess, and probably all but one or two of our precinct's personal protection picks are on it. Val is, I know that. It's everybody who was out in the woods that day. I bet you're on it. And Harry and Hank and Bruce. Ask Terry in writing what he wants to do with all the other people on the FBI list who are on the personal protection roster, or maybe tell him that you can't remove one of the names without the rest, because that would be showing harassment and favoritism, in violation of article blah, blah, blah.

"Then list the people who were at the shootout today, and distinguished themselves by valor under fire. Ask him about the people who were in on the shootout and are also on the FBI list, and if you should make public the fact that they are being removed from personal protection in spite of their exemplary performance. Include a copy of the front page newspaper story.

"Then sit back and wait for the next move."

"Ken, what's going on?"

"I don't know, but I think somebody's playing Terry for a patsy. And I'm willing to bet that it has to do with Mueller, since Terry is being fed info about me, and nobody else. So if we handle this right, and if Terry is smart, he'll figure out that he's being used and he'll step aside. If not, then maybe Terry is the problem.

"If we wait a couple of days and nothing comes of it, then we can try Plan B, by telling the guys that my name has been removed at Terry's request. Somebody will get pissed and some names will be withdrawn in protest. Or add Plan C, in which we let the newshounds find out that there's something strange going on with the personal protection squad, and volunteers are pulling out in droves. Or Plan D, in which the PBA protests setting up a squad of policemen to work under the command of a person who is not a sworn law officer, a lawyer from out of state who works for the mayor on his personal staff, whose actions are not reviewable by the PBA or IA or Ethical Standards or anybody else.

"Is that enough, or do you want more?"

"Just one more question. You aren't mad at me, are you?"

"Of course not. But if Mueller is somehow pushing buttons to embarrass me, what do you think he'll try to do to you? Don't you think we'd better try to nip this in the bud?"

THERE'S MYSTERY IN THE HISTORY

It's funny that I've got this far along with my story and not mentioned much about Val's family. She's the youngest of three sisters, the baby of the family. Her sisters are both married and living out of town, one with two kids, and the other with three. Val's father is a civil engineer, specializing in roads and bridges. He gets outdoors a lot in his work, although not as much as he once did, now that he has younger employees to do a lot of the leg work for him. He works hard, but his whole life is centered on his family. At family get-togethers, it's sort of a joke that he never says much, but always lets everybody know what he thinks. He can say more with a few words than anybody since Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address.

Val's mother is very special to me, sort of filling a space in my life that was left when my own mother died right after I joined the Army. Val and her mom are close, always were, and her mom is probably the only person in the world that we spill our guts to. It's not an imposition; she expects it and she likes to know everything that's going on in our lives. Her name is Paula, and that's what I always call her. It's just a little something we ironed out way back when Val and I started to go together. She knew that I'd never feel right calling her Mom, and Mrs. Stewart seemed too formal, so she's been Paula to me ever since.

Paula has a twin brother, Paul Ekblade. He taught English at the community college for years, and after his wife died of cancer he retired early to work on his writing. He was reclusive for six months or so, and then he got active in the local historical society. It was dominated by elderly women who were looking for awful things to get upset over, and Paul used to refer to it as the hysterical society. Without any big endowments, it limped along and finally the trustees had to admit that it was about broke and would have to close its doors. 

By that time Paul was on the board of trustees of the local library, which came into a wonderful grant from the estate of a lady who liked to read. The timing of the windfall was lucky, because the library was pretty rundown and needed to be expanded, modernized, and refurbished. The rear of the library couldn't be pushed out because the property in back of it belonged to the historical society, and Paul, with a foot in each canoe, managed to inspire a local architect who combined the two properties into an attractive, impressive cultural asset for the whole community. Paul was appointed to manage the combined facility, which kept his finger on the city's pulse and gave him a big office and access to all the facilities and resources a writer could ask for.

One of the projects that Paul pushed was access to the local newspaper, which went back over a hundred years. In conjunction with the publisher, the community college, a charitable foundation, and a computer manufacturer, the whole printed history of our area, as published over the years in the paper, was put into computer memory and made accessible in a special room in a new wing that was added as part of the remodeling project. Oh, how proud Paul was of that newspaper archive room!

Back on Walnut Street I was watching a basketball game on TV when Val plopped down in my lap. I'd rather play with her than with the TV, so the game was quickly forgotten and she started to tell me what was on her mind, in between kisses. "Ken, this Mueller thing has got me thinking. There must be more behind his rise to power and sudden decline. I don't even know what he's doing now, do you?

"No. I heard he's out of the department but I'm not even sure of that."

"Would he be drawing a pension? He didn't seem very old to me."

"Where are these questions going to? Tell me what's on your mind."

"Well, I remember reading somewhere that the Jesuits believe that before you confront your enemy you should learn all you can about him. You know that Ignatius Loyola, who founded the Jesuits, was a military man before he became a religious leader. He never backed away from a conflict but he believed in going into every conflict well prepared. I got thinking about that when I was scrubbing the kitchen floor last weekend. I think we ought to find out all there is to learn about Mueller. What do you think?"

"All right. How do we do that?"

"I think we need help. Somebody with access to all the facts, who's got time on his hands, and who will do anything to make me happy."

"You got a boyfriend?"

"No, silly. Much better than that. I've got an uncle. I'm going to call him. Maybe we could go see him this weekend. Okay?"

Saturday morning we had an appointment to see Uncle Paul in his well-appointed office at the library. He had coffee in a carafe on a warmer, and cute little mini-donuts on a tray that looked like silver. His conference table was polished, and cleared of everything except a thick computer printout that was like a roadmap of some huge database of the history of our state, county, and city. "Don't mind that," he said, "It's so huge that if I kept moving it in and out of a shelf or a file drawer it would disintegrate and I'd be lost when I try to look something up. I know it looks rather forbidding, but it really is useful to me, and it doesn't take up all that much room.

"Now about this Captain Mueller that you asked about. He's a strange duck, a man driven by personal ambition and a strange notion of how to achieve power and fame. What drew your attention to him?"

"He fixated on Ken after that shooting we were involved in. He decided that Ken had something to hide, and he thought he was the person who could find out what it was. It was all in his imagination. There wasn't a shred of truth in any of it."

"I see. But that was quite a while ago. Why bring this up now?"

"Somebody is trying to discredit Ken, and me too, I guess. The way it all came up made us think that Mueller is behind it, and we're afraid for some of our friends, too. So we'd like to put together a complete biography of Mueller and his schemes, right from conception onward. Can you help?"

"My dear, you know I can."

"Then will you, please, as a favor for your favorite niece?"

"To borrow an old burlesque comedy line, 'You ask me so sweetly, how can I refuse?'"

"There was something crooked about how Mueller got into a command position in the police department. I think it had to do with a mayor and some real estate swindle. Can you fill us in on that, too?"

"That's practically done already. I got into that a year ago, looking into the history of corruption in city hall. Not pretty reading, but you'll have that, too. What else?"

"There's a lawyer working on the mayor's personal staff, named Terry Gardner. He made some moves that made us think that his strings might be controlled by somebody outside that office, maybe Mueller, or somebody involved with Mueller. Or it may be that he has some hidden agenda of his own. We need to know what his game is."

"Well, that's a pretty good looking grocery list. Can you come around here next Sunday afternoon? I may not have all of it by then, but I'll have something to show you. Phone me when you're coming and I'll meet you at the door. The place will be closed for business, but I'm always haunting the halls at odd hours."

"May I bring a friend? A good looking blonde about your age, with a sharp mind and a dynamite body?"

"Please do. In that case, I'll try to look presentable. Might even get a haircut."

"And may I please take another donut, for the road?"

YOU CAN'T TELL THE PLAYERS WITHOUT A SCORECARD

Sunday afternoon found Val introducing Bobby Winston to Uncle Paul. Paul's interest was immediate and obvious. "You're Captain Winston of the police?" Bobby entered a guilty plea. "I've been reading about you for years now. You seem to be the best thing that's happened to law enforcement around here since handcuffs. I'm honored to have you visit my office."

Bobby's face lit up and she joked, "Wow. That was such a warm welcome that I ought to go out and come in again. Thank you for your generous praise, Paul. I assure you, I'm just one city employee trying to do my job, but it's a lot of hard work and it's great to know that someone has noticed."

We went into Paul's office and sat at his conference table while he dimmed the lights and gave a well crafted PowerPoint presentation. He began with the history of the city and the sleazy deals that had marked its early growth. One point he made is that the city sometimes benefited from them, since they involved the development of property into facilities that were useful to many of the citizens. But in other cases, the corruption was theft of taxpayers' money or other assets, such as diversion of the labor of city employees to benefit private property owners who just happened to be politicians. He quickly moved up to recent history, highlighting the deal pulled off by a recent mayor, who rigged the planning and zoning commission to refuse a zoning change for a large piece of land, which eventually had to be sold for a fraction of its actual worth, since no businesses could be built on it. It was bought by the then-mayor's cousin, who applied six months later for the zoning change and got it, so that he could sell the land to a developer for a quick profit of several million dollars. "The mayor's cousin was Felix Zanger. That's an odd name, easy to remember. We'll come across that name again," said Paul.

Then he went on to the current administration. "There have been few obvious examples of corruption under this mayor," he said. "There has been favoritism in awarding contracts, and other deals that don't involve the mayor or his family directly, but definitely have lined the pockets of favored contractors and suppliers. The administration can benefit from these indirectly, but everything has been handled discreetly, so we can't detect or measure any payoffs. Now we do see that some of the same extended families have members who have landed good jobs with the city, and Terry Gardner, whom you mentioned, is one of these. These hires have the effect of planting people in key positions who can do favors in the future for friends of the mayor and the city council.




Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 04



"Let's look at Terry Gardner. Here is his family tree. He came here with good references from the White House and Oklahoma City. It was supposed that he was trying to gain experience in various functions of government, perhaps to position himself for a city manager job as his next career move. He looks, at first glance, to be pure as the driven snow, and we have no evidence of any shady dealings on his part. But his pedigree is interesting. If you follow this branch of his family back far enough, it turns out that he is related to our old friend Felix Zanger. And if you look at Mrs. Zanger, you'll find that she's a second cousin of our present mayor. Now isn't that cozy?

"Please be patient with me as I digress to another interesting situation. Our mayor won his job by defeating his predecessor in an election. They are in different parties, and the present mayor ran a vigorous, spirited campaign that won him a reputation for reforming city politics. There were observers who said that the old mayor's campaign lacked luster and excitement, and some said that he was just getting too old to run an effective campaign any more. Would it surprise you to know that both candidates were partners in a deal a few years back, involving some land that was sold to the state for a highway interchange? Funny that nobody pointed that out publicly. But back to this recent election, it was really a win-win contest. No matter who was elected, they kept control of the city in the same small group. And it shows what a joke the party designations can be.

"Now before we move on to Herr Mueller, let's take a break. I have some small tea sandwiches in the next room, and fresh coffee should be brewed by now. Help yourselves to the rest rooms, grab some coffee and a bite to nibble on, stroll around and see what a modern public library looks like, and then we'll take a walk down the hall to our newspaper archive facility, where we'll reconvene in ten minutes or so."

We were glad to have a chance to look around, and the place was truly amazing. There were two adjoining rooms with computer terminals at small tables, one room for using the internet and one for writers and students to use word processors and spreadsheets to do homework, write novels, even organize their favorite recipes, without going online. Books were neatly placed on shelves that were convenient heights for most people, and there were even shelves that could be moved up or down to accommodate people who couldn't reach up high or stoop down low. In the fiction section, some popular authors had their own little groups of shelves, that could rotate to display all of their recent works in a small amount of floor space. 

A hallway leading to the newspaper archive had walls lined with blowups of front page stories about the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, which launched the United States into the second World War, and also the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which started the first World War. Other displays featured the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, the sinking of the Titanic, and the Johnstown flood. As Val and I strolled down the hallway, Paul and Bobby were in a soft-spoken conversation while looking at a headline about the Korean War. Whatever he was selling, she seemed to be buying, with girlish giggles thrown in now and then.

Inside the archive room there were small desks around the walls with computer terminals to display any page of the paper from any date in any year, going back to the period after the Civil War. Once you found the story you wanted, you could print it, and the printed copies ordered by your terminal would be accumulated in a shelf marked with your terminal number, where you could pick them up before leaving.

For us, however, Paul was controlling the displays from his desk in another corner, and giving us a running narrative at the same time. He began with the birth of a baby, Fritz Mueller, and progressed through the years as Fritz graduated from elementary school, played soccer in middle school, and was part of a high school football team that had an undefeated season.

"Then he was prominently featured in story from a nearby town, about a whorehouse that Fritz and his friends from the football team were running in the home of a family who were away in Europe for two years. The whores were local girls, two of whom went to the police when the organizers swindled them out of their agreed share of the fees for their services. The stories percolated along for months, as the younger participants were dealt with in juvenile court, while Fritz and two others, inconveniently over eighteen, were tried as adults and sentenced to prison terms. Then they were miraculously paroled without ever leaving the county jail. There was also a passing mention of records the boys had kept of their clientele, but the notebooks in which the names and dates were recorded were somehow misplaced and could not be found at the end of the trial.

"Just a few years out of high school, Fritz was seen at the opening of a restaurant under a sign that proclaimed The Bavarian Bar, with the notation below in smaller letters, Bratwurst and Beer. The following year there was a legal notice of the bankruptcy of the Bavarian Bar, and later that same year Fritz was in criminal court again, accused of concealing assets from a bankruptcy court. That case was thrown out later due to lack of evidence."

Paul apologized at that point, saying this was as far as he'd gone in the time he had available that week. He invited us to come back in a week, when he would have completed his searches and organized his research into notebooks for us to keep. Bobby asked for two extra copies, which I supposed might be gifts for her friends.

Val and I went out and waited in the pickup, while Bobby had some final words with Paul in the doorway. She was making some point while jabbing with her finger in her pocket notebook, where she had been jotting notes during Paul's lecture. Paul was nodding, and then they both laughed, after which she gave him a kiss on the cheek and came out toward the truck, smiling and giggling to herself like a thirteen year old.

I looked beyond Bobby to Paul, who was standing in the doorway watching her from the rear, while he held his hand against his face, with his fingers over the spot where she'd kissed him.

As I put the truck into gear and started down the street, Bobby leaned forward from the back seat and said to Val, "Your uncle is a wonderful man. Thank you so much for taking me to meet him." I laid my right hand down on the seat and Val gave it one of her special squeezes. 



Problems in the Ponderosas Ch.05



TIME FOR PLAN W

As I was driving, Bobby continued to lean forward, her face somewhere between my ear and Val's, so she could be heard over the drone of the knobby tires on the pavement. "I'm not going to do any of the things you suggested, Ken. As I was listening to what Paul had to say, I kept thinking that letting Terry get involved in a thing that's really police business is not a good idea at all. Tomorrow morning I'm going to take the memo from Terry to show it to the chief. I know him very well, and I'm sure that he's not involved in any of the political and financial fun and games that get played at city hall. Fact is, he wouldn't have time, with all he has to do to run the department. I want him to know about this, and he may not even know that Terry has been picked to run the SSS. The memo, with Terry's signature on it, shows that the mayor's office is trying to muscle in on police business. There are statutes about all this, and I want to go with the chief to the city attorney, who's supposed to advise us on stuff like this. Then I want the city attorney to go tell the mayor to butt out."

"What plan is this? I forgot where I left off. Is this maybe J or K?

"I think it's about W. Or maybe it deserves more letters, like WTF."

"Well, if you can pull this off the way you described, I think that's what the mayor will be screaming."

We dropped Bobby off at her condo, and while Val waited in the truck, I walked in to make sure Bobby got home safe and sound. All this talk about conspiracies had me a little on edge, I guess. When I got back to the truck, Val had the doors locked and was holding her pistol under the flap of her jacket. Apparently I wasn't the only one feeling edgy.

I pulled out my phone and punched the quickdial to call George, my lawyer. He answered, heard me out, and said, "My office, in five minutes."

We sat down in his deposition room. George pushed the button to start the audio and video recorders and said the date and time, and who we all were. "Let 'er rip."

"We've been trying to get a little background on some of the people who are getting involved in things affecting our employment in the police department. You remember when we were involved in the problem of finding the stolen object that was lost in the woods. That case got complicated recently and the FBI sent a team to establish what happened." I gave him a very quick summary of Hatfield and McCoy.

"Then, independently of that, a project was started to form a Personal Protection Squad in our police department," and I gave him a summary of where that stood.

"We had supposed that a well-placed police official would head the squad. Instead, the mayor has designated Terry Gardner, of his personal staff, to command it, and Terry has apparently taken some initiative to decide who is qualified to be on the squad and who is not, selecting them from the roster that the police department, through its precinct commanders, has put together." I went on and explained about the interview I had in Terry's office and the memo saying I was to be bounced.

"There are several things that annoy me about that. For one, the stated reason could explain why I shouldn't be on the squad, but if that's a good enough reason, then a lot of other names ought to come off it. Using that as an excuse to reject me and none of the others, seems like harassment. Second, it appears that my run-in with Captain Mueller has something to do with this, but no mention of that appears in the memo. Third, I should think that having a squad of police officers commanded by a staff person who has never been subjected to a background investigation and has never had any police training, is a bad idea and might be illegal."

"I can look into that for you," said George.

"Now one other thing. Mueller is a screwup from way back. I don't see how he ever could have been allowed to become a police officer. I think he disqualified himself when he was convicted of a felony at age eighteen. I'm going to leave you a recording of a session with a man who looked up a bunch of history on him, at our request. When you've listened to it, I'd like your opinion on it. I suspect that Mueller is still involved in police business and I want to know if that is breaking the law. I don't know yet where he is or what he's doing, but if he was pensioned off by the department after being illegally employed there, then I should think that the pension is illegal as well."

"All right, I'll look into that too. Anything else?"

"Yeah. Please charge me a friendly rate. Cops don't make a lot of money,"

George shrugged and turned off the machinery. I stood up, handed him the memory stick from my recorder, and asked two questions off the record. "George, is the police chief honest?"

"I believe so. But I'll ask around."

"And is the city attorney honest?"

"That one I already know the answer to. He's so honest that he doesn't seem to fit in at all with the rest of those guys in City Hall. Remember Harry Truman, mailing a personal letter from the White House and taking a stamp out of his pocket to stick on the envelope? Honest like that. And the county attorney is just the same."

"Glad to know there's somebody near the top that we can count on!"

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE PONDEROSA PINES 

I called Hank to find out what was going on with the FBI investigation. "Look, Ken, I'm sort of busy. Could we get together tonight at the saloon? Say around eight?"

At 8:05 Val and I were stepping out of my truck in front of Jimmy's Pub. I opened the entrance door slowly and looked around before stepping in. Val was behind me, with her left hand lightly touching my back so I'd know where she was. We paused inside the door to let our eyes adjust to the dim interior, and I looked ahead at the narrow space where we'd had some trouble before. One of the guys at the bar, who had the comfortable look of a regular who'd been sitting there a while, said, "Oh, shit, here comes that big mean guy with the hellcat girlfriend. Better give 'em some room." Bodies seemed to part before me, like the Red Sea opening up for Moses. We passed through without any trouble.

Hank was in the same place where we had seen him last, and as we sat down a waitress put two draft beers in front of us. "A little easier getting back here than last time," I commented.

"Yeah, and things are getting a little easier in the world of unfounded suspicion, too. The investigation into you two and me and Bruce and everybody who was out in the woods, is over. Officially we've all been investigated and cleared. Unofficially, I got tired of being looked at funny and told the agent in charge that he couldn't expect much cooperation from our department if he kept us in a person of interest category for no good reason. So he dropped that part of the witch hunt."

"I guess you haven't found McCoy or you would have told us that when we sat down."

"You're right, we haven't. But we're going back to the woods to look there again. This time, we're doing a helicopter search first, with some fancy instrument that can detect very faint amounts of radiation. For some reason, the FBI is hot for the scenario where both Hatfield and McCoy were buried out there, and we stumbled onto the wrong one. So if they can detect anything from the air, we'll dig where they say the radiation's coming from and maybe we can put this whole thing behind us. It's gone on too long and headed too many directions to suit me. It's been as bad as an art theft. I'd like to get back to nice, comfortable murders. Why don't they rustle cattle any more? Those things are just wonderful. Just follow the hoofprints and you've got the case solved."

Val laughed and said, "Will you let us know when it's over? This thing has been part of our lives for a long time now, and as you say, we're tired of it. But if you do find McCoy in a hole in the ground, what does that tell you? Somebody had to put it there, so won't you just be off on another witch hunt?"

While they tossed this idea back and forth, I was mulling over various questions that had been raised since we got on the trail of Hatfield and McCoy. "Hank, has anybody figured out where Hatfield came from? It seemed pretty definite that McCoy came from the government lab, and the paper trail must have been pretty conclusive. Then why didn't Hatfield leave a paper trail, too? Who had that sort of stuff? I'm sensing a big gap in what the energy guys know, or say they know, about this stuff."

"All I can tell you is that nobody's pursuing that question, so either somebody knows something or there's a massive coverup going on."

"When do you go back to the woods?" asked Val.

"Assuming suitable weather conditions, the helicopter search is tomorrow. Everything else depends on whether they find anything, and if they do, how well they can localize the radiation source. If they can do all the airborne searching in one day, then the next day we go out and dig. We'll need some uniforms along. Either of you want to volunteer?"

"Sure. You'll contact Captain Winston?"

"Consider it done. If everything seems to be coming together, you'll get a call at home tomorrow night."

Val was pensive. "What about Clyde? Won't you need him to read the trees?"

"Good point. I hadn't even thought about that. He's in the county lockup, awaiting trial. I'll bet he'll jump at the chance for a day in the woods, especially when I tell him you're going to be there."

And so it came to pass that most of the original crew of intrepid adventurers gathered by the railroad track and headed into the big pine forest on Friday morning. This time we had FBI and DOE agents with us, and there was a funny looking little one-wheeled cart that was actually a wheelbarrow with a pan replaced by a lead-clad steel strongbox to bring McCoy home in, if only we could find him.

It was sort of a warm day. Val and I were in plain clothes so we wouldn't spook Clyde, and that meant that I could wear shorts and a lightweight short sleeved shirt, and I didn't have to carry my full duty belt. I had my pistol on my belt, and I was carrying an AR slung in front, muzzle down, Army style, so I felt well armed. The AR was a last minute decision, and I couldn't have told you exactly why the thought came to me that I might need it. I sort of liked this particular weapon, our rack number 5-32, which I'd spent time with at the range. It had a 3 power scope that I'd zeroed to a gnat's eyelash. Val had just her pistol on her belt, I guess, although I didn't know what she might have in her pockets.

We were walking along, really enjoying the chance to get out in the woods, away from traffic and noise and air pollution. Hank and a DOE guy were in the lead, the DOE guy steering the procession with a portable GPS. They were followed by Val and Clyde. Two more DOE guys came next, one of them wheeling the little wheelbarrow, which they referred to as "the lead sled." I was walking with Bruce, followed by two FBI guys, and a couple of our uniforms were bringing up the rear. We looked like a movie version of a safari, wending our way through the jungle in the depths of the dark continent. If an elephant had suddenly roared it wouldn't have been shocked me.

I heard Val yell to Hank to stop, but I couldn't hear what she was telling him, so I cut out to the left and legged it up there to see if she was okay. As I drew near she was saying, "It just doesn't feel right. It's a feeling I get sometimes that somebody's watching, sort of like stalking us. Oh, Ken. Stay up here with us, will you?"

Hank said, "Probably a good time to pause anyway." The rear ranks caught up to us, and he asked, "Everybody doing okay?" We all took sips from our water bottles, and Hank said, "Let's go."

I left Val on the left and I got in the middle, so I could talk with Clyde. "Does everything feel all right to you, Clyde?"

"I dunno. I sort of felt what the li'l gal was sayin'. Like somebody's out there that shouldn't be there. But they's a passel of us, so we kin make it."

Val, out on the flank, was looking around constantly. I knew her ability to spot anything out of place, and I knew if there was anything over there to see, she'd see it. I mentioned to Clyde, "Keep watching. Anything unusual, you tell me right away and I'll take care of it."

It seemed to me that if anybody was out here with a mind to make off with McCoy, he'd already had a hell of a good chance in the weeks since we'd been spooking around out here. That could mean that he tried but he can't find it, so he'd like to let us find it for him, and then take it off our hands once we've done the hard part. So we ought to be safe going in, but in danger coming out. On the other hand, if somebody was trying to size us up to spot our vulnerabilities, going in would be the time to do it.

I took slightly longer strides for half a dozen steps, and caught up to Hank. "Do you have a helicopter in the area?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Does it have an infrared scope, to spot people?"

"Sure. That's how they can keep tabs on us, down here under the trees."

"Then ask him to search the area for somebody out here, other than us. They ought to be about twenty yards away, looking us over as we walk, probably two of them."

"Okay."

I fell back to the rank with Val and Clyde. "See anything yet?"

Val said, "Twice now I thought I'd seen something over to the left in my peripheral vision, but when I looked there wasn't anything. Maybe I'm just overly nervous."

"What do you feel?"

"That someone's watching us."

"Then that's what it is. I want to try to trap them in an ambush."

I moved up slowly to Hank. "Helicopter see anybody yet?"

"Yeah, two of 'em."

"Val saw them too, just flashes. I want to set an ambush. But first, ask the helo if they can see anybody way back of us, like halfway to the railroad."

"All right." He got onto the radio, talking softly. We walked along silently and then he got an answer.

"Big force, five or more. Not moving. They're at a spot we passed before."

"So they're waiting for us to go back out the same way we came in. Can you request more troops?"

"What do you have in mind?"

I motioned to Seth, the DOE guy with the GPS, to walk close to us. "I want to stage a mock retrieval of McCoy. Seth, you'll announce that we're very close, and everybody groups up around you. Then put on an act, poking around. You finally yell, 'Right here!' and then we dig and somebody with the lead gloves lifts out a handful of dirt, puts it into the lead sled, and locks it. We rest for a few minutes and start back toward the railroad, but then you turn left and head for Miller road. Just pick a place where it looks like decent walking. Everybody breaks ranks to ask what's going on, and you just get them all headed due west. Don't walk too fast.

"In the confusion I'll fall out and conceal myself, with, oh say, Bruce and an FBI guy and a uniform. We'll ambush the two advance scouts who've been tailing us.

"Now here's where it gets tricky. While we're doing the mock grave robbery, a backup squad of good guys has to come in silently and form a line on the diagonal to cut off the bad guys' main force to the west and south. As you keep going west, the bad guys have to pick up and come after you, and they walk right into the backup squad. 

"My ambush team will get the two forward scouts. The backup squad of good guys gets the bad guys' main force. There's a good chance that one of the guys you'll have will be the one that stole McCoy, and that would wrap up this whole case and not have it droning on till you retire.

"Now look, if they get too close to you, abandon the lead sled and run like hell toward the southwest, then regroup and take up a defensive position. They'll be so proud of having the lead sled that they might just walk away with it and leave you alone." 

It didn't take much to convince Hank. "Okay. Seth, in ten minutes you yell that we're close and go into your act, looking all over, here and there. Take your time. Ken, you walk back and tell everybody we're just about there, and they should come up and take a break. Tell Bruce and the FBI and cops to cluster close to me to get briefed."

I headed off to spread the word, sent everybody up to where Hank and Seth were. I had Clyde go with Bruce so I could have some time alone with Val. As everybody got up close to where Seth was putting on his show, I explained the whole plan to Val. Then we found a good place to sit and waited for it all to happen.

Hank turned to me and motioned to come close. I parked my AR with Val and walked over to him. "Ken, we've got a new helicopter coming in so this one can refuel. Harry is in the new one with a deluxe IR viewer, and he'll coach us from up there to coordinate our moves with the bad guys' moves and make sure we get them all. A squad of cops is on the way, from the third and fifth. All with vests, duty belts, and AR's."

"Who's the point man?"

"Your partner, Aaron Brewster."

"And who's in command?"

"Who else? Captain Winston. She wouldn't hear of anybody else being in charge. Lieutenant Cooper from third is her backup. I've worked with him before. Smart as hell, all cop, no ego."

"Sounds as if we're in good hands. For my team, I need an FBI guy and a uniform, guys who can shoot and aren't afraid to. You take Bruce and let Clyde stick close to him, and I'll keep Val with me."

"So you can protect her?"

"Or so she can protect me."

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS 

Hank sent the FBI agent and the uniformed cop from the third to see me, and we talked for a couple of minutes. The agent was Fred, mid-fortyish, on loan from Baltimore. The uniform, Toby Green, was a guy I knew just to say hello to, mid-thirtyish patrol officer who had been at the third for ten years or more. I asked him to round up a second pair of handcuffs, since we'd be trying to arrest two bad guys and we'd be on our own when we were doing it.

About fifteen minutes later, Hank was talking on his radio briefly, and then gave a nod to Seth, who looked as if he was having an orgasm when he faked finding the place to dig. Bruce took out a trenching tool that he had on the back of his backpack and started digging. The guy with the lead sled came over and put on the big gloves, and when Bruce said, "There it is!" the guy with the gloves picked up a rock and laid it into the lead covered box. The other DOE guy locked it up, and the glove man said, "We've got it, let's go!"

We headed north, went about a quarter mile, and then turned left. Confusion reigned, and everybody milled around Hank, until he explained loudly that we were taking a different route out to avoid having McCoy stolen from us.

Val was looking all over for the perfect place to ambush the advance scouts. Fred finally spotted a great spot, where a tree had fallen but was left lying there, probably because it was wedged between other trees. We got behind the fallen tree and waited. 

When the advance scouts came along, they were obviously not trying to be sneaky about their movements any longer, and sauntered along, following the trail of the good guys. They apparently had a two way radio hookup of their own, and the one in the camouflage shirt was just telling his friend in the dark green shirt about the conversation. "I told him they turned left, and he said to me, 'Why'd they do that?' so I told him, 'To avoid getting ripped off along the way.' and he just laughed. So they're on the move now."

I let them get a few feet past us, and then stood up with the AR at my shoulder. Fred stood, too, about twenty feet from where I was, and yelled, "FBI. Freeze! Throw down your weapons back up three steps." Then he and Toby walked over to where they stood, and Toby told Camouflage, "Put your hands on your head." He did, and Toby snapped a cuff on his left wrist. Then all hell broke loose. The Green Shirt guy spun around, pulled a knife as he did, and slashed out at Fred. Fred took a step back to avoid the blade, and tripped, falling backward. His pistol went off as he fell, sending a wild shot almost straight up, but he kept hold of the gun. As Green Shirt started to take a step toward Fred, I got off a shot into the center of his chest. It startled him and jolted him, and he dropped the knife, but it was too late. Fred already had him in his sights and he fired one shot. The bullet entered through the bridge of his nose and exited through the top of his head, taking a lot of blood, bone and brain with it.




Problems in the Ponderosas Ch.05



Throughout this whole frenzied activity, Toby had never let go of the left wrist of Camouflage, but he moved his right hand like lightning and drew his pistol, which he put up against the middle of Camouflage's spine. Camouflage thought he had a chance, and whipped his right hand down and back toward Toby's holster. Big mistake. The gunshot was partially muffled by his camouflaged back, and the bullet went through the spinal column, scattering bone fragments from a vertebra like shrapnel, to plow holes through the heart and all the blood vessels going in and out of it. His body teetered until Toby gave a slight push, and what was left of Camouflage fell forward, landing face down in the moldy pine needles.

I still had the AR against my shoulder, and I slowly lowered it and reset the safety. I looked to my left and saw Val doing the same with her pistol. She looked at me and said, "You sure got what you asked for."

"What's that?"

"You asked for two guys who weren't afraid to pull the trigger, and that's just what you got."

We both stepped over the log and walked up to our two guys. Fred was back on his feet already, and he and Toby holstered their pistols at the same time. "That was quick shooting. I with I had all that action on tape. You guys are really something."

Toby had the standard answer. "Just takin' care of business."

Val shook their hands with obvious admiration. "And they say I'm quick. You guys are amazing. Fred, you got your sights on him while you were still falling. And Toby, that speed draw was just a blur. I'm honored to be on the same team with you guys." And then she did the unthinkable. She reached up and kissed each one of them on the cheek.

Fred looked around at me. "Ken, you didn't see that, did you?"

"Never saw a thing," I answered.

STORY TIME

Fred had a radio, which he used to tell our main force that we were all right, and we wouldn't need to use those handcuffs after all. Hank said to stay where we were and guard the crime scene, so we found comfortable places to sit down and wait. Fred asked, "How did you two get involved with this case?" So I told him, and he said, "Then Val, you're the wonder woman I've heard about. Are you the same one who put down that agent from Wichita?"

"Oh, yes, that was me. You know, I could cure world hunger and cancer and stabilize the world economy, but at my retirement party that's the story they'd tell about me. 'Here's Val, she's the one who kicked the FBI agent in the balls.' I was sorry to hear that he was hurt so badly, but in a tight space like that I didn't have many options. If he didn't want to get hurt, he shouldn't have groped me like that. How was I supposed to know he was an agent? Even a high school girl would have reacted the way I did."

I put my two cents in. "We make a pretty good team. Val's fast and I'm big. As long as we're together, people pretty much leave us alone."

We'd been sitting and chatting for forty minutes when we heard gunshots in the distance. First four or five close together, followed by too many to count, all in a bunch. A pause, then a burst of full auto fire, and then silence.

I yelled to Fred, "What's happening? Is it over?"

Fred got busy with his radio and mostly listened for close to five minutes. Then he raised his head and said, "They think they got them all. Harry, up in the helo, is looking all around. Hank says to stay together where we are so they don't get us confused with the enemy. As soon as he has a definite answer, he'll call us."

We amused ourselves by watching birds pecking at pine cones on the ground, trying to get at the tiny seeds that didn't fall out when the cones opened up to scatter their seeds as the trees swayed in the wind. Toby told a few tales about rounding up a gang of drug dealers ten years ago, and Fred told about chasing some crooks in the rugged country of western Maryland. When his radio came to life it brought the news that all of the bad guys were definitely accounted for, and crime scene techs with body bags were on the way to us, led by Bruce and Clyde. A while later, just as Toby was finishing a tale about car thieves and a chop shop, we heard the sound of many feet crashing through the undergrowth, which had to be either an elephant or police department employees with their legs protected by jumpsuits and hiking boots. I stood up, figuring my yellow shirt would give them a beacon to walk toward, and Toby waved and yelled, "Over here."

Clyde rushed ahead of the rest, straight to Val's side so he could make sure "the li'l gal" was all right. Then the rest of the group came up to us, and the techs got busy. They snapped pictures from every conceivable angle, and one at a time we recorded our accounts of the action so they could unscramble the different viewpoints back in the office and put together one official report.

The dead men had no identification, but Bruce was confident that fingerprints would tell the story, since they were nearly certain to have arrest records.

While the techs were finishing their jobs, Bruce and Clyde sat down on our log with us and told us all about what happened. The police were stationed in a line, spaced fingertip to fingertip, the old Army way of getting a man every six feet. Hank's team came close to getting in the way, and Harry directed them to a spot south of the danger zone, up on a small rise of ground where they could see the preparation and then back down to a protected position when the enemy showed up. And they did show up, in an untidy bunch, walking along with not a care in the world until Aaron yelled, "Police. Throw down your weapons! Get down and spread 'em!"

A couple of the bad guys started shooting, and the police started shooting all at once with AR's on semi auto. They thought everybody in the enemy force was on the ground, dead or wounded, until one guy wearing a police jumpsuit came out from behind a tree and grabbed Bobby for a hostage and shield. Obviously he hadn't thought the whole thing through, because she not only had a pistol, she was holding it in her hand, down alongside of her leg. She twisted around a little and while her captor was shouting and gesturing wildly with his gun hand, she shot him in the groin.

The bad guy let go of Bobby and she dove forward. As she hit the ground, Aaron and Tom Kelly both let go with full auto fire from their AR's. Then Lieutenant Cooper ordered "cease firing", and when the guys lowered their AR's Bobby jumped up and waved so everybody could see that she was okay.

"Who was the guy in the police suit?"

"An old friend of yours, name of Mueller."

AND THEN WHAT?

After we came out of the woods, the case was officially turned over to the DOE and FBI. A team went back to the woods the next day and dug up The Real McCoy. Other agents, working mainly from info they had found previously, went on to tidy up the loose ends without any interference from local police or politicians. In one of the more dramatic incidents, two agents walked into a meeting in the mayor's conference room and arrested the mayor and Terry Gardner. We never did find out exactly what they'd done because when their cases came to trial they both answered "no contest" and were hustled off for short terms in a federal country club. If there was a lesson there for us, it was that despite our best efforts, we never got enough information on the City Hall crowd to give them a conclusive, accurate appraisal.

Clyde had no federal charges pending, and since he had never shot anybody in our state, he was allowed to plead guilty to threatening, and was given three years of supervised probation. Last I heard, he was showing up at his PO regular as clockwork, and had found a lady to move in with. Whether she was good with a rifle, like that girl who wasn't around any more, I never found out.

Bobby said she needed to learn all she could about the background of the case, so she could make sure that nothing like this ever happened again. The only way she could get completely filled in was to visit Val's Uncle Paul, and they got together several times at his office, after the library and museum were closed. Then, just to fill in any gaps in the history, they got together over dinner a few times. Finally they found it necessary to keep in close touch, so she moved a bunch of her clothes and uniforms into a spare bedroom at Paul's house. She still has her condo, but any time I've had to call her after hours she's been at Paul's.

Val and I had several meetings with Bobby and Harry, to talk about the case and to get their help in planning our careers. Finally Val transferred to the Detective Bureau, where she went to work on a team of detectives led by Hank. She became a fixture at the evening courses in the criminal justice school of the community college, and plans to continue her education when she can by taking a course at a time at the state university, working toward a bachelor's degree. The reason I say "when she can" is that her pregnancy is interfering with that part of her future plans as I write this.

We didn't get married until she got pregnant. It was supposed to be just a small affair with her family and a few close friends. Bobby stood up with her, and Aaron was my best man. We went from the church to a local restaurant to have a quiet dinner together, only to find that the whole place had been taken over by our friends from the department and their families. The reception was noisy but perfect. The only thing that seemed out of placed was that Val drank half a flute glass of champagne and then switched to apple juice, in deference to our fetus.

So now Val is off on maternity leave, and I'm spending my off time studying books on parenting. I got commendations for the bank robbery and the battle in the pine forest, and now have two stripes on my sleeve. Aaron is now a sergeant, Tom Kelly is a corporal like me, and there have been so many commendations for our guys that the personnel files in the fifth are bulging.

We've had some joint operations with the third precinct, drug sweeps and burglary investigations. In the process I've come to know Lieutenant Herb Cooper pretty well. I think he has the sharpest mind of all the Afro-American officers in the department, and he'll probably become chief some day. His promotion to Captain is being delayed only by the time in grade requirement.

Despite all odds, the Personal Protection Squad has come into existence. Ron Morgan, who was a sergeant in the first precinct, was promoted to lieutenant and put in charge of the SSS, as we still call it, reporting to the captain who commands the SWAT team. We went through the bodyguard course at the Police Academy, after which half the squad, including Val, dropped out to form a reserve group. She had her eye on the calendar, with her body clock telling her to think about becoming a mommy. The rest of us went to The Rowley Center in Beltsville, Maryland, to get the advanced training, and we're one sharp, decisive, potentially lethal bunch of bodyguards, let me tell you. Won't be any assassinations or kidnaps on our watch, you can count on that.

Meanwhile, I'm still doing the school visits occasionally. A high school kid asked me the other day, "Are you glad you decided to become a police officer?" The question rocked me back on my heels. 

I sputtered for a few seconds before I could answer, "Honestly, I've never even questioned it. Once I got into law enforcement, there were so many things to learn and so much happening that I was totally absorbed in it. In my mind, I guess I felt that it's what I was meant to do, the only job I was meant to have, and there was no way that I could ever be satisfied doing anything else. I believe that if it's the right thing for you, you'll know it. If you join the department I can only hope you'll find it as fulfilling, as satisfying, as I have. And my wife feels the same way. If you asked her, she'd probably come back with, "What else could I have been?"

So there you have it. That's my story about protecting and serving the public, and I'll leave it to you to put it into a category. It's had highlights of suspense, intrigue, action, and violence, against a peaceful beige background of making our city a safe place for people to raise their kids. My life with Val has been filled with admiration and deep, intense love. On the job, there's a different kind of love, with good friends fighting the good fight together as close as brothers. 

Call my story what you will, it's the only way I'd have wanted to go, and I'm older, wiser, and happier than I was at the start. I figure if you can honestly say that, then anybody's memoir is really a success story.