Going Home - Chapter 18

The rest of the week went by pretty fast. I decided the best way to spend my last week being unemployed was bumming around my apartment, being as useless as possible. I still went by Rosita’s every night to help her with the dinner rush, and we’d turned that into returning to her house for a serious make-out session several of those nights.

I did hear from Orville about Jimmy, though. They’d gotten him in an interrogation room, but he’d brought a lawyer who’d kept him from saying anything. Still, the DA was happy with the case we handed him and said he didn’t think he was going to have much trouble getting a conviction.

Orville also had me stop by and pick up the spare patrol vehicle. It was jumping the gun slightly, and it probably could have gotten him in trouble if I wrecked it, but I appreciated having a vehicle again, especially since it wasn’t a short-term loan this time.

The last few days of the week I did the ride-along, which killed a bunch of assumptions I’d made about how policing in the county was going to be.

First was that it would be quiet or boring. Yes, there were way fewer calls than there were at any given time in New York City, and most of the ones Orville got were extremely routine stuff. Unlike New York City, since they worked long shifts and were the only man around, they didn’t just patrol the entire shift. Instead, they’d occasionally run a patrol, either here in Buxton or around the county, which was only about thirty square miles and had a handful of even smaller communities that consisted of a couple of hundred residents. The rest of the time they’d have a radio on them answering calls either from Sarah or from the neighboring county’s 911 dispatcher, which Buxton had an agreement with to roll calls over to when Sarah wasn’t working.

It amazed me police work in rural areas was as informal and laid-back as it was. Coming from the NYPD, where everything was regimented, it was quite the culture shock. Of course, the NYPD had more officers than this entire county had people, so it made sense.

Occasionally, they’d have something larger to deal with, and either Al or Orville, whoever wasn’t technically on, was still expected to come running to help, if at all possible, which is why both Al and Orville were around the night of the fire, even though technically Al was the only one working that night. It also explained why Orville had wanted help with the investigation. Even without my having some experience dealing with it, driving down to Summersville and spending hours digging through the rubble would have made it a lot harder on whoever wasn’t scheduled to work, since they’d have to pick up all the slack.

The good thing about policing here was that, for the most part, the community policed itself. Everyone was armed, so things like break-ins, hold-ups, and home invasions weren’t common like they were in New York City. People also helped their neighbors whenever there was trouble, and whatever was happening was usually over by the time Al or Orville made it there. Their job was mostly to take statements and arrest the person the citizens had already apprehended.

The second assumption I’d made, mostly from the run-in with the addict who’d tried to grab the woman by the high school, was that my biggest challenge would be drugs, either people on them or people making them. Although there was a drug problem like most of rural America,  it wasn’t something they dealt with all the time. Occasionally they’d get wind of a trailer meth lab which they’d shut down, as much to keep it from exploding and starting fires as to stop the production of meth, or a drug-related crime like burglary, but that wasn’t as common as I’d thought. The attempt I’d stopped was the last one Orville had dealt with and it had been weeks before that that he’d been called to deal with something similar.

Their most common run-in with drugs in the community was finding passed out, or deceased, addicts and we were all expected to always have Narcan, a drug that counteracted the effects of an overdose in progress, in our patrol cars to use as needed. It was, apparently, more common to get a call reporting someone overdosing than it was to get a call about a break-in. Out here, where all ambulances were sent from Summersville, we were the closest thing to medical assistance anyone in immediate danger would have.

That was actually more frightening to me than the idea of getting into it with some addict trying to steal enough for their next fix. I had some extremely basic first aid training at the academy, but that was it. In New York City, the paramedics would show up to a distress call before us half the time, especially if there wasn’t any word of someone being armed or a crime in progress. Heart attacks were more common than shootings or stabbings by a large margin, and they needed to be dealt with quickly, to keep the person alive.

Orville said they went out to Summersville once a month or so for additional first aid training and kept a much wider supply of support equipment in their patrol cars than city police would, including things like a defibrillator and the Narcan. Sarah or the neighboring dispatcher would send out an ambulance from one of the larger neighboring communities as soon as we were called, but it could take thirty minutes to an hour for them to arrive, depending on where they were.

To say I was not thrilled about being a combination solo police force and paramedic during the times I was covering calls was an understatement.

I was glad that I’d done the ride along though, since it did make me feel more comfortable about the shifts I’d be covering. Orville had decided to keep with the twelve-hour shifts, but instead of both of them working every day, the three of us would rotate, which meant most of the time there’d be a full twenty-four hours between shifts for each of us. We were all expected to keep a phone or radio on us at all times so we could be called in for emergencies, and we were to call Orville and let him know about any actual arrests beyond vagrancy, which generally wasn’t prosecuted here, or drunkenness.

Thankfully, for him at least, run-ins didn’t happen every day, so he wasn’t going to be hammered with calls. It still highlighted how all-consuming life as the sheriff could be and confirmed to me that I never wanted that job.

Monday I was on my first solo shift, starting at seven at night and going until seven the next morning. Although Orville had admitted to leaning back and taking a nap in his cruiser or at his desk in the police station when he worked overnights, it didn’t feel right sleeping through my shift on my first night. Sunday, I went to bed super early in the afternoon, not even going by to see Rosita so I could get up early in the morning to push my sleep schedule back, and then I took a long nap until I was supposed to relieve Al, who’d had the day shift.

I still hadn’t gotten to know Al very well, but we had a short talk at the sheriff’s office before he headed home, and he seemed like a genuinely good guy. He’d served a brief stint in the Marines before deciding it wasn’t for him and taking an honorable discharge. His mom had been from Buxton, although she was about five years younger than my mother, and met his father when she’d been at college. His father had died in a car accident when he was in the Marines and I guess his mom wanted some sense of familiarity after her husband’s death, because she moved back here.

Not really knowing what to do, Al moved here with her and got to know Orville, who offered him a job on the basis of his military service. I kind of had the impression that Orville was always desperate for help and offered anyone new to town who was halfway competent and not a complete lowlife a job on the force. Orville had been nice enough to send Al to a three-week training course given by the state police for new deputies and local police departments in smaller communities without the ability to run their own program.

From his explanation, it didn’t sound like much more than a firearms course, a course on how to detain suspects, and some classes covering basic laws and police powers. It was better than nothing, but I hoped, since I had finished the full six-month academy program in New York City and two years of probationary training, in addition to being a police officer in my own right for a while, Orville wouldn’t treat me any differently than Al.

He’d had two years working here in Buxton and the rest of the county, so he actually knew the area and the problems they had around here better than I did, so in my mind, he was still the senior officer on our tiny force.

For now, he was very happy to have me around. It was, apparently, hard for a single guy to manage dates when he worked seven days a week in twelve-hour chunks. Now he’d have every other day off and we could manage to run the on-twelve, off-twelve schedule with two of us if one of the three of us wanted to go on vacation or something.

I didn’t want to let the goodwill go to waste. After chatting with him for a bit, getting to know him, and getting a summary of what had happened during the day, Al headed home and I was on my own for my first shift as a police officer again.

Although Al had just done a sweep, I decided I should start off strong. I made a sweep of both Buxton and the rest of the county, which took about three hours. It was Monday night and in a rural community, so other than a few trucks on the county road and people heading home from work, it was quiet.

After that, I made it back to Rosita’s just as she was closing up. Like most places around here, it didn’t make sense for her to stay open late, since she’d only have one or two customers after nine. When I’d stay to help clean and get the place ready to shut down, we’d managed it in half an hour but for one person, even someone who knew the place inside and out like Rosita did, it took a good hour to close up.

I almost didn’t make it, though. She was just locking the door as I pulled into the parking lot, illuminating her in the doorway.

“I almost missed you,” I said, hopping out of the SUV.

“Yep,” she said, not sounding enthused.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just a long day,” she said, sounding completely unconvincing.

Looking through the window into the shop, everything looked okay, but there was something wrong that I couldn’t put my finger on.

“I’m not buying it. What happened?”

“Just some rude people came by. One of them broke the frame that held Tommy’s medals and stuff.”

As soon as she pointed it out, it was obvious that the large display box she’d had on the wall as a tribute to her brother was missing.

“What!? Did they take anything from it?”

“No. I put everything in my car already so I can take it home and see about getting a new frame. Although I might leave it at home, because one of the pieces of glass cut off the edge of his picture. I don’t want it to get damaged.”

“Who was it?”

“Nobody, don’t worry about it.”

“No, I need you to tell me. Besides trying to keep you safe, this is literally my job now. If people are going around breaking property, I need to do something about it.”

“It was Ethan Farmer and a few of the guys he hangs out with. They sometimes come by and hassle me, but I know the type. If they start getting visits from my boyfriend, they’ll just get worse. No permanent damage was done. Let’s just let it be.”

“You’re thinking about not putting your brother’s stuff back up on the wall. That’s permanent. I loved that you had a tribute to him for everyone to see, so not just you, but the whole town would remember him. It would be a shame if that went away.”

“Okay, I’ll put it back up, but don’t make it worse by tracking down Ethan. If you really want to, tell Orville or Al about it, but you shouldn’t be the one to deal with it. And I don’t want anything official. I’m not signing a complaint or anything. If we just leave it alone, this’ll blow over.”

“I know Ethan pretty well, or I did a long time ago. I can guarantee he won’t let this blow over. He’s mean and petty. If he thinks he can push you around and get away with it, he’ll keep doing it as long as he can.”

“Just leave it alone. Please?” she asked.

I gave a sigh and said, “Okay, fine. But I’m not going to drop it if he causes more trouble. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, and then did that thing where she pushed away something bothering her, acting like nothing was wrong. “So, how’s the first night going?”

“Quiet. I talked to Al for a while, and I’ve patrolled the entire county once through. It’s why I’m so late coming by.”

“I’m surprised you even made it. You were so jumpy all day yesterday because you were excited to get started.”

“I don’t know if excited is the right word, but yeah. I still have a lot of the night left, but I didn’t want to miss seeing you before you went home.”

“Do you want to come home with me? I could get you something to eat?”

“No, at least not tonight. I know Orville said as long as we do a few patrols and keep the radio on, we’re okay, but it still feels weird to be doing personal stuff on duty. I’ll probably calm down about that in a few days, but not tonight.”

“I get it. If you get really bored, you can call me.”

“You know there’s no way I’m going to call and wake you up just because I’m bored.”

“Fine, then how about a kiss before you go back to protecting and serving.”

“That I can do,” I said, leaning over and kissing her.

I got back in my car and watched her drive out of the parking lot. I was annoyed that she didn’t want me to go deal with Ethan, but since I’d promised I’d leave it alone, I couldn’t go push his head in like I wanted to. I’d say I couldn’t believe he was being such an asshole, except that would be a lie. I could completely believe he was being an asshole. It was who he’d always been. My biggest problem was that, for a time, I’d been enough of an asshole for us to be friends.

Still, I knew Rosita well enough to know she wouldn’t be happy if I suddenly went back on my promise, so I tried to not think about Ethan, since the last thing I wanted was to spend the rest of my shift being pissed.

I was just driving past the little grocery store, my brain still fuming about Ethan despite my active attempts to push it away, when something grabbed my attention. For a second, I wasn’t sure what it was, until I saw it again. The grocery store had a parking lot in the front and a strip of pavement running around either side of the building for trucks to pull in, offload and pull out without turning around. Behind the store, there was a small fence that backed onto a thinly wooded area between the grocery store and the next building.

What had grabbed my attention was a light shining on those trees and then whipping away, only to come back a few seconds later, kind of like if you were walking with a flashlight and swinging your arm, or maybe had it tucked under your arm and it was swinging around erratically.

I stopped and backed up, since the road was empty, and pulled into the parking lot, driving around the side of the store. As I cleared the side of the building, I saw a person, who looked like a male, but it was impossible to be sure because of the dark clothing and no light, dashing away from the back of the store. Next to the store was a flashlight that they’d dropped on the ground in their escape, which was also probably what I’d seen when I was driving by.

I could see them heading towards the fence and the wooded area in the back, where my car couldn’t go, so I threw it in park and jumped out, taking off after them.

I hadn’t done any running since I got cleared to lose the cane, and it felt weird. There was a small twinge in my lower leg, but I ignored it as I vaulted over the fence. This job hadn’t been my first choice, but I was going to be damned if I let someone outrun me on my first night.

Luckily, at least for me, this guy was so busy looking over his shoulder at me that he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. There was only a small light by the back door of the store that didn’t even get close to shining through the tree line. It wasn’t thickly wooded and was probably only fifty or seventy feet until it broke open into someone’s backyard, but there were still roots and branches all over the ground, and as he looked back at me, his foot caught an exposed root, sending him smashing headfirst into the dirt. He tried to scramble back up, but I was on him, grabbing the back of his hoodie and pulling hard, sending him smashing into the ground.

“Don’t move,” I said, putting my foot hard on his chest.

I had my hand on the Taser I’d been issued, since I hadn’t seen any sign of a weapon, when it froze in place. I was close enough to see his face as he blinked against my flashlight, and realized it was just a kid. He was older than the kid in New York City, probably thirteen or so, but that didn’t stop me from reliving the entire shooting. I could feel my pulse quicken and for a moment thought I might lose it in some kind of panic attack, but managed to get a hold of myself, just barely.

Had he wanted to, the kid could have probably pushed me off and made a run for it, and I would have been in no state to follow him, at least for long enough that he’d almost surely have gotten away. Thankfully, he put his hands above his head in an ‘I surrender’ gesture and froze, looking wide-eyed at the hand on my Taser.

I managed to snap out of my near panic attack and removed my hand from the Taser, reaching down to pull him off the ground. It wasn’t particularly hot out and I hadn’t run very far, but I was sweating profusely.

For now, I just ignored it and said, “Get up.”

Keeping a tight grip on his forearm, I hauled him out of the trees and over the fence, never letting go of him as I climbed over after him.

Getting to the back of the grocery store, I took him over to the SUV and patted him down quickly just to make sure he didn’t have anything he could dump in my backseat, and then put him in. Although an SUV, the back seat was set up like all the patrol cars I’d driven before, with a mesh wire divider separating the front and back seats and no handles on the inside of the doors.

Regs, in New York City at least, said I should have put him in handcuffs before putting him in the car, since there would be a moment of vulnerability when taking him out again, even if I patted him down. I was still shaken though and not thinking clearly, at least until after he was already in and there wasn’t much I could do about it. It didn’t make sense to pull him out to cuff him, since it’d be the same problem now as later.

Instead, I walked over to the wall and reached down to pick up his flashlight and see what he was up to. I’d expected a crowbar or something to break into the back of the place, but instead, I found a can of spray paint. Orville had mentioned during the ride-along that someone had been tagging a few of the buildings with juvenile and obscene messages. He’d assumed it was a kid with too much time on his hands, and clearly, he’d been right.

I went back to the car and got in the front seat, swinging the arm that held the laptop connected to the sheriff’s office through a cell phone, back towards me. The sheriff hadn’t had anything like this the times I’d been in a cop car as a kid, but that had been a decade ago, and things changed. The system was one of the handful sold to police departments around the country. It wasn’t exactly like the ones we’d had in New York City, but it was close enough I hadn’t had much trouble figuring out how to work it.

“What’s your name?” I asked the kid in the back seat, who’d transitioned from terrified to sullen, arms crossed, trying to show how mad he was.

When the kid didn’t reply I said, “If you don’t want to answer, that’s fine. We can go down to the station; I can fingerprint you, and book you in for failure to identify along with resisting arrest. The more charges the DA has to put on you, the more time you’ll be in juvie.”

He mumbled something that sounded like a name, but I couldn’t make it out.

“If you want to keep from going to jail tonight, you’re going to have to speak up and say it clearly.”

“I said Alexander Bowman,” he said angrily.

“Where do you live?”

“22 Samson.”

Samson Lane was one of the smaller roads that veered off of main street, pretty close to where it turned and split off to go back out to the county road or up to the mine. It wasn’t that far from where I’d gotten my apartment.

I typed in his name and found no records, which wasn’t surprising. Even a hellraiser, out here, had to do a lot for someone like Orville to actually book him into the system and create a criminal record. Of course, this system was only for people booked into police custody in West Virginia. If it had been during the day, I could have radioed in and had Sarah do a search in the national criminal databases and other systems she had access to, but it was unlikely he would have been in there either.

Instead, I did a check on the address and found Nancy and Robert Bowman, presumably his parents. Neither had any kind of criminal records which, along with his response once I caught him, increased my suspicion that this was just a dumb kid doing dumb kid things. Had there been tools or any sign of him trying to break in, that might have been a different story, but with the situation as it was, I considered what Orville would do in my place.

I put his flashlight and spray can on the passenger seat and got all the way in the car, shutting the door behind me and putting it in gear.

“Are we going to the police station?” he asked, sounding scared.

“No, we’re going to go wake up your parents and tell them what you’ve been up to.”

“No,” he said instantly, sitting up closer to the mesh.

He sounded even more scared, if that was at all possible, with a wild look in his eyes. It was always possible he was being abused or something, and he was scared of how his parents would react when I brought him to them, but I didn’t think that was the case. He wasn’t bruised, was wearing decent clothes that looked fairly new, and didn’t have the harder edge that I’d seen on abused kids in New York City.

“Alexander, you have two choices. We go to your parents, or we go to jail. Which do you want to do?”

He slumped back down again.

“Fine,” he said, looking miserable.

I assumed that meant he wanted to be taken to his parents. Maybe it occurred to him that his parents were going to find out either way.

It only took a few minutes to drive to his house, where all the lights except the porch lights were off. I got out, grabbed the flashlight and spray can in one hand, and pulled Alexander out, keeping a tight grip on his arm as I marched him up to his front door.

“Ring the bell,” I told him, since my hands were currently full.

He pushed the button and somewhere inside a dog started barking. I heard someone yell for the dog to shut up, followed by a light snapping on. A few minutes later a man in boxers and a t-shirt came around the corner, hand just out of view. In West Virginia, I had to assume the item he was holding out of view was a gun of some kind, probably a shotgun. He might not have considered how unlikely it was that a burglar would have rung the doorbell, but I let go of the kid and put my hand on the butt of my pistol all the same.

I didn’t actually expect him to do anything, but I’d had enough training drilled into me over the years that my response had been almost automatic. Thankfully, as soon as he saw my uniform through the window, I saw him lean over, probably setting the gun down, before he stepped out all the way into the hall, unarmed. I removed my hand from my weapon, feeling the kid relax next to me. He’d frozen up when my hand had gone to my gun. I hadn’t really noticed, since I was watching the man closely for any sign of trouble, but that was another sign that the kid wasn’t some kind of hard-core offender.

As the man, probably Robert Bowman, came down the hall, a woman in a housecoat came around the corner, following close on his heels.

“Deputy?” Mr. Bowman said as he opened the door, his eyes bouncing from me to his son and back again. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m afraid not. Are you Alexander’s parents?”

“Yes,” the man said.

“Alex, why were you outside the …” the mother started to ask before being shushed by her husband.

“I found Alexander behind the grocery store with a can of spray paint, apparently vandalizing it. When I pulled up to see what he was doing, he took off into the trees behind the building trying to get away. He fell down and he might have scraped himself up a little, but he should be okay.”

“He did what?” the mother said, sounding equally angry and surprised.

“I should let you know that we’ve had a rash of vandalism around town the last couple of weeks. Someone’s been spray painting obscene messages on buildings. From the half-finished artwork I saw Alexander working on, I can only assume this has been his handiwork.”

The father looked furious at the kid, but didn’t make a move to grab him or hit him, which was a good sign. The kid was in for an all-mighty ass whooping, but I didn’t see anything that indicated he was going to be actually harmed by his parents.

“Do you need to … is he going to be arrested?” the father asked, keeping his cool.

“Not right now. I’ll talk to Orville about this in the morning and there might be some reparations for damaged property and some work by Alexander here to clean up his mess, but I couldn’t find any record of him being in serious trouble before. It’s up to Orville if we actually file charges against him, but I’ll recommend that we leave it as a warning for now, as long as we don’t have any more instances of this and he takes care of everything Orville asks him to do to clean these places up. I do think you folks should have a long talk with Alexander about making good decisions in the future.”

“We certainly will, Deputy,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand. “We’d heard Orville was bringing you on as a new deputy. I’m glad to find you are so reasonable.”

“Well, I might be less reasonable next time I have to chase Alexander through a bunch of trees,” I said, looking down at the kid.

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” the mother said.

“Okay. I’m guessing you folks have a long night ahead of you, so I’ll let you deal with it from here. You’ll probably be hearing from Orville in the next day or two.”

“Sure. Thanks again.”

I gave a brief nod and handed the flashlight and spray paint to the father as the mother grabbed the kid by the arm and led him into the house.

I made a bunch of notes for Orville, even though he was relieving me in the morning, and I’d be able to talk to him about it directly. We hadn’t discussed this kind of thing before, and everything I’d done would have been wildly outside the regs in New York City, but this felt like the right outcome for Buxton.