Gimme watcha got!

It's two thirty in the morning...there are three marked cars around the trailer, four patrolmen and a patrol Sergeant.


My unmarked is in the driveway of the trailer, sitting in the passenger seat is a fifteen year old black kid who I believe has just robbed at gunpoint a gas station up the road. Right now I'm just chit chatting with him, trying to get a feel for who he is and how I can angle in and build some rapport. He keeps looking at me, finally he says You look familiar, I know you." He looks vaguely familiar to me too but after a while all the faces sort of run together. I ask him where he used to live and he gives me an address that immediately sets a two year old memory ablaze.


June 2005...I''m standing in the driveway of a rickety brick house in a terrible neighborhood. There is a chain link fence surrounding the property. Up by the house in a plastic lawn chair sits a twenty something black guy who refuses to make eye contact and looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. Next to my patrol car is a cavalier with a broken windshield, on the hood of the car sits a large cinder block and broken glass. A sixteen year old overweight black girl is angrily yelling at me that her younger brother threw the concrete block through the windshield and that this was the third time this year he had done the same thing.

I talk to her thirteen year old brother who says "Yeah , I threw that brick through her window. I did it the other two times too."

"Why did you do that?" I ask.

"Cause she made me mad. She put my game in her car."

He goes on to tell me that he knows I can't do anything to him because he's a juvenile.

I ask him why he thinks that and he tells me that that's what the other cops told his grandma when they came out about him doing the same thing before.

I tell him that if his sister wants him charged I was going to charge him. He looked at me with disbelief. His sister told me that she wanted him charged.

The next day I call the sister to follow up and she has changed her mind. Grandma paid to have the windshield replaced and her brother "has been acting better." I close the case checking the refuse to cooperate box at the bottom of the investigative report. I hope she's right about him changing his ways.


The dim lights from my dashboard cast orange and green glows across our faces as I sit behind the steering wheel with my notepad and pen. We talk about the incident with the windshield for a few minutes and the last thing he says about it is that I've been the only officer to come close to charging him. He smiles through the whole conversation as if its a fond memory. I lean close to him as if we're sharing a secret and he mirrors my movement leaning close to me. "You know your grandma and sister saved your butt on that one. I was sitting in the juvenile justice parking lot getting ready to charge you when they changed my mind."

He just keeps smiling.

I notice he is very short and has a deep voice. Part of the description I got a few minutes ago of the hooded suspect from the clerks at the store that was robbed. I'd already watched the video and knew what clothes the suspect wore and what the gun looked like. I've already located and talked to a man the youngster tried to recruit to rob the store with him, I know the man refused and I know the boy then asked the man if he could borrow a gun to commit the robbery with.

I begin to question him about why he is outside so late on a school night and why is he so sweaty? Have you been jogging?

Outside the car the boy's now nineteen year old sister, whom he's been living with, is arguing with the patrol officers. I can't tell what they're saying but I'm sure it's a bunch of angry nothings trying to distract them from the task at hand. That's how this game is often played. Half assed attempts to divert attention from the investigation to some angry irrelevant bickering.

The boy tells me his sister is behind on the rent and they've been evicted. They have until tomorrow morning to be out. He says he's up and sweaty because he's been packing and carrying things to the dumpster.

Another witness has already told me that they had seen him throwing things in the trailer parks community dumpster and I've already searched it for the gun and clothing. I found neither.

"Do you or your sister have a gun in the house?" I ask him.

"No."

"So there is no gun in the house?"

"No." I suspect he's lying to me. Either that or he's thrown it in the woods while running away from the store after the robbery.

Finally I cut to the chase and flat out ask him if he had anything to do with the store up the road being robbed.

He denies having anything to do with it or even knowing it was robbed.

I ask him if he cares if we search his room. He thinks about it for a second and tells me that it would be o.k.. All I have to do now is convince the sister to let me search the trailer.

I thank the kid for his time and he goes back inside the trailer.

The sister has gotten inside her car hoping to leave the scene. I walk up to her drivers side window and talk to her before she can back out. I talk to her for nearly thirty minutes trying to convince her that she should let me search her trailer, but she refuses consent. I ask her why she won't let us search, suspecting there is probably dope in the house among other things, and she says "It's because her house is messy, and that, although I have been very nice to her, she didn't appreciate the way the other officers had talked to her." She tells me that if I want to come back in the morning she will let me search.

I tell her that that isn't a realistic possibility for me and that I am going to apply for a search warrant. She tells me that she is going to pick up her boyfriend, who I know and who is a real thug, and I tell her that is fine, knowing that when she gets back boyfriend will do something stupid and get himself locked up.

I make some calls and get the patrol sergeant and several deputies from his squad to post up around the residence to make sure no one goes in or out until I get back. Having never applied for a search warrant I call my Sergeant who is bleary eyed but meets me at the office. About an hour later we are back at the trailer search warrant in hand only to find that the sister has come back and picked up the suspect and they left "to go get something to eat" and hadn't come back. I suspect they are going to try and hide the boy at his grandmothers so I'm not too worried about it. I'm more concerned with the fact that they may have gone in and removed the evidence I'm looking for.

The front door is unlocked and we enter with the warrant announce our presence and our intention and begin to search. It doesn't take long before I find the gun and clothing worn by the suspect in the boys bedroom, along with a small amount of crack cocaine and some scales in another bedroom. I suspect the drugs belong to the sister's boyfriend. The sister comes back as we are finishing our search and gets into a brief argument with the patrol officers about the legalities of the search warrant. We finish up and let patrol clear the scene. we talk to the sister a bit and she tells us that she did take her brother to their grandmothers house. She calls him and asks if he will talk to us if we come over . He says he will. we pick the boy up and he agrees to ride with us to the office for an interview. After talking to him for about an hour he confesses to the whole thing. we then take him back home and drop him off. I go to Juvenile Justice and obtain a secure custody order on the boy and we go back to the house and arrest him.

The case comes up on the docket and I am sitting in the courtroom listening to other cases of juvenile banditry when the boys attorney waves a trial and pleas guilty. the boy had no remorse and acted as if committing the robbery was funny. The judge actually notices this and mentions it to the boy who just keeps smiling. She sets another court date for sentencing and says she is considering having him locked up rather than serving his time on juvenile probation, which he is already on. The states attorney leans over and in a whisper asks how long I think it will be before he violates his probation, and I just answer not long.

I sit ans listen to a few more cases involving unruly thirteen year olds, mostly boys, charged with everything from shoplifting to trying to strangle their mothers, and I observe how the system bends over backwards to give these wayward kids every chance. I watch as the judge orders half days at school rather than full days and gives the kids mentors and counselors. I counted four separate agencies represented in the courtroom, all there to offer services to these kids, who didn't bat an eye or seem to appreciate any of it.

I wondered as I sat there if we were actually helping any of these kids or rewarding bad behavior with attention and half school days instead of teaching accountability and assimilation into society.

The System

"Fuck that detective, I'll bash his head in!!"...The angry voice travels out of the computer, along the wire and to the headphones spilling the words into my ears with crystal stereo clarity. It's a sentiment I've heard him repeat several times while he's been locked up on the charges I made against him. I've been listening to and recording his calls for a while now.

He's looking at ten to fourteen years on one of my charges and another four on another, with three felonies I've yet to charge him with. He's a real P.O.S. A one man crime spree of sorts. He moved here in the middle of May and made my radar and was locked up on June 18 and has been in jail pre-trial ever since. I hope he hates this county. The more I investigate him The more felonies he accrues. I've even tied him into some felony crimes in a neighboring county. I gave them my information and copies of my video interviews and they have several felony warrants on him now too.

As I listen I wonder if he thinks he is fearsome. He doesn't instill much fear in me. He's a pathological liar and a bad one at that. I have listened to him blame his crimes on his mother, his brother, his girlfriend, he blames everyone but himself and has no sense of accountability for his actions.

He's in his early twenties, never had a job and has drawn a government check of over 800 dollars a month , which ultimately comes out of my pocket and yours. He spends that money on crack and when it's gone he just steals our stuff when we're not home for more crack money. He claims he is bi-polar and can't work but refuses to take any of his prescribed meds. I guess crack is better for bi-polar disorder.

I was thinking about that last Tuesday as I lay on a surgical table with a tube in my back sucking excess fluid from inside my skull so I can function normally and go to work to earn my living.

As the fluid drained through the tube and into a vial I thought about a woman I knew named Joyce. I met her at Denny's when I was on patrol. She was a waitress in her late sixties with two bad knees. She moved very slowly. She worked the midnight shift. She hobbled large trays of food to tables and refilled drinks infrequently. The other guys used to complain about how poor her service was.

She was always nice enough but had a pained look in her eyes. I hadn't been out of the hospital long then and I recognized the look from seeing patients in the waiting room of the oncology department during my follow up appointments. It was a look of pained, hopeful, despair.

I always tried to leave her little bit of a larger tip than I usually would.

Joyce eventually disappeared from Denny's and I ran into her one day a few months later and struck up a conversation. She had cancer in addition to bad knees and had gone to work at Denny's to pay for her treatments, until she just couldn't work any more and had to quit. I asked her if she had applied for disability. "Three times" she said. "They denied me every time I've applied."

I remembered back when I was blind and the doctors had decided I may not get any better, I had called SSI to find out about disability should I eventually need it. I was told that blindness didn't qualify as a disability since the blind can still obtain "meaningful employment." I never applied and hoped for the best. Drawing a check isn't for me anyway. I got lucky and my vision returned after six months, very slowly but it did come back after several treatments and several thousand dollars in medical bills, some of which I'm still paying for 6 years later.

I told Joyce she should get a lawyer and fight SSI that way. I left her thinking of all the shitbag criminal twenty somethings and 18 year olds' I'd arrested over the years who were "disabled" and had never had a job in their lives, but were healthy enough to rob people, stab people, kick in doors and carry out 32 inch televisions to support their crack habits.

As I walked to my car my face was red with anger and embarrassment. Embarrassment of a government and system that is so terribly screwed up and broken. A month or so later I ran into Joyce at the hospital where I was babysitting a "disabled" eighteen year old who was claiming he was "thinking about hurting himself or someone else." (the exact words he used. I wonder if he picked that phrase up from his mental health worker.

She saw me standing in the hallway and smiled . "How are you Joyce?" I asked. She looked sallow but her smile counteracted the effect the cancer was taking on her body. "Good" she answered. "I found a lawyer who took my case for free and when he applied on my behalf they didn't even dispute it, they just approved me. I'm getting my treatments again. Maybe if I'm lucky it's not to late to send my cancer into remission."

"I sure do hope so." She talked to me a bit about her grandchildren, whom she had been raising since they were born.

I watched her hobble down the hall on the wreckage of her knees and she struck me as somewhat heroic. 18 year old disabled boy looks at me in the hall and says "I'm fuckin' hungry get me something to eat cop." I shoot him a glance and quietly tell him to shut his fucking mouth.

I don't know how things turned out for Joyce, I never saw her again after that night in the hospital. I tell myself that she beat her cancer and is somewhere pushing her grand babies on a swing in the summer sun, but deep down in my heart I know from her appearance that her prognosis was likely very grim.

I like the lie I tell myself better though.

As for my "head bashing" jailbird I'll say this, Real fear in life doesn't come from fists or threats. Real fear comes from not knowing how you're going to pay your bills every month, or working your ass off to spend three hundred bucks a month on doctors so you can work your ass off. Real fear is being blindsided by some illness, and real bravery comes in the form of people like Joyce, who are living their lives, marching forward with no promise of tomorrow.

As I lay there on the table last Tuesday, with a small tube draining excess fluid from inside my skull so I can continue to function and work, I thought of all the 800 and something dollar checks the government would take from my pocket, your pocket, and give to my little jailbird while he sits in prison for the next twenty years. His mailbox will be full of checks when he gets out, he'll have a better retirement than me.

As the doctor finishes and pulls the tube out so I can go back to work one sentence runs through my mind and, ironically, it's probably the same sentence that my shitbag jailbird has been thinking ever since I locked him up...

"Fuck the system."

Two Weeks

In the past two weeks...I've assisted in a murder investigation, a bank robbery and the was the primary investigator on a Felony child abuse case. Mom and her boyfriend decided it would be a good idea to drink a case of beer, eat ten xanax each and top it off by smoking some crack. All while they were watching not only her daughter but three other small children. When they got good and high they began to fight which woke up the 16 month old daughter. Upon hearing the screaming and seeing her mother and her mothers boyfriend punching each other to the floor, the little girl became frightened and ran crying to her mother to be consoled. Mom and boyfriend couldn't take the crying so mom started smacking the girl in the head and mouth, when that led to further crying they gave the little girl at least one xanax and the baby is found on the floor, face down, blue and not breathing, a few minutes later by her father who has come to pick her up after visiting a relative in the hospital.

Mom and boyfriend are laying on the floor too high to even realize he is taking the baby and heading back to the hospital with her.

Mom didn't even cry until she found out how high the bond she earned was. I've charged boyfriend with a few things to and there are more charges on him the more I investigate him. The newest charge I'm going to hit him with is failure to register as a sex offender, It's interesting what you can learn about someone once they make it onto your radar. He made bail on my other charges and is in the wind right now. Nest time his bond will likely be too high to get out.

It's midnight one week ago as I look at her tiny body laying limp on the hospital bed. Tiny blood crusted mouth covered by a tiny plastic oxygen mask. It seems almost perverse and terribly wrong to see a child like that. I look at her and I wonder if, eighteen years from now I'll be arresting her for something similar. Will she sit in the back of my car on the way to be booked and tell me a story about how her mother almost killed her when she was a baby?

This is the metal sky we all live under. Where people are shit and babies are comatose, limp and unaturally blue, lying face down on a dirty hardwood floor covered with used needles and crack pipes.

I want to run from here screaming.

But I don't.

Maybe someday.

Obviously

Hmmmmmmmmm.....

Just a bird

I'm sitting under a small canopy...on a bench behind my building. I work the second floor, above the comm center and below the court rooms and jail. There's a tall fence a few feet away to keep people from hap-hazardly falling to their doom into the parking lot below. This is our designated smoking area and due to a lack of smokers I usually have this space to myself.

This is where I come to formulate my plans of action during investigations. Trying to decide who to talk to first, who to arrest first and when to arrest them. I attempt to find the best course of action to make the dominoes fall in my favor. It's sort of like playing a chess game in your head.

The sun is shining and it's a comfortable 75 degrees. A slight breeze blows across my face as I light my cigarette. In the distance I can hear the faint but distinctive sound of an ambulance racing through the city to some medical emergency or another. A sparrow flies in from somewhere and lands atop the fence. I watch as its head angles one way and then the other with a strange sort of bio mechanical precision, surveying the area to decide how safe it is from moment to moment. It raises then lowers its tail to maintain its balance.

I watch the bird and wonder what its purpose is. What is its reason for existence? Its head continues to move as its small black eyes constantly surveille. Is its sole existance the sole purpose for being survival?

I used to equate birds with flight and freedom. Seeing them used to make me want to shed my suit for more comfortable clothing, step out of the grinding machinery of my life, get into my truck and just drive to see where I might end up. As I watch the sparrow today it seems somewhat oppressive. What good is a life spent simply for survival? Constantly eyeing the area for dangers. Assessing everything around you. Existing in constant fear of being devoured. Simply existing to eat and fly. Never feeling any emotion, unable to appreciate your surroundings even for a moment. Living without the realization that you are a separate and unique creature form everything else. Blind to the fact that there are other ways to live. Never wondering what it would be like to be anything but a sparrow.

There again, perhaps the sparrow is freer than I imagine it to be. The sparrow isn't tortured with fear of illness or debt. It doesn't worry about disappointment in itself and in others. It's free to exist and be a bird. To eat and take flight. The sparrows only pressure is to survive.

The sparrow isn't concerned with being a dove or a robin and doesn't have the capacity to distinguish between the two. The sparrow doesn't feel hatred inwardly or outwardly. The sparrow doesn't have to worry about the details or think about tomorrow. He exists only in the current moment. His is a life free of complications or dilemma.

I stand up to put my snubbed cigarette into the ash can. The sparrow, fearing I may try to eat him, takes flight and is out of sight in an instant.

To him I'm already forgotten.

Make her happy

I was attending in-service training...all week last week. I think that only 24 hours of training is whats required by the state to maintain my certification, but we do it up right and that means over 40 hours of training.
I like training but my mind kept reverting to "My god, how many cases are piling up on my desk with leads going dry and stolen property getting further out of my reach?" I'm finding that although I enjoy the hunt and arrest, what I really like is recovering stolen property and getting confessions.

Fast forward one week. I'm sitting in my office arranging my cases, both old and new. I closed one last week it was a break-in and by the end of my interrogation I've got the suspect on video laughing and practically bragging about committing the crime. It was like he had completely forgotten he was confessing to a cop and was, instead, talking to his drinking buddy.

Anyway, I'm sifting through case files deciding which ones are most serious and which ones are most solvable. It's a host of stolen guns, cars, tools, extension cords, copper wire, four wheelers, you name it. Only two victims had any serial numbers to their missing property. I need to call the victims and let them know why their cases have been stagnant for a week before they start complaining to my bosses that I must be the laziest cop in the world, and wondering why nothings been done about their cases.

The Chief appears in my doorway with a sticky note. One of my victims must have called already. "Do you have Mrs. such and suches case?" he asks.

"Yes sir, I just finished reading that case file as a matter of fact." I say.

He holds the sticky note out looking somewhat grim. I can never tell what he thinks of me. I can't decide if he doesn't like me or if he's afraid that I'm about to snap and bite off one or more of his fingers. He's just one of the few people I just can't read at all and it makes me a bit nervous. His body language is conflicting itself.

"She called and wants to know what's going on with her case. She didn't seem happy. Call her and see if you can make her happy."

I take the sticky note and he leaves. It's a stolen 4-wheeler case. No VIN or description is listed on the vehicle, just a brand and motor size. I call her and she seems friendly enough as I explain that I have been in training for the past week. She tells me that her neighbor saw a vehicle leaving her house on the day the atv was stolen and that someone else tole her that the 4-wheeler has ended up at a crack house. I know which crack house she's talking about as she tries to describe where she thinks it might be, her directions suck but I know the neighborhood. If its gone there it didn't stay there long and the chances for recovery are slim to none. That dealer never keeps large items for more than a few hours, and over a week had passed since it was stolen.

I dig around a little bit and find out that a truck matching the suspect vehicle was stopped a few nights ago for not having insurance and that the truck had been towed to an unknown address on a certain road. I go to the road and drive looking at the houses until I see the truck in a driveway, and luckily its owner standing next to it. as I pull into the driveway I see a 4-wheeler next to the mobile home, it is the same make and engine size as the stolen one.

I get out while the guy tries to figure out if he's going to run or not, he decides not to. I introduce myself and ask "You know why I'm here?"

He looks at the four wheeler and shakes his head yes. He tells me a bunch of lies about buying it off sojme guy that rents a camper in his yard, yeah he let the guy borrow his truck and yeah when the guy came back the atv was in his truck but then he sold it ot me. I listen to his lies and have him write me a statement outlining everything he tells me so I can hang him with the lies later. He helps me load the atv on the sheriffs office pickup and I notice the VIN on the 4-wheeler has been scratched off by someone.

Four hours after I first talked to the victim I'm giving her 4-wheeler back to her. She asks if I've arrested the guy that stole it. I tell her I'm still working out the details but I hope to have charges filed by weeks end.

As I leave I hope I've made her happy. Or perhaps her next call to the chief will be to demand an explanation to why I found her 4-wheeler and haven't made an arrest yet.

Random Realizations

1) My son is growing up. I forget how much he has changed over the years until I look at old pictures of him.

2) In life there are some people who won't like you no matter what you do.

3) Sometimes even though you do all you can it still doesn't feel like it's enough.

4) The unit I was stationed with in the Marines is now fully manned with people I don't know. They have had a 100 percent turn over in personell since I was stationed there.

5) My brother is a Meth addict serving a ten year prison sentence. I still remember catching crawdads in the creek near our house when we were kids. It doesn't seem that long ago.

6) Every woman's ear I've ever whispered "I love you" into has since had the same sentiment whispered into it by a different voice.

7) Someone else is catching crawdads in a creek with their little brother right now. Blissfully unaware of their future.

8) Someone else lives in the first apartment I ever rented. I wonder if they enjoy it as much as I did.

9) I am now older than both my parents were when I was born.

10) Of all the cigarettes I've ever smoked I can pinpoint the one that addicted me. It was a marlboro red smoked in the airport in San Diego thirteen years ago.

11) The fact that thirteen years have come and gone since I sat in that airport amazes me. I still remember what I was wearing that day. Blue jeans, a pair of red and white nike tennis shoes, and a red and white striped long sleeve pullover with three buttons at the neck and a white collar.

12) I can't remember what I had for lunch two days ago.

13) Not everyone that does bad things is evil and not everyone that does good things is a saint.

14) I haven't gone to church since my wife and I divorced five years ago. Sometimes I miss it. Mostly I don't.

15) All my neighbors are retired. Seeing them makes me feel young. Watching them tirelessly maintain their yards while I watch the birds makes me feel old and lazy.

16) I have more in common with people that I dislike than I'd care to admit.

17) We live in a society of instantaneous self gratification and have access to nearly anything we want at a moments whim. On demand television, microwave ovens, pre-cooked and fast food. The internet, credit cards. No one is patient or willing to delay gratification any more.

18) I can remember as a kid living in missouri for two years in a house with no indoor plumbing and having to bring water inside from a spicket in the yard. I wonder how many people my age can say that?

) People are free to make any decision they want, good or bad, even if they could only get by with it once. Sometimes I wonder how many people realize that.

20) Everyone you meet judges you. You judge everyone you meet.

21) NPR is informational and entertaining.

22) There are still more people in the world that give a damn than there are people who don't.

23) kindness and tolerance are are better than political correctness. Being politically correct is destroying our society.

24) In the end the love of money is the root of all evil.

25) I like wearing a suit to work more than I thought I would.

26) Zealots are dangerous.

27) Jehova's witnesses mean you no harm. Neither do mormons.

28) though not a fan of Rodney King and having witnessed the aftermath of the riots in L.A. while I was in California "Can't we all just get along?!?" is one of the greatest quotes to come out of a persons mouth.

29) There is a psycho that lives half a mile away from me and the second time in the same day that I arrested him he asked "what I'd do if he came to my house one night after he got out of jail?" I calmly told him I would kill him the minute I saw him. He is the only person I've ever told I would kill.

30) Nothing is unconditional.

31) As I listen to other cops talk about how rude or confrontational they were to someone I realize that there are bullies among the ranks.

32) I've been rude to people when I shouldn't have been.

33) There are people in the world that I would die for and that would die for me.

34) Someday I'll be old and weak and I think that nothing i do now will have made any difference at all.

35) There are a lot of people in the world who are only interested in you when they want something from you.

36) Since the advent of video games and home movies children playing outside are scarce. Sometimes when I work I drive through the poor crack hoods just so I can see kids playing outside and here them laughing and yelling in the distance as I pass with my windows rolled down.

37) My son doesn't play outside as much as he should.

38) Teenagers aren't disrespectful...mostly. They're just different than from everyone else.

39) It won't be long until my son is a teenager.

40) It sucks to be blind.

41) You can never really know anybody. Nobody can ever really know you.

42) I haven't maintained contact with anyone I grew up with and I miss them.

43) i wonder how good it would feel to be miles from anyone else and just scream until I was out of breath. I guess this isn't a realization but I bet it would be great.

44) I was jokingly called a hippie three times last month.

45) Maybe it's time for a haircut.

46) Bi-Polar disorder is widely over diagnosed. Especially among those who are disabled and live in trailer parks.

47) # 46 wasn't very politically correct.

48) If no one ever died we'd have to start killing people. How would we decide who dies?

49) My son believes that animals have souls. When his hamster died we tied carrots to a balloon and let them float away so they could get to the hamster in heaven.

50) Someone is wondering why there is a balloon with carrots tied to it in their front yard.

Onward and Upward

The Chief called me into his office about a week ago. What have I done? I thought.
Nothing more than I good job I guess. He informed me that out of a pool of candidates I was chosen to go to the criminal investigations division. I am trying to have a positive attitude about it. I always thought I would like to be a detective, although I have never applied for the position before. It comes with, what is for our agency, a pretty good raise. Better hours, holidays off. No more handcuff pouch digging into my back for twelve hours. I think I will enjoy the work if it doesn't bore me to death. I checked out my office the other day. It's a tiny little office that I don't intend to spend much time in. I'm not a big one for being stuck inside all day.
I will have to buy an entire wardrobe as I have virtually no dress clothes suitable for the postion. I spoke with the detective sergeant the other day. He seems to be a sharp guy who knows what's going on. I know the Lt. over the division and he is a very sharp guy with a lot of investigative experience.

My friend Mark ahs been a detective for about three years now. I remember when we were on patrol together. Neither one of us particularly ever wanted to come out of patrol, but when his baby was born he applied for and got the job. The hours and pay were just too good to pass up I suppose. He has earned a good reputation back there. He has been pestering me, as have all the other detectives, for the past three years to come to C.I.D.

Among other things I will have to rearrange my schedule with my son, but after a while it will balance out and feel normal. I doubt I will have anything exciting to blog about other than the paper shuffle I will be engaged in. It will be a good career move if I ever decide to promote again.

It's funny. You never know what life will hand you from one minute to the next.

The company we keep

Have you ever seen that movie?...
You know the one. The possession of Emily Rose. That's who's sitting in front of me on the hospital bed. Her dark hair is a snarled tangle of dirty brown. She looks like a skeleton. She looks broken, but her eyes are alive with a wild crack induced fire. She's high and can hardly sit still. Her arms wave in strange contortions as she tells me about the gunshot wound to her wrist.

Her first name is Deanna and she has at least four different last names that I know of. In another life she wanted to be a cop. She even attended the Law Enforcement academy. The same facility I graduated from.

She was married and has two children that someone else has raised. Now the only thing she cares about is crack.

As I look at her I am convinced she would smoke a two hundred pound rock if she could stuff it into a crack pipe. I've never in all the years I've dealt with her seen her anything but high.

I talk to her a bit about her life before asking her how she was shot. I've already looked at the wound. It's superficial. Just grazed her wrist and it's already stopped bleeding. She's very lucky.

We talk about her kids and her ex-husband. Her kids are doing well she tells me. I don't know how she would know that. She says her daughter is studying to be a nurse and will maybe go on to be a doctor.

I tell Deanna I saw her mom a few days ago.

"My mom?"

"Yep, she was drunk but she talked about you. She worries about you."

"She's always drunk." Deanna says, while her arms flail around excessively in strange archs and swoons.

The doctor peaks into the room and Deanna asks for a xanax to "calm her nerves." I cynically wonder if she didn't hurt her wrist herself so she could come to the emergency room and get some pain meds.

In my experience dealing with crack heads, Xanax and crack seem to go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

"You got crack in my xanax, you got xanax in my crack" I think to myself in a dark humorous sort of way. Dark humor seems to take the edge out of dealing with the human condition day in and day out. You just have to be careful with it. Not everyone understands it.

I finally ask her how she got shot. She tells me that a bunch of guys were at the house drinking and began to argue. She said several of the guys started shooting at each other and a bullet grazed her wrist as she dove to the ground....No she didn't know who any of the guys doing the shooting were, and really she's fine.

I ask her if she isn't getting tired of her life. She says she is. I don't talk to her about changing her life as I know a pep talk about a better, crack free, life will do her no good.

she simply says she wants off crack, and we leave it at that.

"Where is Louis?" she asks me. I tell her I don't know.

Louis is her boyfriend. Louis doesn't use crack. She says she and Louis have been fighting a lot lately about her drug addiction.

Louis wants her off crack. Louis wants her in rehab. Louis loves her.

Ironically Louis is the biggest dealer of Crack cocaine in the area. He is so big in fact people often come from out of state and the surrounding counties to buy from him.

Louis is big time and knows how to play the game.

Louis is respectful to law enforcement.

Louis is one of the smartest men in his chosen profession that I have met thus far.

I've had long conversations with Louis late at night while he sat in his cell block the last time he was locked up.

Louis didn't rat anyone out last time he got caught.

Louis did his time quietly, serving his sentence and never complaining about anything.

Louis knows what the game is about.

Louis is a millionaire and to look at him you would never know it.

The feds never found his money. Neither did we.

Louis is a smart man.

One time several years ago, a crack head came to the house Louis dealt out of with no money. Just a bad crack habit and a shotgun. He put the gun against Louis' chest and demanded cocaine and money...

...Louis promptly took the man's shotgun away from him and beat him into the hospital with it. To my knowledge no one has tried to rob Louis again.

I try to be the best cop that I can be and Louis tries to be the best drug dealer he can be. I have a sort of morbid respect for that.

Louis comes into the room. Louis smiles at me. "Hey how are you man?" he asks. He looks at me as if I'm an old friend. I guess in a weird sort of way we are. A sort of way where what we do is nothing personal. It's just what we do.

It's just part of the game.

We shake hands and chat for a moment. He's worried about Deanna and is relieved when I tell him she's fine.

She's discharged, still high and wild. We all shake hands again and say our goodbyes, knowing next time we meet we might all be trying to kill each other. We stand there. Deanna. Louis. Me.

She thanks me for talking to her like a real person. No one's done that in a very long time she says. Especially a cop.

We all leave.

As I drive my squad car out of the parking lot I begin to think of how bizarre the encounter was, or must have seemed to an outsider.

Deanna...High on crack.

Louis...A well known drug dealer.

Me...A cop.

Just talking in a civil manner about anything but our differences.

All of us knowing it's just part of the game.

Off in the distance

Two A.M. I got off work two hours ago...
I sit on the porch, smoking a cigarette and this is one of those rare times I'm drinking a beer.

As I smoke my Marlboro and drink my drink I wonder how I have gotten to this particular moment in my life.

As I smoke my smoke and drink my drink wondering how I've gotten to this point in my life, somewhere off in the distance, a lonely dog barks a deep lonely song.

And while the dog, alone n the cold, barks his song I wonder what else my life could be and who else I could have been under a different set of circumstances.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink listening to the lonely song of the dog while wondering how I got where I am and became who I am and who I could have been it occurs to me that I might have, with a tweak in upbringing, been a drunk or a drug addict.

I could be beating a wife, who in her twisted sensibilities, needs the beatings.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink listening to the lonesome barking dog, realizing that I could be a wife beating drunk I think that, perhaps, if that was my life then my son would probably be watching.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink, off in the distance a second dog begins barking with the first and as I think of how, in another circumstance, I could be teaching my son how to drink and angrily beat a woman, there is a high probability that I wouldn't take any accountability, or perceive this cycle at all and to me, my perception would be that I was the victim. That everything in my life had made me this way, a victim every day of my life, and that everyone I lashed out at in some way was to blame for my abuse of them.

And as I smoke my smoke and drink my drink and think about who I might have been and the life I could be living, with a small tweak in my upbringing, a third dog joins the barking night time song and it no longer sounds very lonely. I realize that my life doesn't seem so askew.

I'll go to bed, wake up in the morning and face the same problems I went to bed with. I'll be thankful that my upbringing gives me the strength and fortitude to do so.

Twenty random facts

Twenty random facts about me...


1) My biggest regret in life is having been a boy scout for years and never applying myself to earn the rank of eagle scout.

2) I deathly detest maggots. They make me gag nearly every time I see them.

3) I am an insomniac. I often live on only three hours of sleep a night.

4) I want to ride my bicycle a hundred miles in a day without stopping.

5) I like to sit on my porch late at night and watch cars go by.

6) If I could be anything other than a cop I would get into graphic design.

7) I've never in my life been on a real vacation or left the country.

8) I used to regret having never been in combat when I was in the Marine Corps.

9) I'm now thankful that I never had to go to combat.

10) I believe that most (but not all) people who report being of crime against their person are full of Bologna and most true victims never report being victimized.

11) I have a recurring dream that I am sitting in a white room at a steel table and across from me sits someone (varies who from dream to dream) that I find elicits, in real life, very strong emotions of hatred and disdain. In the dream I feel only content and we sit across from each other talking about our lives and, for that moment we are just two people talking like friends.

12) For years I dated women who reminded me of my first girlfriend. I enventually realized what I was doing and stopped.

13) I married my wife in large part, and against my better judgment because it would have felt to me like a failure to not marry her.

14) One of the most rewarding things I've ever done is carve a jack-o-lantern at my son's school with a little girl who's father didn't show up to do so even though he had assured the school on two previous occasions that he would. When I heard the father's name I realized he was someone frequently arrested and was notorious for fighting the police.

15) On a domestic between a meth/crack addict man and woman, I played catch for a few moments in the driveway with a cute, withdrawn, blonde haired three year old boy. The boy was the nephew of the young man my wife was having an affair with. The child's place in life made me very sad.

16)I get teary eyed when I watch Lance Armstrong's Nike commercial entitled "Magnet". Especially the part where he rides by the hospital and the cancer laden children inside flock to the window to watch as he peddles by holding his fist up urging them to defy the disease and be freed from the I.V.'s they drag to the window with them.

17) I secretly envy coast to coast truck drivers.

18) I find ducks wildly funny with their angrily quacking, waddling social structures.

19) The first book I ever read was Stephen King's Pet cemetery.

20) I like to hold the door for other people but feel uncomfortable when the door is held open for me.

Summer 1995

It was a humid Saturday night...
and we had the keg set up in Joe's front yard. It must have rained the night before because I can remember there being a large mud puddle in his driveway.

I was two years into my contract serving with the Marine Corps. Joe had just gotten orders to be sent to Japan and we were celebrating his impending departure. The local P.D. had already responded to Joe's house for our loud music that night. Each time we turned the music down and apologized but the music seemed to return to full volume a few minutes after the cops left. We were, after all, twenty five or so half drunken young Marines and I'm sure they didn't particularly want to start a big brouhaha over some loud music.

There were about nine guys drinking beer across the street and we invited them over to our party to share our keg. We didn't know these guys as they were from a different unit. Those guys were already pretty tore up, they had started drinking waaaaaaaay before we began our festivities.

The dude that lived across the street began yelling at everyone and generally being a large pain in the ass. He started calling his wife a "Stupid Bitch!!!" and promptly pushed her down into the mud puddle, then threw a lit cigarette into her face. Joe's wife told the guy he needed to leave and he began yelling at her and spit on her.

I snatched old boy up, threw him over my shoulder and began to run down the road with him. I was telling him to calm down and go home to sleep it off, we didn't want any trouble at our party. He began screaming profanities in my ear and started tearing the belt loops off my pants. The next thing I knew I was surrounded by seven or so of his boozed up pals. They began punching me in the head telling me to let their friend go. I took the guy on my shoulder to the ground sending him face first into the pavement, he went unconscious upon eating the road. One of his buddies dragged him out of the circle while the rest of them kicked and stomped me.

I don't remember feeling any pain. All I remember is the ferocity and relentlessness of their attack and wondering how a group of people could be so animalistic. I got to my feet with them still kicking and punching at me, managed to punch a couple of them in their grimy mouths and then hearing someone yelling that they had called the police. The attackers ran away.

I walked back to Joe's house with a new realization that I've carried with me since. Sometimes you have to fight like hell for what's right even when the odds are stacked against you. You have to go for your enemies throat with as much ferocity as they are coming at yours. That is all they respect and understand.
Incidentally that guys wife called me a "Mother fucker!!!" for knocking her husband unconscious. Welcome to the wide world of helping out the victimized.

I'll sue you

A while back I arrested this guy.
I don't remember his name or even what I arrested him for. All I remember is what a belligerent jack-ass he was. Cursing and yelling. He was compliant enough to not get himself into any more trouble than he was already in, but he would not stop running his mouth.

I'm not an emotional person but he was really irritating me and other than getting his biographical information I didn't talk to him. While waiting to see the magistrate he continued his litany of verbal abuse as I wearily rolled my eyes in an attempt to find my happy place. Finally he says "I'm gonna sue your ass." Not a new or original threat by any means, everyone threatens cops with civil litigation. I just leaned close to him and whispered into his grimy little ear "I hope you do."

He stops talking and just looks confused as I explain "I'll counter sue your dumb ass, You'll be so in debt to me I'll own your children's children."

....????....???....

I guess he didn't know what to make of either the statement as a whole or the calm natured delivery, but he shut up for the first time since I had picked him up. He couldn't do anything but stare at the floor the rest of our time together.

Summer 2001

I wiggle my legs to make sure they're still attached.

My car has finally stopped and landed, upside down. I realize I'm hung in a tree. My car teeters forward then back. I'm hanging by my seatbelt. I move my arms, wiggle my fingers.

I exhale.

My airbag has deployed and deflated. A white powder fills the passenger area and collects on the roof below my head. I see the ground six feet beneath me.

My career is over, I think as I sweep the mic off the roof underneath me to call it in.

I'm speeding down the road, blue lights flashing, siren screaming. A burglary in progress. I cross the narrow bridge. The road is unfamiliar to me. I near the address I'm headed to and turn my emergency equipment off.

My heart is Racing. Pure adrenalin. Two cars enroute to back me up. I come into a turn. My tires find the loose gravel in the road and I begin to fishtail. I turn into it but begin to swing wildly in the other direction. I try to correct, and spin all the way around. After three wide fishtails I turn into and and just lock the steering wheel. I'm now in the wrong lane of traffic, 70 MPH and traveling backwards. I hear crunching metal as I hit the guardrail. That's good it will slow me down, I think as my car leaves the ground. It's so slow. I watch the steering wheel break open as it expels the airbag. Like riding a roller coaster, I think to myself. The airbag slowly inflates. I watch as it nears my chest. My car twists through the air. I see the guard rail beneath me through my drivers side window. It's sliding by impossibly slowly. The airbag wiggles and slowly begins to deflate. My car goes over the guard rail. Time speeds up. I hear a loud CRUNCH and my car abruptly stops. I collect my thoughts. I wiggle my legs to make sure they're still attached.

Slow night, I think as I pass a 24 hour gas station. I wave at the clerk. She waves back. The call comes in, a burglary in progress. I've never heard of the road this call is on. I use our car to car channel to get directions. Two cars check enroute to back me up. I'm speeding down the road, blue lights flashing siren screaming.

Dead in a ditch

I can smell the putrescent decay from here...

I'm at least a hundred and fifty yards away and I can Still smell it. It's hot and humid today. The end of July always is in the south. "I hate the summer here" I think as I stretch the yellow DO NOT CROSS. CRIME SCENE. tape between the weathered fence posts on either side of the road.

I see my Sergeant down there. He's motioning for me. I respect my sergeant. He's a smart, loyal man. He looks, to me, like agent fox mulder from the x-files show. I duck under the crime scene tape and walk towards him. The gravel crunches and puffs of dust spiral into the air under my feet as I take each step on the gravel back road. The sergeant walks toward me holding his nose. "Can you stay down here for a minute?" he asks. "I need to get some fresh air."
"Sure. Where is it?" I say.
He just points at the woods as he continues walking to my car.

What smells unpleasant at a hundred and fifty yards has become unbearable in the ten feet of separation I now have between myself and the body. I walk to the edge of the woods and there it is.

"MY GOD!" I think. It doesn't even look human any more and I wonder how long its been here, festering in the hot sun and humid air.

It is black, charred looking and splotched with large yellow pockets of what I imagine to be puss. It's bloated to near bursting and seems to be bent in half. It might be laying face down, but it's hard to tell what's what.

It's full of maggots. The body writhes with them just under the slick skin's surface. I can't tell if they're trying to eat their way further in or make their way back out. I decide maybe they are happy where they are. Feasting. There are a few of them squirming hungrily on top of the skin. Trying to eat their way in to join their brothers and aid in the natural order of life and death.

I know that when they move the body it will split open and fall apart gushing a mixture of thick ooze and maggots onto the ground. I'm glad my shift is near end and I won't be here for those festivities.

The body is neither recognizable as male or female. Indistinguishable as to race. I wonder who it was in life. I imagine someone has been missing them. Somewhere I imagine a child, spouse, mother, father or all of the above is hoping their loved one isn't lying dead in this ditch, perhaps they've been pacing the floor waiting on this corpse to walk in the door any minute now. Hoping. Praying.

Whoever this is has become the cliche parents try to scare their teenagers with. The time tested "You'll end up in a ditch dead somewhere."

I wonder what this person did that was so unforgivable they had to be ended like this. I imagine it is one of our local drug addicts.

My shift ends and I go home, talk to my six year old son about the evils of drugs. He rolls his eyes and says "I know all this already daddy. You already told me about it." I give him a hug and he goes to his room to play with his toys and I worry, knowing that someday someone will offer him drugs. I hope at that moment he remembers all the talks we've had about this and he makes the right decision. I don't ever want to pace the floors wondering if he's in a ditch somewhere on a dirty back road. My baby discarded like an animal.

Four years in a nutshell

August 2002. Thank God for the voice command feature on my cell phone...
I think as I speak the name of the person I want to call into the phones speaker. In the last 9 hours I have managed to go completely blind. All I can see is an ugly grey fog. The line begins to ring and I hear a voice say "Hello"
"I'm blind."
"What?"
"I'm blind lieutenant. I don't know what's wrong but I can't see anything. I have an MRI scheduled for tomorrow, I need the day off."
"You can't see anything?"
""Nope. It's like my eyes won't work, all there is is a dark shade of grey with a few black blobs in it."
"Sure yeah, If you need more time off after tomorrow you got it just ask."
"Thanks I really appreciate it."
"Call me after your scan and let me know what they say alright?"
"I will. Thanks again."
"No problem. If I can do anything for you just let me know."
"Alright. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
"O.K. talk to you then."

I hit the end button. I don't know what;s wrong with me. I can only imagine it's something serious if it has caused me to go sightless in a few short hours. It has to be pretty bad to warrant the doctor sheduling a brain scan. I know they are sending me for the procedure to look for brain tumors even though the doctors wouldn't say that. I sit and I wonder if I'll wake up tomorrow. I sit and wonder if I'm dying. I sit and think that I am so grateful this is happening to me and not to...

...My wife and son walk into the room.
"How do you feel?" she asks me.
"O.K." I lie.
She is thinking the same thing as me. Wondering if it is a brain tumor. Wondering what the scan will reveal. I hold my hand a few inches from my sightless eyes. I try to will them to focus enough to see something, anything but they refuse.
I've been so tired lately it's been a struggle just to stay awake and I always feel like I'm about to lose consciousness. I hear this awful raging noise in my ears. It feels like my brain is being crushed to jelly with water. I put my hands against the sides of...

...My head slides into the large white machine, slowly trailing is the rest of my body. My arms are held closely against my sides. It's such a tight fit in the machine I can feel it rub against me as I am pulled into it. It begins to make a series of clicking noises. It sounds like a fully automatic electric stapler. I'm scared. I close my blind eyes and imagine...

I'm six years old. My little sister and I are at the top of an immense hill. We're looking down at the spillway at the resavouir. The sun is shining brightly. It's early afternoon and the grass looks so lush and green, speckled with a bright yellow explosion of dandelions. The breeze is blowing, gently ruffling my fine blond six year old hair. I'm giggling as I look at my kid sister who is standing next to me.
"Are you ready?" I ask her.
She smiles and says "yes."
We let go of each others hand as we lie down in the grass next to each other and start rolling down the hill at what seems like a breakneck speed at least to a four and six year old. The world is a blur of ground, sky, ground, sky, ground, sky. Light, dark, light, dark faster and faster we tumble side by side squealing and laughing until we reach the bottom.
We stand up all grass stains and smiles. I grab her hand as I hear my six year old voice ask "Sister are you..."

"...Alright?" I hear the tech ask as the machine whirs and clicks.
"I'm fine." I answer in my now twenty six year old voice.
"Just hang in there for a few more minutes. We're almost done, then we'll get you out of there." She says.
My two year old son sits on my wife's lap in the next room. They are watching me through a plexi-glass window. I know she's worried and I can't wait to get out of this narrow hole and go to them. After what seems to be an eternity, The machine powers down and I feel my body being slid, slowly, back out of the inhumanely narrow tube.
I sit up and feel my wife gently take my hand. I can't see anything as she guides me back to the room they had been sitting in. I ask the question that has been plaguing everyone's mind, but no one wants to ask.
"Is it a tumor?"
"I'm not a physician and technically I'm not qualified to read the scan." Says the technician."but I've ran a lot of these scans and I've seen a lot of abnormalities so I have a pretty good idea what to look for and looking at your scan I think I can safely say that I..."

"...I do" I hear my twenty two year old voice say as I gaze into the eyes of the woman I have fallen in love with. I'm nervous and she looks so beautiful in her white dress. I'm holding her hands in mine.

They're trembling. So are hers.

"You may kiss the bride." Our preacher tells me. His voice is distant as I've become lost in her dark brown eyes. We lean close and I feel her soft lips press firmly against mine. The room erupts in applause. Her mother st arts...

...Crying as the tech tells us "I didn't see anything that would suggest a tumor."
"Oh thank God." My wife sobs as she draws a deep breath of relief.
My wife leads me through the corridors of the hospital to the exit saying "There's a door just up ahead." I love my wife more than ever at this moment. I know it's been...

...Hard on her. She had spent the last month with me not knowing what was wrong with me. She had been by my side both day and night the entire nine days I was in the hospital. She was there and held my hand gently when the doctors stuck a long needle into my spine and drained out a large amount of spinal fluid to analyze. She stood by me when they put another needle into me femoral artery and injected dye into my brain. She went back to the job she hated because we didn't know if I would ever be well enough to work and my sick time was running out. Our future was so uncertain then. She watched as I blindly gave myself shots of louvenox into my stomach, which was covered in large yellow and purple bruises due to the many sites of injection. She cried often as she gave me my medicine twice daily because I couldn't see well enough to tell them apart.
"I love you so much." She whispered into my ear every night.
"I love you to." I would say before drifting of off to sleep. "She cried nearly every night before she went ot sleep.
Then one day things shifted. I was now seeing a little better, things were divided into blurry shades of black in the grey that my world was.
She was leaving for work, "I love you." I said and leaned in to kiss her. She turned her face away and I felt her cheek against my lips instead of her mouth. "Love you to." she said flatly as she got into her new truck and pulled out of the driveway. A few hours later the phone rang began ringing. My son was playing with toys I couldn't see well enough to tell what they were. I followed my ears to the phone. I debated whether or not to answer because I had been getting a lot of hang up calls. Those were mostly at night though after my wife returned home from work.
"Who was it?" she'd ask.
"don't know. They hung up." Afew minutes later she would retreat to our bedroom with the phone where she would stay for nearly an hour at times. I would hear giddy laughter resonate from the bedroom while she talked to whoever was on the other line, in a hushed voice. I was happy she was laughing again. She seemed happier than she had since I'd gotten sick. I loved her with all my heart.
I picked up the phone..."Hello?"
"Hi this is Mr.green from Green ford. I'm trying to reach your wife to follow up with her about a truck she looked at a few days ago."
"She's at work. I can give you that number."
Several moments of silence.
"Ummm...I called her at work and they said she was on vacation this week."
Somewhat confused "No, she left for work this morning."
"I'm sorry. I'll try that number again. I'm sure they were mistaken then."

I hung up and called her work. "She's not here today. She's still on vacation. Can I take a message?"

"No thanks." I hung up. My son standing near me. "Daddy, can we go outside?"

I'm sitting on the porch watching the indistinguishable grey blob that is my two year old son ride his big wheel on the driveway. It occurs to me that if my vision doesn't return I'll never be able to teach him how to bait a fish hook when he turns five, or when he's sixteen how to drive. I think of all the normal and special moments I'll never share with him. I think that I will never know what shape his face has taken when he has become a man, or be able to tell him how pretty his first girlfriend is. I begin to cry for the first time in my adult life. I feel the large tears drizzle down my cheeks. My son walks over to me and having never have seen his big strong daddy cry before puts his tiny little two year old hand on my knee and in a tiny quivering voice verging on tears asks me...

"...What's wrong?" She asks. "Nothing, I'm just thankful to be your husband. How was work today?" I ask her, wiping tears from my cheeks.

"Fine!" She screams as she hangs the phone up angrily. My house is dark and empty since she moved in with her mother across the street after revealing to me that she had been having an affair with a much younger man.

I stare at the phone sadly, wondering how we'd come to this. Passionately fighting over property neither of us cared about. I would look across the street and see his car parked in her driveway all night and into morning. I would stare, insane with jealousy at the thought of him lying in bed with my wife while my son slept in his bedroom.

One day I told her "I'm moving..."

"...into my new house. I'm filled with a mixture of sorrow and excitement. My new house is bigger and has hardwood floors. I have arranged the furniture in the same way it was in the old house, so it will seem more familiar to my now three year old son. My vision has returned to 20/20 and I've returned to patrol after an excrutiating year long stint working in the jail. I've actually been promoted too.

"What do you think buddy?" I ask my son.

"I like it daddy!" he exclaims before he takes off running through the house. I begin to date again as my now ex-wifes relationship with her boyfriend begins to crumble.

I pick my son up from his mother's house after school. He is now five and doesn't even remember a time when he I and his mom all lived together, I think. As we drive by our old house I he is looking at it through the trucks window, and he says "Daddy. I miss when we lived at our old..."

House, I think as I drive by. It's two in the morning and I'm patrolling my old neighborhood. It's a good neighborhood. Quiet. I patrol it more as a sentimental thing rather than a necessity. I remember four years ago. Standing at the kitchen sink watching my wife watch our son play with the little girl who lived next door. She was talking to the girls mother. The sun is going down and it casts an orange glow on my wife's face.

She's smiling. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I stand there feeling like the luckiest man in the world as, unbeknownst to them, I gaze at my family. Hoping that they will come inside soon. some cheesy love song is playing on the...

...Radio the telecommunicator is telling me that there is a domestic in progress I need to respond to. I tell them I'm enroute and as I drive to the call I wonder how I ended up here. What have I done to deserve the terrific son I have. The nice house I live in and the beautiful caring girlfriend I now share my life with.