Petty Crimes & Head Cases

by Lola Beatlebrox

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what my customer said. The light was a ball like the Good Witch of the South, only the bubble was opaque.”

  I could just imagine Paddy Hamburger’s headline: Woman Sees the Light—Cameras Go Dark. Or maybe: Man Turns into Ball of Light—Zaps Nosy Shop Owners.

  My urge to call Carl escalated to red alert.

  “Sassy, I’ve got to pick up Jamie now.”

  “Okay, Tracy, good to see you.”

  “Ciao.”

  “Ciao.”

  Outside, I was on the run when I heard sirens. I saw police cruisers at the Oscar gas station, their light bars whirling. I dashed past an old truck parked near the gas pumps. Carl was standing in front of the convenience store holding his service revolver.

  On the pavement in front of him was a body.

  The next day at the salon Margaret Pyle held me as Annabelle applied a cold compress. Tina was wringing her hands. Shelley dished out a casserole as Sassy wiped hair off the counter. Kayla was home babysitting Jamie.

  I was a mess.

  Carl was suspected of the racially-motivated murder of a Native American. The chief put him on administrative leave pending determination. He hadn’t been arrested, but Paddy Hamburger had written a story full of quotes from people accusing him of racial profiling. The tribe had filed a complaint with the Department of Justice. The FBI assigned an agent to the case.

  Never mind there was a tire iron in the Ute Indian’s hand. He was dead and the cameras weren’t rolling.

  Chief Fort Dukes spoke from two sides of his mouth. He was calming us and playing to public opinion. At a rally of Citizens Against Police Brutality, he said, “Justice will be done.” Then he came to our house and put Carl on leave.

  I closed the salon. I couldn’t do anybody’s hair. I couldn’t talk to anybody—even my best girlfriends. All they could do was hold me and offer me plates of food. There was no tomorrow, only yesterday. I wanted to hide in my cape closet and never come out, but I had a husband and son to take care of. My only allegiance should be to them. Then why had I collapsed on my salon sofa and couldn’t get up?

  Why indeed?

  The thought of doing anything illegal crushed me. I had always considered myself a righteous person, a person who would never consider breaking the rules. I would never want anyone to think badly of me—that I could do anything heinous or reprehensible.

  “But you didn’t do anything, Tracy,” Margaret said. “You weren’t even there.”

  I know that. You think I don’t know that?

  I felt guilty by association. To kill someone in cold blood, as Carl was accused of doing, was abhorrent to me. Of course, I knew my husband was not racist. Of course, I knew he was acting in self-defense.

  I knew my man.

  He was the most honest, ethical policeman in the world. He was more law-abiding than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He had more integrity than the Pope. I knew he didn’t do what they’re saying he did.

  So why was I so upset?

  Why didn’t I just pick myself off the sofa and hold my chin up and carry on, knowing the outcome would be favorable?

  Because I knew the way the world worked.

  People were saying cruel things. People were merciless. They would sacrifice a fine upstanding person on the pillory of public opinion at the first whiff of scandal. I was afraid for my beautiful husband and I was afraid that I couldn’t do anything about it.

  Someone was banging on the salon door. The noise became insistent. Margaret got up and arranged my head on a pillow. She went to the front door.

  “Go away,” she shouted.

  “I just need a comment!” It was Paddy Hamburger.

  “You’re not welcome here!” I could see Margaret straighten up to her full height and search for a Venetian blind to cover the plate glass window. Of course, there wasn’t one.

  “One little quote.”

  “Tracy is not available for comment!”

  Margaret returned to the sofa. “Do you want to talk to Paddy?”

  I shook my head. Then I realized I had to. “All right,” I said.

  Margaret let him in.

  He approached the sofa. I saw from his face that he was dismayed to find me this way. My eyes were swollen, my face was puffy, my complexion was red, and my hair was a shambles.

  Margaret advanced on him—her six-foot frame towering over his five foot six—and he put his camera back in his satchel.

  “I’m sorry, Tracy,” he said, taking out his steno pad. “What would you like me to say?”

  Paddy Hamburger was asking me what to write? Maybe he was human after all.

  I told him that Carl had the highest regard for the Native American community and had helped their people find medical help and legal advice. I told him that Carl graduated from the best police academy in our state and believed the law was always to be upheld. I told him that Carl acted in self-defense—that the man was going to kill him with a tire iron. I asked him to put out a plea for witnesses, to beg anyone who saw anything to step forward and tell what they saw.

  Paddy finished writing and closed his steno pad. “Keep the faith, Tracy,” he said, and went out the door.

  “You did well,” Margaret said. “I think Paddy will quote you fair.”

  “Things look bleak now,” said Shelley, “but you and Carl will pull through. Justice will prevail.”

  “The greatest prayer is patience,” said Annabelle.

  “The Native American community is with you,” said Tina. “They know who Carl is. They know how that man was. He was sick.”

  Sassy came out of my workroom. “Tracy, do you have any Soft Scrub?” she asked.

  Everybody laughed, even me.

  Cleaning must go on and life must go on, whatever the circumstances.

  Shelley’s casserole found its way to our house but Carl didn’t eat much of it. Neither did I.

  Jamie chowed down. “This is good!” he said. “Chicken, rice and gravy. Your mom’s a good cook, Kayla.”

  Kayla eyed us both. She’d been walking on egg shells all evening. “If you’re finished, I’ll take you upstairs and read you a story,” she said to Jamie.

  “Let’s play Captain America. The bad guys know how to fight back, but I’ve gotten to Level Three. You can take a couple turns and help me get to Level Four.”

  “Take your plate to the sink,” Kayla said.

  Jamie obeyed. “What’s for dessert?”

  Kayla opened the freezer. “Popsicles.”

  After they disappeared upstairs, Carl and I sat for a long time. He picked up his fork and put it down again. I drank water.

  “You know . . . ” he said.

  I didn’t know. And I did know. I waited.

  “You know, you work your whole career and you know this can happen. Every cop knows. The decisions you make every day could end up haunting you for the rest of your life. The guy came at me with a tire iron. I did what I’m trained to do. There was no thinking. There was no time. There was no right or wrong. There was just action.” He fiddled with his fork again. “But there’s always reaction. There’s always politics and there’s always two sides to every issue. There are multiple sides to this one and I’m caught in a net.”

  Carl’s face was drawn. His eyes were slits. His mouth was a downward crescent. There were no dimples on his cheeks. I held him in my arms. He wept.

  The chief and the district attorney were looking into the case. The deceased’s name was Sam Eagle Feather. He was a thirty-five year old carpenter, the same age as Carl. Divorced, no children. For years he played on the rugby team with the local Tongans, and had even traveled to their island for a big tournament. But recently he’d missed work and lots of games. People who knew him said he’d injured himself on a coral reef in Tonga and contracted a bad infection. Multiple antibiotic regimes had not worked and the virus attacked his brain. Over time he become irrational and belligerent. That’s why his marriage had b
roken up.

  Carl told me the same story he told Internal Affairs. He parked his patrol car, went into the convenience store, and purchased a bottle of water. When he came out, he saw a man struggling to get the spare tire out of his pickup. The man swayed and fell.

  When Carl approached the fallen man, he yelled, “Go away, Cop Man!” He staggered to his feet and grasped a tire iron. Carl avoided the first swing, but the man moved forward whipping the tire iron straight at Carl’s head. He identified himself as a police officer and ordered him to freeze but the man kept coming, slicing at Carl’s head over and over again. Carl fired his service revolver. The bullet hit Sam Eagle Feather square in the chest, killing him instantly.

  “I’ll never forget the look on his face,” Carl said. “It was as if I were the cause of all his problems and he was finally going to get rid of them forever.”

  People were skeptical. Papers all over America had been running editorials about systematic racial discrimination and police violence. The atmosphere created by these cases had affected my husband’s ability to defend his actions.

  I reopened my store but cancellations poured in. No one bothered to call; they deleted their appointments online. I moved through my day like an automaton. I chucked every newspaper in the trash without reading it.

  Carl stayed home alone. There was nothing for him to do while the district attorney and the chief sorted out the situation. I sent Jamie to school until I got a call from the principal’s office. Kids taunted him at recess when he defended his father, and Jamie had done more than kick a kid in the shins.

  I wanted my mother.

  My parents live in the oldest trailer park in Palm Springs. It’s homey, chummy, and fun. People say hi to each other. They tell jokes at the swimming pool. They play shuffleboard and backgammon. They have community barbecues. Mother has gotten younger ever since she moved there. My father is in seventh heaven. There are nine golf courses and he plays them all in regular foursomes.

  We’d been in California for five days when the rhythm of our minds slowed down enough to match their pace. “Let’s pick some oranges,” I said to Jamie one morning. He grabbed a shopping bag and we went outside among the hummingbirds and the bougainvillea to the orange trees. Jamie picked up a long pole with a wire cradle on top and attempted to capture an orange. He teetered on his toes and missed.

  I laughed. “Make it easy on yourself, try the lower branches!”

  He dropped the basket down to the next branch, snagged an orange, and tossed it to the ground. When we had six oranges, we trooped back to the double-wide.

  Jamie climbed on a stool and took the juicer out of the kitchen cupboard. He cut an orange in half and pressed it down. The motor did its work and pretty soon there was sweet, fresh ambrosia to savor. This was the most work we did all day. The rest of the time we rode bikes, sunbathed, and swam. My mother insisted on doing all the cooking; my father did the grocery shopping.

  Life was good in never-never land. But lest we forget, the chief called to make sure we weren’t on the lam, and Carl’s attorney sent briefs that he read in private. We were going on the thirtieth day of our banishment when the phone rang.

  “Hi, Tracy, this is Katherine Putnam.”

  My heart sank. Was she calling to cancel my prep for her wedding?

  “I’m calling because Deepak wants to talk to you. Here he is.”

  “Tracy?” said Deepak. “How are you?”

  “Just fine here in sunny California.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” His cheerful voice was pleasing to my ears, but I couldn’t imagine what he wanted. “I would like to speak to Carl, but you should listen too, if you can push the speaker-phone button, please.”

  “Deepak, how are you?” Carl said into the little rectangular device on the kitchen counter.

  “Fine,” said Deepak. “You asked me to find the name of the man who is an expert on security camera disabling technology. Well, I have found him.”

  “Good,” said Carl.

  “He is the younger brother of the man who owns Stealth-Techt.”

  “No!” I said.

  Carl said nothing.

  “He is, shall we say, the black sheep of the family and he and his older brother are rivals. In fact, the younger brother has done everything possible to sabotage his older brother’s business. Their enmity goes way back.”

  Deepak paused and I said, “Go on.”

  “The younger brother has developed the technology to create a light shield around a thief and an artificial intelligence laser. He can zap security cameras at one thousand meters and not be seen even when close-up.”

  Carl looked at me in disbelief.

  “And he has used this technique to disable the security systems at three of Stealth-Techt’s clients. I think you know which ones—the Main Street Boutique, the Jewish temple, and the Oscar gas stations. He is proving to his brother that he can do this because his brother said it couldn’t be done.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “You can assume the CEO of Stealth-Techt knew all the time who had disabled his clients’ cameras, but he did not give his younger brother up to the authorities,” said Deepak. “He believes it is a family matter.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not,” Carl said.

  “I know, Carl, that you are not in a position to arrest him where you are now,” said Deepak, “and I wouldn’t advise you to do so even if you could.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because, you see, he has something that you need.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Footage of the incident at the Oscar gas station.”

  Carl and I were speechless.

  “Are you there?” Deepak asked.

  “Yes, we’re here,” I said.

  “This gentleman was walking by the Oscar gas station that day. He saw the Indian staggering around, just as you said. He always carries his cell phone and he stopped to take a video of the man even before you came out of the convenience store. He has what can be described as ‘an eye for crime.’ He recorded the whole thing.”

  I sucked in my breath.

  “He is willing to come forward to the authorities in your city with this evidence. In exchange he asks that the investigation into the security camera incidents be dropped.”

  Carl and I looked at each other.

  “I know this will be a hard decision for you. Katherine tells me what moral people you are, but if you can see your way to accepting this proposal, we think justice will be done.”

  Katherine came on the line. “Take the deal, Tracy. We want you back. We miss you!”

  Tears sprang into my eyes.

  Carl and I said thank you and told them we would call the next day with our answer. A hard night followed with more soul searching than we had experienced in our married life. Crimes against property had been committed. Carl had vowed he would never take a bribe on the job or condone any cop who did.

  But Carl’s career was at stake and my livelihood, too. We wanted to return to our home and restore our place in the fabric of our community. By dawn, we agreed. We would take the deal.

  The next evening, after a long drive, we sat in Larry Brennan’s office across the street from city hall. Larry was Carl’s attorney. He had a barrel chest that made his suit jacket look like a box that fell off a UPS truck. His face was so red people thought he fell asleep in a tanning bed every week, but that was his Irish heritage. Jamie played with all five of Larry’s kids, who looked like strawberry lollipops dressed up in clothes.

  “This sounds more like Hollywood than real life,” Larry said. “You sure you haven’t been watching too much TV?”

  Ordinarily, Carl and I would have laughed, but we were too worried.

  “Laser techies, blazing light bubbles, two brothers who hate each other,” Larry said. “Even Rabbi Josh’s wife couldn’t come up with a situation like this.”

  I looked down at my handkerchief. It was twisted into a little rope.
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br />   “Let’s examine the facts,” Larry went on, eyeing the notepad in front of him. “Number one. Your rogue techie is only charged with one count of criminal mischief for disabling the security cameras. Mrs. Oscar wants the district attorney to charge the guy with ‘interfering with electronic communications fraud’ but that’s a third degree felony at best. It’s nothing compared to a homicide.”

  My handkerchief untwisted slightly.

  “Two. Immunity gets granted all the time. People come forward and ask for immunity in racketeering cases. It’s routinely granted in order to nail the top guys.”

  You’re comparing this to a RICO case? My handkerchief twisted back up.

  “Three. Your record is squeaky clean. Your personnel file is impeccable—even laudatory. You have no pattern of racially motivated incidents, you’ve helped little old ladies cross the street, and your supervisor has given you a clean bill of health every year.”

  Thank you, Chief Fort Dukes.

  “Four. Evidence shows the Native American was holding a tire iron. Friends said he’d been acting strangely ever since he went to Tonga with his rugby team last year. He had become ornery and failed to show up for practice and games. When he did, he was confrontational. Violent. He was injured in Tonga when he stepped on some coral. Cut himself. The illness has affected his personality.”

  My handkerchief did another somersault.

  “Now let’s look at the assumptions,” continued our lawyer. “One. The district attorney wants to win this case against you, but the evidence is not open and shut.”

  I smoothed out the fabric.

  “However, the case is high profile. It’s made the national news. The tribe filed a formal complaint with the Justice Department. Section 1983 of the Civil Rights legislation is on everyone’s lips. Our esteemed district attorney is beholden to public opinion. He can’t drop the case without significant evidence.”

  I wanted to crawl in a hole.

  “Two. From what you’ve told me, this Deepak is a smart and honest guy. He’s seen the video and he believes it exonerates you. If we can convince the district attorney to give your laser techie immunity, which I think we can, I can introduce the video as evidence. So that’s what we’re going to do.”