The LawDog Files

by D. Lawdog

  Got him. Now I knew who he was.

  Out of habit I looked under the bed. Hey, it’s happened before. No such luck this time, though.

  I opened the closet door—no Mr. Johnson there—the clothes were hung with almost military precision, no gaps to show missing clothes. I was looking at a tiny framed pen and watercolor portrait of a woman on the bedside table when two younger women stepped through the door, one of them carrying a red, blue, and green checkered robe.

  Well, he was not wearing a tartan bathrobe after all. I hoped he was still wearing the blue pajamas.

  The portrait was a bit smudged and looked like it was bent or folded a time or two before being framed. It was a blonde woman, young, who was pulling a blue ribbon from her ponytail while looking levelly at the artist. It was well-done, drawn with love as well as skill. Dollar to a doughnut says Mr. Johnson was the artist. It has that feel.

  The aides are clearly upset. Mr. Johnson seems to have been a favorite. He is a white male, tall—they’re not sure how tall—and he’s nice. And never a problem.

  That’s nice to know.

  The only thing they think is missing from his room—aside from him—is his cane. The side door alarm beeped at the supper meal at five. They thought that was him, but truth be told, nobody was really sure when Mr. Johnson amscrayed.

  Yeah, this one wasn’t going to be easy.

  I tipped my hat to the aides and started walking around outside the home, checking the dirt at each door. At the side door, I found it. It was not much—a circular imprint a little bigger than the diameter of a quarter in the dirt—but in my memory I see the tan rubber aftermarket tip someone had slid onto Mr. Johnson’s cane. With the cane imprint as a marker, I could see the shiny spots where his cloth-soled slippers had pressed into the caliche, and it was fairly easy to track Mr. Johnson to Muir Road.

  I marked the spot, hurried back to the Super Scooter, called in a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) for Mr. Johnson to dispatch, and then ran from the cruiser up to my mark and started slowly idling east on Muir Road, head hung out the window, watching the little rounds marks.

  Six blocks later, I was starting to get worried. Muir Road goes straight east into Old Town, the original location of Bugscuffle. In the early 1900s, maybe teens, something had happened in Old Bugscuffle—fire, tornado, I’m not sure. Whatever it was, that entire section of town had picked up and moved west to its current location, leaving behind stone foundations and a few low, ruined walls, overgrown in eighty-some-odd years of salt cedar, pecan trees, ornamental trees run amuck, cane breaks, and other tree-type growth. Worst of all, Old Bugscuffle had red brick streets. Which New Bugscuffle happily—and mindlessly—runs a street sweeper down every other week.

  Two blocks later, I watched helplessly as the little circles and the small shiny spots turned into red brick streets. Dammit, dammit, dammit… “Car 12, County.”

  “Go ahead, 12.”

  “County, I’ve lost track of that BOLO at Muir and Pecan. Might be a good idea to turn out the VFD.”

  “10-4, car 12.”

  “10, dispatch.”

  “Go ahead, 10.”

  “What’s 12 got?”

  I climbed out of the car as dispatch filled the sheriff in on our Missing Person, hoping that Mr. Johnson had veered from his course and had climbed up into the grass. No such luck. But I honestly didn’t figure a 94-year-old man would get off on uneven grass when there was a perfectly nice brick road right there. Dammit. My walkie-talkie crackled to life.

  “Car 10, car 12.”

  “Go ahead.

  “You know that foundation slab about a block and a half east from your current location where the high school kids go to party?”

  “10-4.”

  “That’s the old Carter place. Next door to the east is the old Johnson place. Comprende?”

  Bingo. I felt my chest ease a bit. “10-4, car 10, I’m en route.”

  “Good. Car 10, Dispatch, tone the Fire Department and have them meet me at the corner of Muir and Pecan.”

  Three quick breaths later, I pulled the cruiser to a stop on the red brick street. North of the road was a huge lot waist-deep in vegetation—where it wasn’t shoulder deep or worse in salt cedars, rioting pyracantha—and a narrow path wending its way through the undergrowth. I scooted along the path, anxiously looking for—and not finding—those little rounds marks, but checking anyway. At the end of the patch—almost fifty yards back—was an enormous stone foundation slab.

  Dozens of burn marks showed where decades of high school students had started campfires; various names and statements were written onto the stones with pens and markers; sprayed on in every conceivable shade of Krylon; or carved into any available surface while scads of empty beer cans, liquor bottles, fast-food containers, and empty condom wrappers gave mute testimony to what the kids were doing when they weren’t indulging their artistic and literary muses.

  But not one sign of Mr. Johnson. I loped back to the street and walked slowly along the edge of the road, looking… got it.

  Right in the middle of the lot that the sheriff had called “the old Johnson place” I found two parallel lines maybe a handspan apart, where the leaves had been moved and turned over, their damp bottoms dark in the sunlight, as if by someone walking through in a shuffle. Say, an elderly man. I knelt and brushed gently to the right of the trail and was rewarded when I came across a round impression—a little larger than a quarter—partially covered by a leaf.

  “Car 12, car 10.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’ve got tracks at the old Johnson place.”

  “10-4.”

  Out of habit I stayed to the left of the tracks, but I moved quickly. The sun was going down, and night wasn’t going to make this any easier. The tracks led through the brush and up onto a foundation slab, straight up the center of the slab for several yards, before making an abrupt left turn, marching off the slab, and then angling northwards of the Carter place.

  Five minutes later, as the sun was going down, I found Mr. Johnson.

  There was a low—no taller than the middle of my thigh—fieldstone wall separating the two lots, and sometime in the past there had been a pecan tree next to the wall.

  He was sitting on top of the wall, back against the stump, his spiffy feather-adorned bowler hat a sharp contrast to his neat blue pajamas, a rusted metal box sitting in his lap and the cane leaning against the wall.

  “Car 12, County. Code 4.”

  If one were to squint real hard, it would be easy to believe that he was lost in thought or maybe napping.

  But I could tell from ten feet away that he was not.

  “Car 10, car 12, do you need Rescue?”

  I took my hat off and put it on the wall. Then, I stripped off my gloves and dropped them into the hat. His right hand was resting on top of the metal box, and I slipped my fingers to the inside of his wrist to check for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Looped around his index finger, held in place by his thumb, was a ribbon, badly faded to a dove gray but probably once the cornflower shade that might have been used to tie back the hair of a blue-eyed blonde girl.

  “Car 12?”

  I gently placed my fingers on the side of his throat. He was cold, and there hadn’t been a pulse there for some time.

  “County to car 12.”

  Funny how there seemed to be a hitch in my throat. I squeezed the fragile shoulder softly and then hit the “send” button on my walkie-talkie, “County, negative on Rescue. Signal 9.”

  A long pause before the county dispatcher replied, “10-4, 12.” She would be calling a Justice of the Peace to come to pronounce—there was going to need to be a path cleared for that and for the funeral home, but it just didn’t feel right to leave that old gentleman alone again. Not in the dark.

  The sheriff and the volunteer fire department would be here soon enough.

  FILE 13: Napoleon Complex

  There was a young man who moved to our
town named Frederick who managed to get on my wrong side in a hurry.

  Near as I can tell, his mama gave him anything he wanted from the time he learned to point. In her eyes, he could do absolutely no wrong.

  He was, in plain language, spoiled bloody rotten. Top this with the fact that Frederick was five foot, four inches tall and the possessor of one well-fed Napoleon Complex, should enable anyone to foresee the trail of smacked-around girlfriends, lost brawls, unreturned rental movies, unpaid gasoline, burn-out marks, skipped bills, hot checks, harassing phone calls, and a record number of Public Disturbance and Disorderly Conduct calls, except, apparently, his mother. Who also moved to our fair town.

  I believe he holds the record for shooting to the top of the sheriff’s Smoke List.

  * * *

  I was patrolling the west side of town one balmy Friday night, when about 3 in the A.M., I saw headlights up the street that looked wrong.

  I pulled up to the house and immediately discovered the reason the headlights looked wrong: they were coming from a car high-centered on the bank of a koi pond occupying the front lawn of a corner residence.

  From the trail of brutally slaughtered garden gnomes, it appeared that the driver of the car had chosen a spot some twenty feet shy of the stop sign to make a right turn.

  I parked the cruiser at the curb, turned on the lightbar, and picked my way through the gnomic massacre to the driver’s side of the expensive European convertible sports car.

  Since the window was rolled down, I could clearly see that the driver’s seat was occupied by my favorite Frederick, who was making very careful movements of the steering wheel while peering blearily, albeit intently, through the windshield.

  I cleared my throat, “Ahem. Sheriff’s office.”

  Freddie practically jumped out of the seat, whipped around, and stared at me like a deer caught in headlights.

  I waggled my fingers at him.

  Freddie reached down and pushed the UP button for the driver’s side window, closing the convertible’s window in my face (I guess), very carefully engaged the right-hand turn signal, and gently turned the steering wheel to the right. The engine revved politely.

  I stepped back and looked at the koi pond. Yep, still high-centered.

  I will admit that I waited until Freddie had released a massive sigh of relief and shakily wiped his mouth before I tapped on the window glass.

  I’m evil that way sometimes.

  Young Freddie jumped damned near a foot out of the seat, clutched his fists to his chest, and stared at me in a mixture of absolute confusion and just a bit of panic.

  I made cranking motions with my hand. Freddie continued to stare at me. Getting a little irritated, I reached over the top of the window and unlocked and opened the door. Freddie promptly scrambled into the passenger seat, curled up into a little ball, and began a loud, rapid, and totally unconvincing snoring.

  I performed a Migraine Salute. Freddie peered at me through one eye and then began to snore even louder and faster. I moved the transmission into P, turned off the engine, dropped the keys into my pocket, walked around to the passenger side, and said politely, “Sheriff’s office, Freddie. Step out of the vehicle, please.”

  To which Young Freddie yelped, “Can’tsh choo shee I’m as… asleep?! Fug, funk, [deleted] off, joo dumb[deleted]!”

  I’m not exactly sure what the alcohol had been telling Freddie, but I don’t think me getting a satisfying double handful of the front of his silk shirt and snatching him out the passenger seat of his car was a part of the plan.

  I love convertibles.

  We wound up nose to nose, his toes a good six inches off the turf, and me smiling a very large, not-very-friendly smile. “Are you awake now, Fred… Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what the hell have you been drinking?”

  “Scroo… screwd… screwdrivers, joo fug… fickin’, [deleted]ing maroon, no, moron.”

  “Okay, Freddie, let’s go over to the nice cop car.”

  “Whafer… wotsifor… why?”

  “Because I said so, Freddie.”

  “Joo got gotta tell me wha’s… why Ah’m bein’ adrested for.”

  “Gnomicide and suspected DWI. You want to walk to my cruiser, or do I drag you?”

  “’M gonna home. Choo… joo talk to by lagyer in… de… de morn, ’Ey! Leggo de eer! Ear! Choo gogda by eer!”

  We arrived at the cruiser, and I retrieved Freddie’s wallet and called dispatch to report my location and to run a 27/28 and a 29. I noticed that while I was on the radio, Freddie was sniveling into one of those new-fangled cell phones. To his lawyer, I assumed.

  Hah!

  I got my business done on the radio, gently inquired if Freddie wanted to perform some Standardized Field Sobriety Exercises, relieved Freddie of the phone, and repeated my inquiry about the SFSEs, to which Freddie replied loudly and profanely in the affirmative.

  He then proceeded to fail the SFSEs. Spectacularly.

  Which led to Freddie getting hooked up and put into the back of the cruiser. Because it was a balmy Texas night (and to give Freddie somewhere other than the floorboard to hork, when required), I compassionately left the back window down.

  I had just finished telling dispatch to find a tow-truck driver with some experience at improvisation when I noticed a car hauling tail up the road toward my location. Said car screeched to a halt behind my cruiser with one tire perched comfortably on the curb, and the peroxide blonde driver exploded out and began to stomp to the cruiser. I jumped out, pointed at Freddie’s mama, and firmly said, “We’ve had this discussion before, Darla. Remember the words ‘Interfering with the Duty of an Officer’?”

  “Why are you arresting my baby?!”

  “Mama!”

  “Oh, baby! You’re in handcuffs! Why is he in handcuffs!?”

  “That would be under the ‘arresting’ part, Darla. Driving While Intoxicated.” I gestured toward the car, the koi pond, and the lawn with its pitiful population of decapitated Little Folk.

  “He shaid… said I kildt a ganomey. I din’t meen too, but hesh wouldn’t gegt… get… off my way! I’d hoknt de horn and evvrthing! Idt washn’t my fault!” bawled Freddie.

  “Darla, he drove his car over that lawn. He reeks of booze, and he failed every single one of his sobriety tests. He’s drunk, he was driving, and he’s going to jail just as soon as the wrecker gets here.”

  “Bull[deleted]! My baby doesn’t get drunk. Nobody can pass those [deleted]ing sobriety tests! See?” Matching actions to words, Darla flung her head back, attempted to stab herself in the eye with a polycarbonate fingernail, and tumbled against the side of my cruiser.

  I immediately began to help her up, when I noticed that Darla’s eyes were… awfully bloodshot. And under the pungent whiff of Chanel… was that… booze? Darla smacked my helping paw away and stood, swaying ever so gently, with her hands on her hips.

  “See? My baby can’t pass those tests because nobody can pass those [deleted]ing tests!”

  “Yeah!” yelped Freddie.

  My smile was probably beatific.

  “Actually, Freddie did the tests over here in front of the cruiser, where there’s light.”

  Darla stomped around the front of my cruiser, attempted to touch her nose, and caught herself on the hood of my car, glaring triumphantly at me.

  “He also tried the walk and turn. Want me to show you how it’s supposed to be done?”

  “I [deleted]ing know how it’s supposed to be done!” So saying, she promptly failed that one, too. An angelic choir was softly singing hosannas in my ear as I gently mentioned that Freddie had failed the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus, and surely she…

  “I bet I’ve got a nystagmus, too! Check and see!?”

  “Yeah!” announced Freddie.

  How could I say no?

  When I was done with my light, Darla looked at me triumphantly, “See? What did I tell you?”

  “You are totally correct, Darla,” I said, feeling around for my spare set
of handcuffs on the gear shift of the cruiser, “You said you’d fail the sobriety tests, and you did. Each and every one.”

  “So you’re going to let my baby go?”

  “Hell, no.” I waved the handcuffs at her.

  Took me five minutes to get that biting, screaming, kicking, clawing, spitting, cussing hellcat into the cruiser, I’m here to tell you.

  Worth it, though.

  FILE 14: City Folk

  Being in an area of Texas outside the Austin city limits, we don’t get a lot of protests or other bushwa of that nature. We are, however, on a route between Here and Somewhere Else, and we have the occasional person on the way to Somewhere Else wind up going afoul of local law enforcement. Like the vegetarian girl with Washington plates who cussed out a cowboy at the local diner and then spit into his basket of french fries all because he was eating a burger.

  By the by, ladies, a valuable lesson was learned that day. If you’re going to Say It With Saliva in Texas, make sure your boyfriend can take a whuppin’.

  Anyhoo, can we possible leave our angsty little problems back at the old homestead? Please?

  * * *

  Once upon a time… no, wait, wrong format.

  Our evening deputy was cruising the northwest section of the county when this towering pillar of black smoke sort of caught his attention.

  He hared off down a farm-to-market road, found the lease that the smoke was coming from, and noticed that the gate at the cattle guard was standing wide open. He went over to the cattle guard, and then down about half a mile of badly rutted dirt/clay/gravel road, to find a yellow late-model Mustang high-centered on one of the ruts. The driver’s side door was standing open, and one white male was standing behind the car, attempting to rock it off of high center.

  ’Bout a hundred yards down the road, there was a pump-jack totally engulfed in flames.

  Deputy Frank figured that there was probably a young lady somewhere, but he really wanted this car out of the way because there were a bunch of fire trucks about to come down this road, and the local Volunteer Fire Department wasn’t too particular about how they moved obstructing vehicles, so he got out of the cruiser to give the young man a hand.