The LawDog Files

by D. Lawdog

  “10-4, en route.”

  I pulled up in front of the residence, and I could see the Reporting Party in the bay window, still clutching her cordless phone, and pointing frantically to the back of the house.

  I admit to a well-concealed sigh, waved at her, and then began making my way around the outside of the house, no doubt to spend several minutes peering into the dark.

  Imagine my surprise when I turned the back corner into the backyard and came nose to snout with a bloody huge feral hog. I remember well, in the middle of that startle-response adrenaline dump, seeing the bristles fly up on his chest. Kind of like he had just gotten center punched with a Winchester 127-grain +P+ 9mm. Like the kind I carried in my P7.

  And I realized that I was standing in a textbook perfect speed-rock position.

  I had just enough time to mentally pat myself on the back, and then the hog, metaphorically speaking, looked down at the hole in his chest, said, again, metaphorically speaking, “Oh, you [deleted],” and then headed my way with the obvious intention of adjusting my buttock-to-shoulder-blade ratio.

  Not being entirely gormless, my body, no longer admiring the shot that started this whole episode spun, took two steps, and flung me at the lower limbs of the nearest mesquite tree… about those two steps ahead of the enraged pig.

  So. There I was, hanging like a panicked sloth from the lower limbs by one ankle, one hand, and one wrist while a Paleolithic-class hog stood below, loudly opining as to my ancestry and sexual proclivities and daring me to come down.

  Yeah, that wasn’t happening. Unfortunately, my current suspended position meant I couldn’t get another shot off at the hog without winding up down on terra firma with said ambulatory chop and with him at a decided advantage.

  Worse, during the mad sprint for the tree, I seemed to have dropped my walkie-talkie.

  I resigned myself to not going anywhere for a while. A sentiment obviously shared by Senor Puerco.

  A lot longer later than I felt was absolutely necessary, I heard the sound of a DPS cruiser pull up outside. At last, think I, backup. And not before time.

  Indeed, backup soon showed itself cautiously around the corner in the form of the DPS trooper assigned to our wee town. He scanned the backyard with his flashlight—passing over me the first time, I might add—before the beam settled on the hog. It then panned up.

  There were snorting noises that I suspect may have been an attempt to conceal mirth. Not a very good attempt, but at least he tried.

  “Shot the hog, didn’t you?”

  I snarled something that may have been less than courteous, but I plead long-term discomfort.

  “I told you that dinky little 9mm wasn’t any good, didn’t I?”

  I was attempting some form of comeback when I heard the bark of a Texas DPS-issued Sig P220, and the .45 ACP round smacked the hog right behind the foreleg.

  I knew this because I had a unique perspective on the second bristle spray of the morning. Which led the hog to announce, at the top of his porcine lungs, “You want a piece of me, too?”

  And I watched the DPS trooper scramble to the top of an ancient outhouse with the alacrity and grace of a scalded-arsed ape.

  “Nice shot, Tex” I snarked from the comfort of my mesquite tree.

  “Damn,” replied that worthy, “That’s a big hog.”

  I casted a sneer in his general direction, “Why don’t you thump it a couple of more times?”

  Long pause.

  “Can’t.”

  “Well,” I snarled, twisting a bit, “I not in any position to do anything about this, so it’s pretty much up to you.”

  The hog sent a grunt my way, letting me know I hadn’t been forgotten.

  This pause was longer. Oh, for the love of… “You dropped your bangstick, didn’t you?”

  “I had something on my mind!” There was another pause, contemplative this time. “I’ve got my .32 backup.”

  I could feel a facial tic developing.

  This went on until the sun rose, the hog trotted off with a firmly cocked snook in our general direction, and the trooper and I climbed down and solemnly swore never to speak of this again.

  Fast-forward about a year, and I was in dispatch when the local game warden staggered in and headed for the coffee pot with the same sort of intensity that a man three days under the Sahara sun heads for an oasis.

  “You okay, Harry? I asked, slightly concerned.

  “[Deleted] monster hog out by the T bar S,” he muttered from around a soothing mug, “Took three rounds from my .450 Marlin. Didn’t think the [deleted] was ever going to go down.”

  I was mildly impressed. “Damn.”

  “Checked him over and found this under the skin on his chest.” He displayed a perfectly mushroomed Winchester Ranger bullet. Probably about 127 grains, were I to guess, “Some damnfool moron shot him with a 9mm sometime. Can you imagine that? Idiot. Some people shouldn’t be let out without a minder.”

  Whoops.

  FILE 28: A Lesson in Respect

  When I wrote this, a Gentle Reader asked if my math was on. He had apparently added the age of the gentleman in this story, subtracted some history, and was missing a decade or two.

  This incident actually happened back in the 1990s.

  I did get a couple of outraged emails from folks wanting to know why I just stood by while Waldo adjusted the headspace and timing on the mouthy kid. I gently replied that they probably didn’t realize how fast that sort of thing can happen, how long it takes to open a security door, and how many people in the cell were going to lie to me about what had happened when we did get the door open.

  He was fine. Educational beatdowns are a fact of life inside.

  * * *

  The intake officer gave me a call from the intake section, and I scooted on over there.

  Seemed an elderly gentleman had arrived at our jail by way of the local municipal court. 80 years old, plus or minus, with exactly zero criminal or traffic records of any kind.

  I looked at this gentleman—eyes clear, back straight, looking around with mild amusement—and I asked what brought him to us. Surely community service would be a better way of dealing with him?

  The old gentleman fixed me with a gray eye, and in a slow drawl he said, “Son, I spent 1951 to 1953 in Korea, trying not to get my boys killed. I figure that there makes me a man grown.”

  I nodded, cautiously, not exactly sure where this was going.

  “Now I figure that since I am a full-grown adult, and I know the risks, whether or not I wear a seatbelt isn’t the business of a bunch of panty-waisted jackasses down in Austin.”

  Oh.

  “My wife asks me to wear the damned thing, I wear it. I’m her business. My girls ask me to wear the damned thing, I wear it. It’s their business. Everyone else needs to tend to their own knitting and leave mine alone.”

  Gotcha.

  “So I take this ticket to the city judge, and he asks me if I was going to plead guilty or not guilty. I say that I don’t know about guilty, but I definitely wasn’t wearing the damned thing that day. He asks how I’m going to pay the fine, and I tell him he’d better stick me in jail because I wasn’t going to pay someone for putting his nose into other people’s business.”

  I looked at the intake officer, both of us trying not to smile.

  “So here I am.”

  I headed for the intake sergeant to suggest that maybe some kind of accelerated time-serving might be considered. Maybe a passing of the hat, or some such, when I passed the GenPop tank and noticed one very large, very familiar figure glaring balefully at me.

  “Waldo,” I said carefully, “What’s on your mind?”

  Waldo the Wonder Biker sneered at me and then spat off to the side.

  “He was riding down Main Street wearing a chrome Nazi helmet, dark glasses, combat boots, and a smile,” said the intake corporal contemplatively, “Seems there was stuff flapping in the breeze that God never intended to flap.”


  I grimaced, “There’s not enough brain bleach in the world to fix that.”

  He grinned, “Gives ‘tank-slap’ a whole new meaning, don’t it?”

  “Oh, for—enough! Eww!”

  I looked at Waldo, “You’ve been guinea-pigging the product again, haven’t you?” My answer was an extremely eloquent extended middle finger.

  *sigh*

  Well, at least they got some clothes on him.

  I found the intake boss, he agreed that the older gentleman didn’t need to be in Durance Vile for any longer than strictly necessary, and I left to chase down the jail administrator.

  Twenty minutes later, I was back with an Order of Release, scooted past the GenPop tank, and saw the older gentleman was sitting on the bench, talking softly and gesturing gently, with Waldo and two of his buddies sitting on the floor in front of the bench, listening raptly.

  Huh. This was odd.

  As I watched, another inhabitant of GenPop—much younger, with the ingrained sneer and bad attitude one tends to associate with some of the younger criminal element—swaggered over to the bench currently occupied by the elderly gentleman, planted himself, and drawled, “Hey, there, Old Stuff. You need to move off of my bench.”

  At this, Waldo raised a polite hand to the older man and said—my paw to Freyja, I heard it with my own two ears—“I’m sorry, Mr. Frank. Excuse me for just a moment.”

  I was looking at Waldo, seriously wondering if I should check him for a pod attachment point, when he lumbered to his feet, draped a fatherly arm across the shoulders of the youngster, and gently steered him to the bathroom area of the tank.

  At this point I was seriously worried about Waldo’s mental status.

  Then, I hear a muted thud followed by the Waldo’s dulcet tones—he’d make a fine rage metal frontman, would our Waldo—gently gargling something about eye sockets, respect, an anatomically improbable yet gruesomely fascinating version of puppeteering, and courtesy in general.

  Ah. That was the Waldo I knew.

  There was a final thud, and then Waldo stepped out from the bathroom area, resumed his seat on the floor in front of the bench, and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Frank. You were saying?” And the older gentleman resumed what was obviously a riveting story.

  I couldn’t stand it. I beckoned, “Hey, Waldo! Come up to the bars for a moment!” Waldo’s beard contorted into his usual snarl, but he got up and stomped over to talk.

  I indicated the older gentleman, “What’s up, Waldo? You feeling okay?”

  He looked at me a moment. “Man, ’Dog, that old dude’s been through some [deleted]. You can see it on his face. Really bad [deleted], but he doesn’t let the [deleted] win. Dude like that earned respect.”

  Hell of a thing when a burned-out biker reprobate meth cook made more sense than a municipal judicial system.

  Not much more that I can say to that.

  FILE 29: Thing 1 and Thing 2

  The joke the sheriff likes to use is that everyone else he knows has a work wife. I’m the only person he knows who has work daughters.

  I tend to find that women—given an officer with draggy knuckles close by—tend to be excellent peace officers.

  The majority of work done by peace officers involves communication. Women, as a whole, tend to be a lot better at communicating than the guys do.

  The stories about the Things were filler I threw together one day just to have something to write on the blog, but my Gentle Readers wholeheartedly loved them. When I meet folks in the paint, they always ask me what happened to the Pink Gorilla Suit and how the Things are doing.

  DD-1033 refers to the federal program that allows unused military equipment to be reutilized by civilian law enforcement agencies.

  ADC is the acronym for aide de camp.

  * * *

  In the Army—and most probably in every other branch of the military—there is something of a tradition of miscreant E4s. The pay grade of an E4 is the first rank that involves any sort of official leadership, and, as such, is expected to make frequent faux pas. An E4 with a good head upon his shoulders, dedication to the mission and flexible scruples can often be the difference between a successful ARTEP and a “No-Go.”

  As a “fer instance,” let us suppose that you are somewhere knee-deep in snow watching herds of brass monkeys headed south. The never-sufficiently-be-damned cab heaters on the unit’s M3 Bradleys have gone Paws Up again. Your miscreant E4s will show up just before chow, having “repurposed” a “stray” trailer for some extra cab heaters.

  Later on during the same exercise when you suddenly need that “stray” trailer, it will appear as long as you don’t touch the bumper number. Fresh paint smears something awful.

  If your E4s don’t have the lion’s share of the pogey-bait, the really good FMs, and the superfluous equipment that just tends to make things easier—“A shower? How in the hell did you manage to bring a pressurized shower out into the middle of BFE?!”—they know where to get their paws on it. That, along with a certain willingness to trade, bribe, beg, borrow or steal, and repurpose as required to Accomplish The Mission, tends to make the task of the military commander somewhat easier and less aneurysm-inducing. Vishnu bless ’em.

  However, E4s without a mission to focus their little nefarious minds upon are often the source of the stories that begin, “This ain’t no [deleted]. I took my eyes off the little [deleted]s for ten minutes, and the [Insert Descriptive Military Noun Here] exploded / burst into flame / sank / floated / wound up on eBay / got pregnant / moved, when movement was physically impossible / broke the sound barrier when not physically possible / divided by zero / wound up on top of the base watertower” are typical.

  Several miles of interstate highway shut down due to tabasco-augmented smoke generators? E4s.

  Nightly news video shot of hanging hams in the windows of the C-130 doing a flyby at the local airshow? E4s.

  Base commander’s beloved prize-winning pecan orchard mysteriously converted into high-velocity matchsticks by precise application of low-yield explosives? Bored E4s.

  When I was promoted to my current position, it required thirty minutes of arguing on the part of the chief deputy before I finally accepted the promotion, and that was with the caveat that the sheriff and the chief deputy understand that I am absolutely and totally addlepated when it comes to the day-to-day administrative paperwork. “Nae problem!” sayeth them, and Thing 1 was detached to be my ADC.

  Well, one year later, and I went from reporting to the head of a bureau of the sheriff’s office to reporting directly to the sheriff. As such, my duties expanded considerably, and I developed another ADC: Thing 2.

  Both Thing 1 and Thing 2 were sergeants with eight years+ experience in the sheriff’s office. They were both literally young enough to be my children, and they were both female.

  I learned several things in the last year. The first of which was that I had no idea how the fathers of daughters survive, much less maintain their sanity. Seriously. Multiple conversations in the office between those two ended with me yelping, “I’m sitting right here, and there are things that I do not need to know about!”

  Secondly, when it came to flexible scruples and ruthless pragmatism, all those E4s I had known—and I’d known a lot—all those male miscreant E4s didn’t hold a candle to my two female miscreant sergeants.

  For example: I was sitting at my desk when Thing 1 and Thing 2 staggered through the doorway, carrying a cube-ish OD green wossname.

  Me: “What is that?”

  Thing 1: “It’s a wossname!”

  Me: “It looks like a fridge. With Air Force markings.”

  Thing 2: “Really?”

  Me: “You’ve been in the DD-1033 room, haven’t you?”

  Thing 1: “Isn’t the DD-1033 room locked?”

  Me: “Yes.”

  Thing 2: “Then it couldn’t have been the DD-1033 room. Place we found this wasn’t locked.”

  Me: *migraine salute*

  Sheriff
: *wandering through with a cup of coffee* “Huh. Nice fridge. Probably fit better over by the filing cabinets.”

  Both Things: “Thank you, sir!”

  *sigh*

  And I wasn’t known as the greatest respecter of rank around, but really….

  I was wandering through the office when I heard the walrus snorting of Senior Officer Who Shall Remain Nameless in his patented Condescending Neanderthal persona, together with a voice I recognized as Thing 2. This immediately caused me to buttonhook the corner in full fire-breathing mode only to find Thing 2 apparently hanging on every word coming out of the pie-hole of SOWSRN.

  SOWSRN: “Condescend. Condescend, condescend, condescendingly.”

  Thing 2: “Really?”

  I swear I’d seen smaller eyes in anime.

  SOWSRN: “Condescend!”

  Behind SOWSRN, I saw Thing 1 steer a two-wheeled dolly into the open door of the office occupied, coincidentally, by SOWSRN.

  Thing 2: “I never would have though of that!”

  SOWSRN: “Condescending, condescend, condescended.”

  Thing 1 reappeared in the office doorway. Strapped to the dolly was one very large, very expensive, and thus very scarce, very tightly controlled widget. Thing 1, the dolly, and the widget disappeared down the hallway.

  Thing 2: “It’s been so very interesting talking to you! We mustn’t keep you! Bye!”

  SOWSRN turned and ambled back to his office, whuffing contentedly. At the door he turned. I was totally at a loss. I think I may have been covering my mouth with a hand. I’d never done that before.

  Thing 2 (sotto voce while giving a small wave): “Smile and wave, boss. Smile and wave.”

  And then there was the time Thing 1 and Thing 2 had just unloaded a spectacular quantity of wossnames from the back end of the POV owned by Thing 2.

  Me: “I really didn’t think you’d be able to get all of those in there.”

  Thing 2: “Are you kidding? I can haul seven dead bodies AND the shovel all at the same time!”