An hour later Clipper walked out of the police station, and grinned at the warm sun on his face. The trembling in his hands had subsided, and although he was still feeling a little outside of himself, as if he were watching a moderately interesting movie, he was also beginning to feel the guilty elation that comes with winning the ultimate game. “We’re gonna need beer,” he told Ann with a tight grin as they climbed into her car.
Chapter 2.11
After a long, largely sleepless night, the next day started early with a breakfast phone call from a psychologist. Ray Wheeler was a comfortable, middle-aged Doctor of Psychology who was on retainer to several local law enforcement agencies that needed occasional mental health assistance. Clipper had been expecting the call as part of the department’s standard operating procedure and, although he liked and respected Wheeler, he had not been looking forward to talking to him.
“Hi Doc,” Clipper said blandly when Ann gave him the phone.
“Good morning, Thomas. Didn’t get you out of bed, I hope.”
“Naw, I’ve been up all night… thinking about eating my gun.” Clipper grinned into the shocked silence.
“Ah… you remember that your department policy requires that you have an assessment? To see if counseling might be beneficial?”
“I remember, Doc,” Clipper said, “but I have a pretty firm rule that nobody gets inside my head but me.”
Wheeler finally laughed. “Believe me,” he said chuckling, “the last place I want to be is inside your head, but you know the box has got to be checked. Why don’t you drop down to my office around one tomorrow afternoon and we’ll have a little chat.”
Clipper knew that a refusal on his part might come back to bite him in any civil suit arising from the shooting, so he grudgingly agreed. “Ok, ok, but I’m wearing my tinfoil helmet.”
For the rest of the morning, Ann stayed busy screening calls. Clipper spoke to cops and a few close friends, and made an appointment to meet the Attorney General’s investigator at the Station at one o’clock. After a quick lunch, he had Ann drive him to the station early, wanting to spend some time with John Peters.
Clipper found Peters seated at his desk, reading follow-up reports.
“Don’t get too comfortable, there.” he said. “I don’t plan to be gone all that long.”
“You can come back right now, for all of me.” Peters tossed a report back on the pile. “I don’t know how you deal with all this paperwork, especially now that you’re famous and all.” At Clipper’s questioning look, Peters tossed a sheet of typing paper onto the desk. “The phantom poet strikes again.” he said with a laugh. “I figured I’d better take this down before No-Ass saw it and fired someone.”
The upper levels had a breach,
when Chief No-Ass o’er stepped his reach.
Reporters on the floor, you say?
Don’t worry, Lieutenant Clipper saved the day.
With hammer fist and mighty roar,
he showed the press the exit door.
Then he turned with righteous ire,
and held the Chief’s feet to the fire.
He roared, “Don’t ever do what you did today,
and for all time hence, stay out of my way!”
PP
Clipper read the poem and grinned ruefully. “Yeah, or before a real poet saw it and sued the department for abuse of poetic license or something.” Chuckling, Clipper pulled up a chair, and spent the next forty-five minutes bringing Peters up to speed on the current case assignments, and reviewing the progress on the homicides.
At five to one, Chris Donald, the investigator from the Attorney General’s office, walked through the door accompanied by an older State Police detective named James Small. Clipper had known Donald for several years and considered him a competent, if somewhat unimaginative, investigator. He and Small went back a little further, and Clipper was glad to see that streetwise old trooper was assigned to the case.
They took seats around the small table in an interview room and Donald set up a professional looking recorder and uttered a few test words. He played it back, erased it and restarted it giving the date and time and naming those present. He stated that the interview was in regards to the death of one Matthew McMaster, and then read the standard Miranda Warning from a card. Clipper responded that he understood his rights and was willing to continue the interview without having an attorney present. He then took them through the entire incident, from the first radio call to his arrival at home, his fists unconsciously clenched as he described his mad dash through traffic to head off the chase, and his voice catching as the shooting unfolded again in his mind. The investigators asked for clarification on several points, and at the end of an hour, Donald ended the interview, turned the recorder off and sat back in his chair. “That should do it,” he said. They’ve got a nice security video of McMaster in the bank, and he’s got a bunch of priors. I’ve got a few more interviews to do, and there’s the lab work… should be able to wrap this up in a week with any luck. We’ll be in touch.”
Clipper left the interview room and went looking for John Peters for another quick progress meeting on the homicide investigations, and found him at his own desk.
“How’d it go?” asked the sergeant.
“Ok,” said Clipper tiredly, “no surprises.”
Peters gave him a speculative look. “I took one other poem off the bulletin board this morning,” he said quietly, passing a folded piece of paper to Clipper.
Clipper opened it and read:
A bad man came to town today,
had not the sense to stay away.
He was running from a vicious crime,
just passing through for a warmer clime.
but no matter how far or how fast you go,
you can’t outrun the radio.
Spotted and trapped, he turned to the gun,
and started a fight that couldn’t be won.
Clipper stood tall with his big forty-five,
and still stands today – the last one alive.
With steely resolve and monstrous class,
he met that bad man and smoked his bad ass.
PP
“You ok?” Peters asked quietly.
“Yeah, but we’d probably better find this guy before his poetry goes public.” Clipper sighed. “I don’t think Bangor’s ready for this brand of cop humor.”
Clipper grabbed one of the casebooks and went to find his truck. He picked it up in the secure lot behind the station and drove it to an auto glass place to arrange for the side window replacement. As it turned out, they were able to get him right in, and he was on his way home within an hour with only a couple of small tears in the headliner to remind him of the damage.
Ann was waiting when Clipper walked in the house. “Are you all right?” she asked worriedly.
“Piece of cake,” said Clipper tossing the casebook on the kitchen table. They’ll probably get it to the grand jury this term, and it’ll be over.”
“Grand Jury! Why the grand jury? You didn’t do anything wrong!” Ann’s voice rose.
“Take it easy,” Clipper soothed, smiling at her protective anger. “That’s for my benefit. After the AG rules it a justifiable shooting, he’ll present it to the grand jury and hopefully get a no-bill to make it official.”
“Hopefully? Hopefully! What if…”
Clipper laughed. “Relax. Let the system work. And speaking of relaxing, why don’t you go home. I appreciate you staying last night and ferrying me around today, but I’m ok. I got my truck back and some work I need to do. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, you need someone around here. When are you going to settle down and get married?” Clipper smiled as the old argument reared its ugly head. He was currently between girlfriends, his last relationship having drifted to an end six months previously. He liked women, but he also valued his privacy and enjoyed living alone, which was completely at odds with Ann’s need for an active family scene, and a constant source o
f friendly sibling bickering.
After considerably more urging and the extraction of a promise to call her every day, Ann reluctantly left, and Clipper took a beer and the case book out to his deck. He spent the rest of the afternoon poring over the reports and lab findings and found nothing new. He was still leaning toward some sort of business related motive, but he couldn’t figure one that made sense.
When hunger forced him out of the case book, he wandered into the kitchen and made a desultory search of the refrigerator and freezer before finally slipping a flat Llama .380 automatic into his hip pocket and leaving the house. He drove downtown, left the truck in the First Bank lot and strolled along Exchange Street to a small family-owned Chinese restaurant. As a patrol officer, Clipper had once apprehended a burglar in the act of trying to pry the door off a small safe in the restaurant office and had been treated like royalty by Mister Ling, the elderly owner, ever since. Clipper did not eat there often, because Mr. Ling always refused to give him a check. Embarrassed, but not wanting to offend, Clipper always accepted the old man’s generosity and left a fifty dollar tip. Tonight, Mr. Ling, himself, seated him and stood by, chatting brightly until the food arrived. Clipper ate a leisurely meal of steamed sea bass and mixed vegetables, and was sipping the last of his green tea, when a shadow fell over the table. He looked up to see Chief Norris standing alone, his wife seated in a booth across the room.
“I won’t interrupt your meal,” said Norris, “but I wanted to tell you I have no hard feelings over that incident with the press yesterday. I understand the stress you’re under with the homicides, and I’m also drafting a commendation for your actions in apprehending the bank robber.” Norris spoke as if delivering a prepared speech with a stiff little nod at the end. Clipper murmured a surprised, “Thank you.”, staring, open mouthed, as Norris walked back to rejoin his wife.
Clipper drove home and stumbled to bed at eight o’clock as the previous forty-eight hours caught up with him. His last thought before falling into a deep slumber was: “I wonder what that political creep’s up to…”
Randolph ‘Peeps’ Pelky stood six feet, seven inches tall and tipped the scales at a whopping one hundred and forty-two pounds. His perfectly round skull was tufted with spikey brown hair and his eyes always bulged wide open in a face blistered with chronic impetigo, giving him the look of a pencil topped with a surprised grape. His arms and legs were scabrous sticks, his hands and wrists so small that several police officers had found out he couldn’t be secured by regular handcuffs.
At age 19, Peeps had been on the street for three years, and that was unlikely to change as his grateful parents had taken his absence as an opportunity to start a new life in a different state. Peeps reveled in an IQ just three times his age, and an absolute conviction that houses had windows in them for the sole purpose of his entertainment. It was a rare family in Bangor that hadn’t experienced the eerie thrill of seeing Peep’s round eyes peeking over their windowsill, and Bangor’s patrol officers figured someday someone would make good on the oft heard threat of ‘Takin’ my shotgun to that spooky bastid’.
Peeps normally spent a great deal of time avoiding the police, but right now he would have been cheered to know that Bangor’s finest were looking for him. He been spotted and chased by some stranger when he took a look into the house on Broadway the other night, so he’d taken an impromptu three day road trip with a couple of guys who let him hang around because he was a skilled shoplifter who could keep them in cigarettes and munchies. He’d drifted back into town with the sunset and was headed for a late supper at the trash cans behind Avery’s Bakery, when a car pulled to the curb beside him and a voice said, “Excuse me?” Peeps had slowly come to his senses laying on the ground with a raging headache, arms securely wrapped in duct tape and someone humming cheerfully in the background. Crying in fear and confusion, he struggled to look over his head as the humming stopped and footsteps approached.
Chapter 2.12
The next morning, Clipper called in to make sure nothing was breaking with the homicides and then carried a thermos of coffee out to his workshop. Clipper’s workshop was a twenty by thirty foot building he had built himself, completely finished with electricity and running water, on a cement slab fifty feet behind the house. Inside, he had created a well-designed woodworking shop with table saw, band saw, planer, drill press and lathe along with two long work benches and a large assembly table. With the flip of a switch, cool white fluorescent lighting reflected from off-white walls, and NPR’s classical music wafted from ceiling mounted stereo speakers.
Clipper tied on a shop apron and moved to a small, five-shelf bookcase sitting on the assembly table. Constructed of maple boards to his own design, it was complete except for final sanding and finishing. Clipper dampened the sides and top of the case lightly with water from a spray bottle and found some 320 grit sandpaper and his orbital sander while it dried. After gently sanding the slightly raised grain smooth, he dusted the case off with compressed air and wiped it thoroughly with a tack cloth. Applying Danish oil to a clean shop rag, he took his time, working the oil deep into the wood, fascinated as always by the magical change from flat, unfinished wood to swirling surfaces of molten honey shot through with cinnamon stripes twisting up from previously unimagined depths. For a while, the stress of police work did not exist.
Clipper stepped back at the end of two hours, shoulders tired and hands cramped, but pleased with his efforts. After the oil dried for a couple of days, he’d wax and buff the bookcase and sneak it into Ann’s house, just in time for her birthday.
Clipper was cleaning up when his cell phone chirped in his pocket. He thumbed it on, expecting John Peters. “Hello.”
“Hi, Clip,” said Ed Bass. “How’re you holding up?”
“Oh, hi Ed. Doing ok. Out in my shop, making sawdust.”
Bass chuckled. “I wondered if we could get together today or tomorrow. If you’re up for it, that is… talk about the reenactment…” Bass trailed off, clearly ill at ease.
“Sure Ed,” said Clipper. “It’s not a problem. We could shoot for three this afternoon if you want to give Murch a call. We spent some time together the other day and hashed out some ideas.”
“Ok, good. Ah…have you talked to Chief Norris lately?”
“As a matter of fact, we spoke briefly last night. Why?”
“I…er, happened to overhear a little conversation he had with the City Manager, yesterday afternoon. Seems he thought you needed some kind of discipline for something or other, couldn’t hear just what.” Bass laughed. “I won’t repeat what the Manager told him, but it wasn’t pretty. I’d love to know to know just what you did to piss him off.”
Clipper laughed. “I’ll tell you over a beer sometime. See you later.”
After a quick cucumber and tomato sandwich and diet coke lunch, Clipper showered and changed into clean khaki slacks and a loose-fitting polo shirt. He clipped the Llama to his hip out of habit, pulling the shirt down over it on his way out the door.
Ray Wheeler liked cops. He was intrigued by their ability to deal with the pathos and horrors of their job, compassionate and understanding when the job got the best of them. He’d served three years as an Army infantryman during in the early ninety’s, and had a clear, real-world understanding of the danger of sudden or prolonged stress. He cast a critical eye on Clipper as he led him to a comfortable chair in his office. “Well,” he said taking his own chair, “how’s it going?”
“Fine, Doc,” answered Clipper, feeling a little like a bug under a microscope. “I’m ok, really.”
“Are you sleeping well?”
“I’m sleeping fine, Doc. Right now my biggest worry is that my gun’s being held as evidence, and I can’t get my hands on it to clean it.”
Wheeler made a noncommittal sound that made Clipper realize that he sounded a little too flip. “Well,” he said, “I guess that’s not true. My biggest problem is figuring out who killed Bill Owens and Rupert Jones. This is
a damn inconvenient time to be suspended.”
“But you do understand the reason for the suspension?”
“Of course I do, but there’s still no problem on my end, Doc. A real bad man chose a gunfight over surrender, and I did my job. I was better than him.” Clipper smiled. “I’d really be upset if it had been the other way around.”
Wheeler chuckled, and Clipper relaxed. They chatted for another fifteen minutes before Wheeler leaned back with a sigh. “Ok, he said. “Consider the box checked. I’ll clear you for duty, but I want your promise to call if you have any trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, feel fatigued or depressed, anything out of the ordinary.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” Clipper said with a tired smile.
“Don’t blow this off, Clip. You have to be aware of changes, in your interpersonal relationships too. If a friend says you’re changing, listen to him. Or her. You seeing anyone now?”
“Nope, none of my relationship are that interpersonal right now.”
“Ok. Well, listen to yourself and your friends, and maybe drop by and see me sometime.”
“You got it,” said Clipper getting to his feet with relief. “Thanks, boss.”
Clipper left Wheeler’s office with a vague feeling of contentment and an unconscious smile on his lips.
With an hour to kill, Clipper stopped by Gunsmoke, a gun shop and shooting range on the edge of town. He talked guns with the owner for a while, handled some pistols, filled out some paperwork, and walked out an hour later, $1,350 dollars lighter in the checkbook, but with a brand new Kimber Tactical Pro II lightweight .45 in his hand. Granddad’s old .45 had earned its rest.
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