Time Skip

by Craig L. Seymour

  And then he realized that he was concentrating on the people that he considered to bear the blame, when there might be a whole host of people who were in no way responsible, but who might have been well positioned to do something if only they had known what he knew. This might include baggage screeners, customs and immigration officers, flight instructors, or other random individuals who would have contact with either the hijackers or the plotters. He wondered if he might be able to position himself to deal with the terrorists directly, if only he could remember their names and faces. But, that was his problem. He had always struggled with the recollection of details. Names, faces, and dates were not his strong suit.

  He remembered Mohamed Atta, and the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid. With that and a smattering of other facts, he was confident that he could piece the rest together if he had the authority and the resources of the FBI. But without that, he wasn’t sure what he could do.

  He could attempt to get the information into the hands of people who did have the resources to deal with it. But, without more detail he couldn’t imagine his somewhat vague recollection of events leading up to that day would carry much weight. As he remembered it, there were numerous warnings from people of substantial credibility, yet nothing was done. He could hardly imagine how he might hope to influence anyone.

  Lovelle let things drag on for a while without making any kind of decision. Eventually friends and family took notice. His parents were concerned that he was letting the FBI rejection drag him down. They just wanted to see him do something that looked like a positive career step. And Trina and Katie had both come to suspect that things had fallen through, and were just wondering when he would tell them. They would tell him so when he finally confided in them.

  Both women were typically sympathetic and insisted that there was no reason to spare them from his misery. They insisted that was what friends were for. He responded to both of them that he felt like all the grief was flowing in one direction, and he was tired of being a broken record.

  “You’re not a broken record,” Trina teased, “You always find something new to be depressed about.”

  “Well, I’m glad my misfortune amuses you,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll be sure to find something else to fail at so you won’t get too bored.”

  “Shut up!” she cocked her head, doing her best valley girl imitation.

  She wouldn’t let him go that day until they had talked through the situation. This was unusually awkward, since, for once, Trina really couldn’t help him. Unlike in the past, he really couldn’t let her get to the crux of the matter. Previously, although he had to leave out certain details, his troubles were either matters which were relevant only to the life he was currently living, or matters of the heart where he had always been able to create a fiction which could explain why he was forlorn, such as the mystery girl, or just simply that he had fallen head over heals for “Katie from work”. But, this time there was no way to express how important it was that he join the FBI, and that no other sort of law enforcement or public service could substitute. He knew it would seem like an odd obsession if he tried to explain it in any other way than the truth, so he didn’t express the sentiment at all. What Trina was left with was someone who didn’t seem capable of getting past what should have been a small setback.

  *****

  Since he could not come to any conclusion about how to proceed, Lovelle finally decided he needed to get off of the fence and get on with life. He would have to formulate some plan down the road, but, continuing to live in his parent’s house was not going to help him decide what to do. So he made what seemed like the most logical career choice at the time, and he became a cop. More precisely, he became a sheriff’s deputy. A county near where he lived was hiring and as the Detroit area was the home of the single largest population of Middle Eastern immigrants in the United States, his language skills made him an excellent candidate.

  His original law enforcement plans involved moving away. He had been looking for a small but busy department where he might have the best chance of standing out. And, he had wanted to isolate himself for a time, separating himself from the distraction of his relationship troubles. But those plans had been built around the idea of getting into the FBI. Now he was simply hoping to do some good while he decided what to do about the September 11 attacks.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lovelle was sent away from home for his training and found himself separated from everything and everybody that he had ever known. For the first time in nearly 7 years he wasn’t surrounded by people and things to remind him of his situation. He was having a totally unique experience. He expected it to be a welcome break from the stress that he had been under. Instead, he hated it. He hated the structure. He hated the authoritarianism. He hated the omnipresence of his trainers. All of his adult life he had worked in some sort of independent position. As far back as his time at Wayne State he was working as a part time manufacturer’s rep. This time around he had worked as a route sales rep and a courier during his summers off. Having a supervisor breath down his neck was not something he was used to, and he was barely able to tolerate it. And as a 39 year old he found it nearly impossible to hold his tongue when an instructor who was actually his junior by several years decided to berate him. More than a couple of times he came very close to dropping out, or being ejected.

  But, when it was all said and done he had managed to finish and went to work. But, work was hardly better than the academy. He was back on the road, but with a training officer sharing the cruiser. He still couldn’t relax. And Sergeant Nova was not exactly his kind of person. He was abrasive and egotistical without any good reason. He was not endowed with any characteristic Lovelle could imagine being proud of, except maybe for self-assurance. And frankly, Lovelle couldn’t understand where that came from. He was neither handsome, charming, nor intelligent. He was, to put it bluntly, an oaf. He was big and lumbering and not all that bright.

  His type of arrogance was not a good mix with any kind of power. But this kind of power was exactly what men like him were drawn to. He was the kind of cop that makes even law abiding citizens nervous of the police. And he clearly wanted Lovelle to be one too. But Lovelle was the opposite type of person. He was far more likely to err on the side of leniency. He went into this career with reservations as it was. His long held live and let live philosophy already made him uncomfortable with the idea of enforcing certain laws that he believed to be an unnecessary interference in people’s private affairs. But, going in, he had decided that the good he could do would outweigh any bad. What he found rather quickly was that there would be a lot of discomfort in the job, offset by very little sense of accomplishment.

  It wasn’t that the sheriff’s department wasn’t doing plenty of good in the community. But Lovelle felt like he was nothing more than a body in a squad car. And while sometimes that was all it took to prevent some crimes, it had nothing to do with him in particular. It did not really balance out that he was doing some things that he really didn’t believe in.

  When the presence of a police cruiser stops someone from speeding through a residential area and striking a pedestrian, no one ever knows it, not even the officers. Only the errant driver even knows that he was slowed by the police, and he can never know how things would have turned out if he had continued on at high speed. But when Lovelle and the Sergeant confiscated some guy’s car because he was soliciting a prostitute, it was Lovelle who made the arrest. He couldn’t help feeling that the real villain in that scenario was him.

  Adding to that struggle was a strong feeling of isolation. He did not feel that there was anyone to confide in. He was determined to succeed in this job. Failure might interfere with his future ability to stop the 9/11 attacks. He couldn’t chance that anyone at work might find out how he felt, and he didn’t want anyone he cared about to pressure him to quit.

  So he muddled through, waiting for something to change. It was the same kind of thing he had done in his first
life. Without any real plan, he just hoped that something good would happen. He was waiting for something that would let him know what to do next. Unlike in his first life, this time, however, something was going to happen to force his hand. Things were going to come to a head in less than a year. And the way things were going to change he could never have anticipated.

  *****

  Lovelle was on patrol with the Sergeant when a domestic dispute call came in. They arrived on the scene and found a young woman hiding in her car, with her father pounding on the hood, and kicking at the door. She was in no immediate danger, so Lovelle tried to settle the man down. He jumped out of the cruiser and approached the man. “I need you to back away from the car.” But as he tried to get in between the man and the car the man made the mistake of taking a swing at him. He missed by a mile, but that was all the excuse that Nova needed. He moved in to grab the man, and the man resisted. The next thing Lovelle knew, the man was on the ground, blood pouring from his nose. Nova kicked him and then picked him back up, cursing “You stupid sonofabitch!” and slammed him against the car to cuff him. For a long moment Lovelle was in shock, not sure what he should do. This was exactly what he had been afraid would happen if he worked with Nova for too long. When he regained his own composure he moved in to try and calm his Sergeant down.

  “Take it easy, Sarge.”

  But Nova seemed completely oblivious as he pulled the squirming man back off the car and slammed him down again. By then, the daughter was out of her car.

  “Don’t hurt him!” she shouted. Nova ignored her as well and twisted the man’s arm behind him violently.

  “Get the cuffs on this jerk!” he yelled at Lovelle. Deciding this to be his best chance to diffuse the situation, Lovelle did so as quickly as he could and took possession of the man, moving him to the back of the cruiser.

  Nova saw what Lovelle was doing and objected, “Don’t put the jerk in there, he’s gonna bleed all over my car.” Lovelle ignored him, retrieved a towel for the man’s nose, then eased him into the cruiser. Then he turned his attention to the daughter. She was berating the Sergeant, and Lovelle was afraid that the situation, which was now more or less in control, might get ugly again.

  He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Miss, I need to ask you some questions,” he said, loudly but gently, and extracted her from the situation. At the same time, another cruiser arrived and gave Nova someone else to talk with. As the Sergeant regaled the other deputies with his story of stepping in to protect the ‘rookie’, Lovelle talked with the young woman. It turned out that her father had run out of his medication, and that he was having an episode.

  “Look, Deputy Lovelle, I realize that my dad took a swing at you and you have to arrest him. But your partner went way overboard.”

  “He's not my partner. He's my boss.” Lovelle corrected, and the woman got the sense that he was upset by Nova's actions as well.

  “What I'm wondering is, if I file a complaint, what are you going to say you saw?”

  “Ma’am, I saw Sergeant Nova hit the suspect in the face, kick him while he was lying on the ground, and push him into the side of our cruiser twice. That is what I saw, and that is what I will swear to if asked.”

  That was the beginning of the end of Lovelle’s career with the Sheriff’s department. As soon as he made the decision to go against his training officer in a lawsuit, he was sure that he could not go on with the department. In light of the way he was already feeling about being there, he knew he wouldn’t be able to continue once he was branded as a whistle blower.

  *****

  As if he needed even more trouble, his situation became even more complicated when Lovelle became involved with the daughter. Her name was Lisa, and she was a twenty-four year old graduate student. Her mother had died giving birth to her, and she had been raised by her grandparents while her father struggled with the loss of his wife. His mental health had gone into a downward spiral from there. The two had been apart for a long time, but, in recent years he had been able to gain control of his life with medication, and Lisa had allowed him back into her own life. However, he was living barely above poverty level, and he had failed to make his meds the number one priority. The night of the altercation she had come to visit him and found him in a belligerent state. She had dropped her purse on a table while she tried to settle him down. When that didn’t work, she found herself taking refuge in her car without keys to start the engine. Fortunately, her cell phone was on the seat, and she was able to call for help.

  The last thing Lovelle would have ever expected was that he might get involved with the kind of woman who had domestic violence in their life. But, it turned out that Lisa was not at all that type of person. Her grandparents were upstanding people, and had raised her with strong values. She was nothing like most of the people he met on the job.

  He found Lisa to be engaging, attractive and intelligent. She found him to be compassionate and mature. It was pretty clear, much to the chagrin of her father’s attorney, that they were smitten. So, just as the lawyer had asked Lovelle not to quit his job until the case was over, he asked him to put his feelings on the back burner as well. The last thing they needed was for the opposing side to be able to negate his testimony by painting him with the taint of self-interest.

  For Lovelle, putting his love life on the back burner was easy enough. He was well practiced at it by that time. But asking Lisa to wait might be another story altogether. Since the lawyer had approached Lovelle about the matter first, Lovelle had indicated that he would take care of it. Initially, the process was as simple as stopping the flirting. As obvious as their interest in one another was, it was yet unspoken when the attorney had made his request, so Lovelle thought it best to manage the situation without Lisa’s knowledge, leaving her free to act naturally.

  At first Lisa took this abrupt change in behavior to mean that Lovelle was no longer interested. She figured that he had found somebody else, or that she had done something to turn him off. She could live with the notion that he had a new love interest. But, she would be very upset to know that she had done something wrong. Like many people, particularly those of the feminine persuasion, she could not live with not knowing. And, unlike when she was patiently waiting for him to move beyond flirting, this was a question she needed an answer to now. She cornered him after a meeting with the attorney just a few weeks before the first court date. . “Curtis, I have to ask you a question.”

  “Sure, what’s up?” Lovelle answered, having no idea what was coming.

  “Why did you lose interest in me?” She was a particularly direct person, which was one of the things Lovelle liked about her.

  “Lose interest?” for his part, Lovelle was rarely so direct and played dumb instead.

  “Don’t.” she said sternly, “Don’t treat me like I’m some ignorant girl with a crush.”

  “I’m sorry. I... uh…” he stammered then caught himself and shook his head. He took a deep breath and quickly decided to play it straight with her. She was a smart, level headed young woman who deserved as much. “Look, Mr. Ramstad asked me to cool it. He doesn’t feel it will play well to a jury if your father’s main witness is dating his daughter. And he’s right. I might not exactly come across as impartial.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me that? Are you that full of yourself? Did you think I'd fall to pieces if I couldn't date you?” She was bordering on anger now. “Did You…”

  “No! Not at all.” he interrupted, laughing out loud at the very thought, before she could go any further. “I just uh… I uh… Well I… I guess I'm not used to trusting people not to be led around by their emotions. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so jaded about people, and I certainly should have known better than to assume something like that about you. I shouldn’t have even assumed that you had feelings for me. It was stupid. I guess when I don't expect someone to do what I think is right I try to find ways not to give them any choice.”

  “You’re right. That is stup
id.” She sneered then walked out in a huff.

  Actually it wasn’t stupid. She called him at home for the first time that night to apologize for walking out that way. She expressed that she was still angry that he had misjudged her. “You really can’t go around trying to manipulate people that way. And I hate that you thought that I would put my love life before the wellbeing of my dad.” She paused and then took a more conciliatory tone, “But I know that you were only doing it for good reasons, so I forgive you.” She then went on to express how happy she was to finally know that their affection was mutual, and that she could hardly wait until the case was over. She told him that the attorney thought that there would be a settlement offer after the pre-trial hearing and how she hoped it would be enough.

  All of that was fine, because he felt exactly the same way, and he told her so. Getting those feelings out into the open was not the problem. The problem was, that even as she was willing and able to put off the physical, or rather, the direct contact portion of the relationship, she had the emotional side in full swing. She called him each night for the next 3 nights to talk at length about anything and everything. And on the third night, as he was preparing to tell her that she should not be calling him like that, she informed him of just how happy her best friend was to hear about them.

  That was it. Lovelle was vindicated. As bright as Lisa was, and she was very smart, she was a scholarship student just a short distance away from getting her MBA, she was still partially blinded by her emotions. Not that this was anything but normal. Lovelle knew full well how emotions could trip you up. He had been miss stepping for years now. He also knew that he had been right to worry about her slipping up once the cat was out of the bag. She could no more sit patiently on the verge of a relationship than your average man could patiently wait to consummate a relationship once it’s in full swing. Oh, he’ll wait. But not because he wants to. It’s not natural for him. It must be forced. Forced by morality or simply respect for his partner. So he waits, but not patiently. And Lisa could wait too. But it was up to Lovelle to point out to her the dangers of phone records and possible depositions of friends and family. Just a few days earlier the only thing between them was a mutual attraction. Now, however, there was some version of a relationship, and to testify otherwise would be perjury. So any hint of suspicion by the opposing lawyers would put them both, and anyone she might tell, in jeopardy.