American by Day

by Derek B. Miller

  Irv says as much: “That’s why I took the job, Roger.”

  “Yes, Sheriff,” says Roger.

  Irving is sitting at his desk at the police station with his snip-toe cowboy boots, crossed and steady, up where they shouldn’t be. Roger does not require all of Irv’s attention, so he uses the reserves to tear open a white packet of sugar while balancing a phone in the crook of his neck. It occurs to Irv, as Roger rambles on, that only a person of a certain age would even try to cradle a cell phone in the crook of his neck. It’s an interesting exercise, though, at least compared to listening to Roger Mandel.

  “I was elected to enforce the law, not make the law, Roger,” Irv yells into the phone. “You talk to the state legislature if you want to know where laws come from. They will surely give you a guided tour of their own assholes. There’s always room in there for one more. Meanwhile, I cannot, will not, and don’t even want to talk about the Simmons case, which isn’t even a case anymore, as the judgment came in months ago. And I would like to remind you that the death of Jeffrey Simmons took place on the other side of an invisible jurisdictional line that the American people, in their infinite wisdom, have established, thereby turning what looks like one place into two places, so they can have someone else in charge over there who isn’t me. So go back to your rock, Roger!”

  “But there’s a family connection between the Simmons case and Lydia Jones case, Sheriff. And the Jones’ case is in your jurisdiction. So what happened over there might have had an influence on what happened over here. There’s got to be a link.”

  “Not a legal one.”

  “Surely you’ve got an opinion, Sheriff?”

  “Police work, Roger, is not a matter of opinion. In the name of the good Lord Jesus Christ, if I ran an investigation on the basis of opinion and ideology and not facts I’d be breaking the Ninth Commandment—God’s law itself—by, de facto, bearing false witness against my neighbor—or, more accurately—by bearing witness against my neighbor that I could not, in all good consciousness, swear was not false because I don’t have the facts. Do you see my point? What I’m saying is that I cannot be a good Christian and swear on His name without data. Science is not antithetical to the Christian spirit, Roger. It is the means by which we enact the justice that God has commanded of us to perform unto our fellow man. Why am I the only one who gets this? I remind you that I ran on a platform of ‘excellence through knowledge’ and I’m six years into repeating myself and if I wanted to be repeating myself ten times a day I’d still be married. Why do you keep calling me? Are you lonely?”

  Irv pours the packet of sugar into his coffee, not dropping a grain to the ground.

  “I got papers on the left side of my desk, Roger, that have to be moved all the way over to the right side. You think they’re gonna get up and move themselves? I’m busy here. Go do your Hunter Thompson thing someplace else.”

  Irving hangs up.

  He shouts his views to Melinda and Cory in the next room.

  “You know why they want opinions? Because it’s cheaper and easier than finding the facts. Whatever happened to the days of Bartles and Jaymes or whoever the hell took down Nixon?”

  Irving looks up from his coffee mug—World’s Most Average Dad—and finds he is alone in the office.

  “Where the hell is everyone?” he mutters under his breath.

  “WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYONE,” he shouts at the top of his lungs.

  Cory Liddell pops his head into the main station room from the adjoining waiting room—christened the Green Room on account of people there waiting to “join the show”—and explains that everyone is in there.

  “Well . . . why? It’s past eight. We’re supposed to be . . . working.”

  Cory says it’s James’s birthday today so they were having ice cream cake, which is why everyone is in the other room.

  “At eight in the morning?”

  Cory says the freezer is on the fritz again so they have to eat it now.

  “Well . . . that’s perfectly reasonable then,” Irving said. “Just remember, you’re all on duty. And you’re getting fat. I don’t like fat cops. Nothing more pathetic than a fat, wheezing cop trotting down a road after a perp, holding his belt up. There’s a video series on the internet now of all kinds of hoodlums filming the fat cops who are chasing them. Wheezing and puffing and turning bright red. At least the black cops don’t turn red. Still fat, though. God I hate seeing that. I can run a ten-K in fifty-two minutes and I’m forty-eight years old.”

  Irving Wylie checks the local news, the state news, the national news, and they are all talking about a black man with a foreign-sounding name who may soon be elected president of the United States in November. Irving is a big John McCain supporter, and considers the senator—much like himself—among the last of the Real Republicans, but when McCain chose that reason-impaired bimbo from Alaska to be his running mate even Irv had to get off the GOP elevator. That doesn’t mean Irv is ready to jump ship and become a Democrat—because really, what is a Democrat?—but it does mean he can pretend it’s all not happening right up until the excruciating and bitter end, and by then, hopefully, the election will be a fait accompli and his vote won’t matter anyway.

  McCain, though, is getting pudgy too, and he hates to think of Palin being one cholesterol-saturated heartbeat away from the presidency. The good news, he figures, is that elections couldn’t possibly get any weirder than this one.

  The sheriff’s station—at Irving’s instruction—has a bell over the door so that people who come inside will be announced and feel like welcomed customers. Most find it disconcerting but he’s holding on to it. This morning when the bell rings, Irving looks across his coffee mug and watches a middle-aged, slightly disheveled, semi-OK-looking blonde walk in wearing aviators and carrying a motorcyclist’s messenger bag and a guitar case; all of which is incongruous enough to be suspicious.

  The woman scans the police station like the Terminator, locks on to Irving, and proceeds to his desk.

  “Are you Irving Wylie?” she asks.

  “That pleasure is mine,” Irving says without conviction.

  “I’m here to report a missing person,” she adds.

  She is foreign. He can’t place the accent, though. The three most common foreign accents up here are French Canadian, Mexican, and Brooklyn, and she doesn’t sound like any of the three.

  “I can help you with that,” he offers.

  “Are you the police chief?”

  “I’m the sheriff.”

  The woman does not reply.

  Irv removes his feet from the desk and sits properly. He reaches for a pen and clicks it open a few times for effect. It clearly has none, so he continues:

  “I’m Irving Wylie, duly elected second-term sheriff, at your service. You can call me Irv. What’s in the guitar case?”

  “A guitar. You were elected?”

  “Well . . . it wasn’t a coup or rigged or anything, if that’s what you’re wondering. What kind of guitar?”

  “Acoustic. You elect police officers in America?”

  “We elect sheriffs in much of America and specifically here in Jefferson County. Ma’am, are you on any medication?”

  “No.”

  “Are you supposed to be?”

  Irv can’t recall the last time a blonde made him nervous. Redheads, obviously, but not blondes.

  Well, actually, there was the odd Nazi or two, and there has been some minor trouble with white supremacist gangs, but those were all blond men. Not women. This woman is clearly not a gang member either. She isn’t a drug user, a heavy smoker, a chronic drinker, nor does she have any obvious tattoos. She isn’t wearing anything to concern him, like gang colors, swastikas, or One Percenter icons. Still, something about her unsettles him. He wants to put his finger on it, give it a name.

  “Why are there no chairs in front of your desk?” she asks.

  “There’s a birthday party in the next room and they needed the chairs. We didn’t
expect the morning rush we’re having right now. Can you slowly open the guitar case, please?”

  Sigrid opens the guitar case, removes the guitar, and plays an E chord, which is all she knows.

  “That was lovely. Would you like a chair? I can arrange that.”

  “I’d like you to find my brother. He’s missing,” she says, returning the guitar to the case.

  “Maybe we can do both; let’s see if we’re up to the challenge.” Irv stands up, brushes some breakfast crumbs from his shirt, and pops into the Green Room to emerge moments later with a steel-legged office chair with a drab olive vinyl seat. He places it in front of his desk and taps it two times for effect.

  Sigrid removes the shoulder bag and sits down.

  “I know what it is,” he says.

  “You know what what is?” she asks.

  “You’re very composed. A cool cucumber.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Sigrid replies.

  “Doesn’t matter. Lay it on me,” says Irv in a warm and deep voice.

  “My brother lives here and he’s missing. I visited his home this morning and found that he’s been absent for about two weeks. He allegedly told a local prostitute she could stay in the house and that he was leaving. I have no proof of that but I believe her. What’s unclear are the circumstances in which he left, his motives, whether he was coerced, and . . . of course . . . the fundamental matters of his whereabouts and well-being. The prostitute’s name is Juliet McKenna. And she says you have been to his house and you’re looking for him too. Which I take to be good news, but it makes me wonder who filed the missing person and when.”

  Irving was attentive at his desk with his elbows resting and fingers locked. “That was well presented. Are you a cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not from around here, you’re not.”

  “I’m from Norway.”

  “Norway?”

  “It’s a country in northern Europe—”

  “I know where it is. How long have you been in America?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  Sigrid does not answer.

  “Did you understand my question?”

  “I’m thinking about the answer.” Sigrid is silent for another moment and it makes Irv fidget.

  “Yes. There’s a stamp in my passport. Here it is.” She hands it to him and he examines it.

  “Can you prove you’re a cop?”

  Sigrid removes her ID from her wallet and hands that to him too.

  It is a hard plastic card with her picture on it, a code in hi-viz yellow letters and numbers on a black background and across the bottom it says POLITI. Irv flips it around and holds it up to the light, illuminating the numerous security codes and holograms. The name on the badge matches the name on the passport, which matches the face of the woman with the calm demeanor in front of him.

  Sigrid remains sitting across from Irv as he searches the internet for images of Norwegian police ID cards. They look like this one.

  “OK, you’re a cop,” he says to her, handing back the card and passport. “And it does sound like your brother is missing or something like it. What’s his name?”

  “Marcus Ødegård,” she says, hoping the full name will help.

  “Marcus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Man, you really buried the lede, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what that means. English isn’t my first language.”

  “We know Marcus Odegard,” he says, pronouncing it with an atrocious accent. “We’re already looking for him, and your English sounds superb.”

  Sigrid sits back in her chair. “Yes. I heard you were at his house. What can you tell me?”

  “What I can tell you, Ms. Odegard, is that your brother Marcus is wanted in connection with the death of Professor Lydia Jones. Which, in our view, is why he’s missing.”

  Corinthians 13

  Sheriff Irving Wylie removes a folder from his drawer and invites Sigrid to follow him through a door behind his desk, down a narrow gray hallway, and into a large room containing two holding cells, both empty. Irv steps casually into the closest one, sits on a long bench to the left, and starts unpacking the contents of his folder.

  Sigrid lingers at the entrance to the jail cell and looks at the open door.

  “Well, come on in, don’t be shy,” Irv says, not looking up.

  “Why are we sitting in a cell?”

  “The Green Room is occupied and the interview room is being painted. The smell gives me a headache. I like it better in here.” He nods toward the barred windows. “There’s fresh air and a hint of lemon.”

  Sigrid follows him inside and sits on the bench opposite his.

  “Is this jail new?” she asks.

  “Why, because it’s so clean?”

  “They usually smell bad.”

  “We don’t use it much. We prefer to take people out back and shoot them.”

  “I see.”

  “Now, the dumpster . . . that smells terrible.”

  “OK.”

  “So,” says Irv, crossing his legs and placing the file on his lap. “Your brother is missing and his girlfriend is dead and you’ve come here to find him, and to do that, you’ve been to his house and—not finding him—you’ve come to the police. How am I doing so far?”

  “You haven’t found him, so . . . not so well, Sheriff.”

  “It’s a process. What can you tell me?” he asks.

  “About Marcus?”

  “I’m sure not interested in Norway.”

  “My father corresponds with him. Marcus stopped writing. Pappa became worried. He tried calling and emailing. He thought it would be best if I came to look for him.”

  “He wasn’t overreacting a bit?”

  “It was a good time for Marcus and I to see each other anyway, and I have some leave. I heard wonderful things about upstate New York.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Your turn,” Sigrid says.

  “Fine. Professor Lydia Jones, Ph.D., thirty-nine years old, never married, born in Syracuse, New York, and moved here for a university position seven years ago. Made tenure in the department of philosophy specializing in . . . Wait a second.” Irv removes some bright red reading glasses that are more suited for a woman, puts them on, and continues, saying “. . . the politics of race and the history of identity politics in America. That’s some pretty heavy and sophisticated stuff. She wrote three books—two academic and one for a popular audience—seven peer-reviewed articles . . . all of which have colons in the titles, so they must be important . . . and she died by defenestration at Eighty-Six Brookmeyer Road two weeks ago. Autopsy performed. Toxicology negative. Small rip on the right shoulder of her sweater, demonstrating a struggle—forensics insists it was incompatible with a mere snag for some fancy reason—and there were traces of skin under her fingernails. Always a popular touch. We have a DNA match between those samples and your dear brother’s, which we collected at your brother’s house with a warrant. We have issued an APB—that’s an all points bulletin in our vernacular—and we are still looking for him. But now that you’re here,” Irv says, removing his glasses, “I think we have a much better chance of bringing him in without anyone getting hurt. So welcome to the show.”

  “May I see the file?”

  Irv hands it to her. She takes it and does not immediately open it. She wants to hear the story from Irv first. This will give her a basis for comparing interpretations, which is crucial for undermining his confidence in his own case.

  “Any eyewitnesses? Video?”

  “As a matter of fact, we found a guy named Chuck who saw your brother exit the building Lydia fell from, run to her body, check it, call 9-1-1, confess, and then run away. So I’m feeling pretty good about things, but I’m always open to scrutiny and abuse.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What’s it?”

  “Your case against Marcus. That�
��s it?”

  “I’m not making a case, but yes. An eyewitness and a confession. Two of my favorite things. It feels pretty solid. Or at least a good start until we talk to him.”

  “Nine-one-one’s the emergency number in America?”

  “Yes. They route the calls and send fire or police or EMTs.”

  “How do you know Marcus called it?”

  “We have the recording, we have the witness saying he placed a call for a matched duration at a matched time. And if that isn’t enough, I plan on using you to ID his voice, under oath. And that ought to square that circle.”

  “What did he say?”

  “‘She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead. I did this. I did this.’ You’re welcome to hear it, of course. In fact, you’ll be required to.”

  “He said, ‘I did this’ twice?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else do you have?”

  “I have trace elements of his skin under her fingernails, which is a nice example of Locard’s Law playing itself out.”

  “You’re referring,” says Sigrid, “to Locard’s 1904 piece on scientific method and criminal cases?”

  “I’m referring to something a guy named Howard says about transfer always happening. I was repeating it in an effort to impress you, which has backfired.”

  “We don’t know if there was a criminal act,” Sigrid says. “Locard’s Law may be an illusion. Transfer of physical evidence between the victim and perpetrator does often happen as Locard theorized, but for all kinds of reasons. That’s where we’ve made advancements since 1904. The general can never be a substitute for the particular.”

  “Huh,” Irv says.

  “You have a witness to a phone call,” says Sigrid, “Marcus’s skin under her nails but without any sense of how it got there, and an ambiguous message on an emergency call.”

  “I also have him running away from the scene.”

  “What else?”

  “And away from the police.”

  “What else?”

  “And his family.”