Hero To Zero 2nd edition

by Fortier, Zach

  He fucked up, though.

  While the pharmacist was printing the lists, Ray grabbed a couple of bottles of strong pain pills off of the shelves to feed his increasing addiction. The pharmacist had been suspicious of some earlier losses of pills and had installed hidden cameras. He knew that someone was stealing from him, he just didn’t know who or how.

  Ray was caught red-handed. The pharmacist reported the theft immediately. Ray ended up losing everything. His career, retirement, respect—all gone.

  The people we worked with were surprised, shocked. They could not believe that Ray had done the theft. I met with Billy Webster’s ex-girlfriend later and she said, “I told you they were both dropping pain pills like they were candy.”

  She was right. Everything she told me had been true. Webster would go down in flames as well a few months later, but for a different and unrelated incident.

  AS AMAZING AS RAY FOSSUM was as a cop, Billy Webster was even more so. I met him one day after he had just been assigned his first tour on the narcotics strike force. I was riding as an observer with a cop I knew, trying to see if I wanted to transition from the Military Police Corps to the civilian side of the house. Billy was friends with the cop I was riding with.

  We were leaving the jail after he finished booking a suspect and were crossing the parking lot, when Webster pulled up in an unmarked car. Smiling his million-dollar smile, he started laughing, making us jump to the side as he pulled up fast, stopping hard, tires screeching. I was instantly pissed off, having no idea who this metrosexual-looking crazy man was who was trying to run us over.

  He said, “Hey, what’s up?” to the cop I was with. I was glaring at him as they talked, and he said to the cop, “What’s this guy’s fucking problem?” Then to me, “Hey, we got a fucking problem here?” I didn’t answer.

  The other cop explained I was a ride-along, and then he told me that Billy was an undercover cop. We continued to stare at each other. I was, as I still am, stubborn as hell, and when I get mad, I’m even more so. Finally I walked away, heading back to the patrol car while the two friends talked.

  Later, the cop I was riding with explained that Billy was the single most amazing cop he had ever worked with. He said that Billy had an uncanny knack for knowing what was going on in the streets. He said that it was eerie the way Webster could locate people who were on the run or hiding from the cops, and that he’d been sent to the narcotics strike force “early,” meaning he was sent ahead of the normal time frame in which a cop was considered able to contribute to the unit.

  I wouldn’t see Webster again for some time. Four years passed, and I ended up working for the same department as Webster and Fossum. I’d spent some time in the sheriff’s department and decided it wasn’t for me. I had tested at the police department while working at the sheriffs department and finally been hired. I was in training, and my training officer was introducing me to the other officers in the department.

  We were leaving the jail, and there was the amazing Billy Webster. He’d just left the strike force. It was his turn to rotate out and back to patrol. Webster was fatter, straining the buttons on his old uniform shirts, and out of touch with the patrol side of the streets. Narcotics is a whole other world, and he’d specialized in it.

  He had a drunk driver he was booking and was obviously nervous about what to do with the suspect. He asked my training officer if he would like to have his “new” rookie take the DUI for the experience. My trainer immediately saw through this ploy and said, “Nope. You catch it, you clean it”—meaning “You caught him, the work is yours to do.”

  He commented on the excess weight Webster had gained and the way his buttons were barely containing his newly acquired pot gut. They exchanged “fuck-yous” and we departed.

  I would run into Webster occasionally after I completed training, as our shifts overlapped and we worked the same area. He was every bit as streetwise as I’d been told. He knew everyone on every call in the inner city, and not only did he know them, he knew their families and associates. He was very aware of the people around him and the non-verbal communication they exchanged.

  I tried to learn as much from him as I could. I was always asking questions, trying to see what he saw, hear what he heard. It seemed I could never quite understand how he grasped so well what was going on from the smallest and most insignificant details. Every call with him was an education.

  I tried to keep up with him one night as he chased down, on foot, a rapist who had just broken into a house and raped a woman. Webster arrived at the scene as the guy took off on a bicycle. Webster was already out of his car, walking the area, looking for the guy. Webster saw him and sprinted off on foot after him, quickly closing the gap and tackling the suspect, knocking him off his bike and slamming him into the ground.

  It was pretty cool to see his enthusiasm. Even more amazing, I later found out that he had sprinted after the rapist piece of shit on a damaged knee. He wore a knee brace every day at work and never complained.

  Webster hated to lose in court as much as he hated to lose on the streets. He had a very high record of convictions in the courts, and the judges admired his ability to close a case.

  I personally had a district court judge tell me while he was signing a search warrant for me that he thought very highly of Webster. He asked me if Webster was involved in the incident I was working on, for which he was signing the warrant. I told him that he wasn’t. The judge said that was unfortunate, as he liked seeing him in his court. He described Webster as “ballsy” and the best cop he had ever known—which is very high praise from a sitting district court judge.

  One night I was sitting with Webster in a parking lot, parked side by side and I asked him about a narcotics case he’d lost in court. It rarely happened, and he was pissed. He told me all about it and then said, “But that’s okay, in the end they got theirs.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He laughed and made me promise not to tell. I said of course I wouldn’t tell. He smiled and told me that he’d gone to the suspect’s house while off duty and slashed their recently purchased tires on their jacked-up 4x4 truck. The tires were hugely oversized and very expensive. He Webster said, “No one gets one over on me, ever.” He said, “ What the courts won’t take care of, we will. We are cops and we keep the shitbags in line, no matter what.” He then smiled and drove away.

  Another incident occurred when Webster was on a call with one of his friends in the department. The other cop was training a new guy we called “Skidmark.” All three were sent to a child-abuse call, and when they arrived, they found that the man had indeed sexually abused this young child.

  There is a special place in every cop’s heart for child abusers; it is a dark place you don’t want to visit. The rules start to break down there. Anger seeps in at the inadequacies of the system, and it becomes harder and harder to follow what the rest of the world sees as the right or correct thing to do.

  That night, the two veteran cops lost it, and beat the abusive suspect up a bit. Not a lot, but more than the self-righteous Skidmark could live with. He turned them in to the department’s internal affairs unit. They were investigated and given time off without pay after having been found to be in the wrong on the incident.

  It isn’t pretty, but it happens. All cops have been there. Webster’s street-cred went up with his fellow cops for caring enough about the abused child to lose it on the suspect and beat his ass. Meanwhile, Skidmark had sealed his fate as on the department as a rat and a snitch.

  Webster lived larger than life when off duty. Cops don’t make much money, but he often went on Caribbean cruises with his wife and kids. They owned a new motor home and a new boat, and had recently purchased a new home on the southeast side of the city.

  When other cops questioned him about the lifestyle he lived, he claimed his wife made a lot of money at her job, and that he was a better money manager than they were. He added that he was also in the National Guard, and made mon
ey there. Cops are a suspicious bunch, and no one bought this explanation.

  One night while I was out to dinner with a couple of old-timers from the force, I heard them discuss the tight- knit group of friends Webster had and how they all lived above the standard a cop could normally afford. These guys had seen a lot in twenty-or-more years of law enforcement, and they knew that if it walked like a duck and quacked like a duck, it was probably a duck—even if you couldn’t prove it. I listened and watched.

  Webster had a friend who owned a towing company in the city. Often the friend would ride along when Webster worked at night, accompanying him on the calls he was assigned. Webster was known as a “shit magnet,” meaning he could get into some very hairy situations, so going on calls with him was always an adrenaline rush. The two friends went on vacations together and hung out often when they were not at work. Everyone was suspicious of the friendship.

  The towing company started to receive more than its share of tows from the crashes handled by the department, and the other towing companies complained. The department policy stated that there would be an automatic rotation of the towing companies selected by dispatch unless the drivers involved in a crash requested a particular company.

  When drivers did select the company, more often than not, they would request the towing company that belonged to Webster’s best friend. This was investigated over and over at the request of the rest of the towing companies in the city; however, nothing was ever found to be suspicious. This went on for several years.

  Webster was as adept at department politics as he was on the street, and started to get promoted up the food chain—first to sergeant, and then later tested for lieutenant. He was next in line to promote. He was once again sent to the narcotics strike force, this time as the supervising sergeant.

  The strike force flourished under his supervision: arrests went up, drug seizures went up. Under his tutelage, the strike force seized an unprecedented volume of vehicles used in narcotics transactions. The proceeds from the sales of those seized vehicles came back to the strike force after the courts upheld the seizures.

  Webster was a rising star in the department, on his way to at least assistant chief.

  That was when Webster’s personal life started to go to shit. His high-maintenance wife was having an affair, and he used strike-force wiretaps to monitor her phone conversations with her boyfriend illegally from his own home. He told me about the affair one day at a local clothing store where we both worked part-time providing security.

  He began dating, and later moved in with, one of the women who worked sales at a nearby cosmetics counter. After they broke up a few months later, she told me about the wiretaps he did at home and his addiction to painkillers. I did not believe her at first, but later it all fell into place.

  After his second stint on the narcotics strike force, Webster came back to patrol as a sergeant. He was still dealing with a lot of personal issues, and perhaps that made it harder to keep his extracurricular activities on the down low. It became clear that he had a personal investment in making sure that his buddy’s towing company received a majority of the tows from the department.

  I was present when he went up to another towing company’s driver and told him that he would arrest him if he did not leave an accident scene. He then convinced the driver to request his friend’s company, telling the driver that they were the best in the city.

  His interest was more than just looking out for a friend, that part was obvious. At the time, however, I was generally viewed as paranoid and seeing conspiracies where there were none, so I did not comment. I filed the incident away mentally as noteworthy and continued to watch.

  One night I was on a call and Webster showed up. He was usually calm and cool; even during his wife’s affair, very few people knew what was going on. That night, however, I could see that he was noticeably shaken.

  Something had him worried, and I asked him about it. He said that I was seeing things and that I was paranoid (yeah, yeah—I heard that my whole career). I replied, “Yep, it’s me, seeing things again, sure. That’s why you’re shitting yourself with fear.”

  Webster didn’t respond. Another sergeant showed up and they dismissed me, basically telling me to leave while they discussed sergeant matters.

  I was not about to be dismissed by anyone. I was on a call. I said, “Hey, this is my call—you showed up, you leave!”

  Normally that would not have floated past two veteran sergeants. It was a test, and they failed. I should have had my ass kicked on the spot for being insubordinate. Instead, they shrugged and walked about fifty feet away to talk.

  Later I found out, after bugging Webster about the incident, that he was being investigated. The rumors about his ties to the towing company were flying again. The other sergeant who had shown up was involved in the investigation, and Webster had asked him off the record how serious the charges were. Webster told me the other sergeant had said that they would “take care of it,” and not to worry. Webster was noticeably relieved.

  A week later, he was relieved of duty while the investigation blossomed. Several of Webster’s friends were then also relieved of duty, and they and Webster were eventually fired. All were accused of violating the department’s policy on tow trucks being called to car crashes. They were never formally charged, however; Webster was a force to be reckoned with on the streets of our city—street wise, smart, and tough.

  But his career was over.

  Many years later I would talk to Ray Fossum about the tow truck incident involving Webster. He said that Webster offered him an opportunity to make money by taking kickbacks of cash from his best friend’s towing company in exchange for directing tows to them. He said Webster had been doing it for years, and that in exchange for the information Fossum had on Webster, the county attorney had offered to reduce Fossum’s prescription drug charges.

  Fossum refused to tell what he knew about his friend, and went over to Webster’s home to tell him what had happened. He said that when he arrived, Webster took him into the garage and turned up a stereo as loud as it would go. While the sound was echoing off the walls, Webster said, “Go ahead, talk now!”

  Fossum was devastated. Webster evidently didn’t trust him, and thought that he was wearing a wire; the music would have made it impossible for any wire to pick up the conversation they had. Fossum said that he told Webster, “Fuck you, man!” and left.

  They were two of the best cops I would ever meet. Each had his demons. Each went painfully down in flames.

  WE’D HIRED A LOT OF new guys to deal with the turnover created by the hiring of a new chief. He was hell-bent on making his mark on the department’s culture and getting rid of what he considered deadwood. He defined “deadwood” as anyone nearing retirement.

  Personally, I think that the veterans threatened him. They knew who he really was, since he, too, had risen through the ranks. They all knew his public face nowhere near matched the reality of the prick he really was. He was busy pushing them out, and replacing them with new hires.

  That was when Lance Edwards came to be a patrolman in our department.

  He was a former MP, and came to the department with a wealth of experience in the military police environment. He had travelled the world, enforcing military laws. He retired from the military and was immediately picked up by our department.

  He loved police work—seriously loved the job and most everything about it. He immediately made a name for himself as an outstanding patrolman. He had a knack for finding stolen cars that was unprecedented. It was an amazing and quirky gift. He recovered more stolen cars than anyone else on the department, and he continued to do so the entire time he worked for us.

  I asked him to teach me his technique for recovering the stolen cars one night, and he showed me dozens of lists of stolen cars he had made from BOLOs (“be on the lookout”) that had been put out by dispatch. He cross-referenced them, making lists just for Chevys, just for trucks, just for out-of-s
tate plates, and just for four-door vehicles. When he saw a car whose description fit one of the lists and felt it was suspicious, he would look up the plate, and boom! There it would be.

  He also had a knack for making felony arrests. He made more felony arrests than any other patrolman in the department. It was not that he made just a couple more arrests; he made a lot more arrests. He made more DUI arrests than any other patrolman in the city, and nearly as many as the entire patrol section combined. He had a knack for finding drunk drivers that was creepy; it was almost like a sixth sense.

  He was a poster boy for the kind of cop the chief wanted. He would drop anything and everything to come to work and cover a shift. He would work any shift he was called to fill and complete any task he was asked to do. He really loved being a cop.

  The chief was elated, and used him as an example of what the “new” patrolman should aspire to be. This was what he was looking for when he pushed out the old guard—blue flamers, go-getters, guys who could make a difference, and for a smaller paycheck than the grizzled and, in his words, “lazy veterans” he had pushed into retirement.

  The chief recognized Lance Edwards as Patrolman of the Year several times. The chief bragged about his “new breed of patrolman” in chiefs’ meetings, and mentioned Lance often to the city council.

  Lance had a pretty amazing reputation right away. He was also very social, which is unusual for a cop. He liked to party, and would often have friends over to his house. He had a passion for camping, and his camping parties quickly gained popularity among the patrolmen. He invited everyone, and played no favorites with any of the internal social cliques in the department. Detectives and patrolmen were all invited. The parties were quietly talked about in the hallways of the department, whispered about in the weight room, mentioned in the twenty-four hour convenience stores while guys were getting a quick drink.