Hard Favored Rage

by Don Shift

  “Guess you listened to the radio this morning.”

  “Yes sir, I did,” the manager said knowingly.

  “How come you showed up this morning?

  He shrugged. “I honestly couldn’t tell you. Part of me felt like it was the right thing to do, helping people get food. Better than getting cleaned out. And if this turned out to be nothing, I didn’t want to give corporate an excuse to can me.”

  “Why’d you come in, Deputies?”

  The deputies were taken aback. “We had to, I guess.”

  Palmer felt a moral obligation. Finnegan didn’t know what to do except listen to what his sergeant said last night. He knew many deputies didn’t feel that same way. Several openly expressed that they were there only until things became too out of control. “You know, like when the Titanic started to go under, and the officers jumped in the water.” It was better than nothing. The decision to remain was less altruistic than it was a combination of peer pressure and fear of being labeled a deserter for quitting when things really weren’t that bad. No one wanted to be the first to walk away. Even Sean Sibley had shown up to Camarillo this morning, despite his talk last night. Palmer had caught a snippet of his voice on the radio.

  Suddenly there were screams from the dark back of the store near the dairy cases. The deputies ran towards the disturbance, shoving people and carts out of their way. It took them a few minutes. Two women were fighting. One was covered in a dark substance that looked like blood and another held an object in her hands, extending it towards the other woman. Both cops drew their pistols.

  “Drop it!” The startled woman dropped the object. “Cuff her!” Palmer ordered. Finnegan did what he was told and Palmer reholstered. “Ma’am, where are you hurt?”

  The “victim” or whoever she was looked puzzled. “I’m not hurt.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “That’s barbecue sauce.” Palmer sniffed and sure enough, the substance all over the woman’s head, face, arms, and chest was barbecue sauce.

  “What’s all this about then?”

  The woman in cuffs started yelling. “That bitch tried to steal my barbecue sauce. It was the last one on the shelf.”

  “Let me get this straight. She steals the last bottle of sauce and you decide to steal it back, then spray her with it.”

  “Well, yeah,” she said implying that Palmer did not understand something critically important about her reasoning.

  “You wasted your barbecue sauce. The last bottle on the shelf.”

  “It was worth it. Have fun trying to find a dry cleaner, you thieving whore.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Palmer said to no one in particular. Women were incredibly illogical when they fought. “That’s it, you’re out of here. Finnegan, let’s take her up front.” Both deputies took an arm and the three awkwardly made their way towards the door. The manager looked surprised to see a woman in handcuffs.

  “Barbecue sauce. They were fighting over barbecue sauce.”

  “Hey, I’ve got a lot of meat at home in the freezer that my husband is cooking. We needed sauce,” the woman explained.

  It makes sense, the sauce part, Palmer thought. It was a logical assumption in consideration of the fact that both his parents and his wife were cooking up everything perishable. He had assumed that she was going to drink it for the calories. David promised Finnegan had pork ribs for lunch.

  “There’s your next problem,” the manager said, pointing to a man who was yelling in the face of a female checker. “It’s all starting to fall apart.”

  “Hold your tongue,” Palmer said.

  The man was screaming something about not having cash and where the checker could put the store policy. Before David could take a step, the man pulled a pistol out of his pants and waved it around. The store erupted into screams and the man lowered the gun and started pushing the cart in a run for the door. Shoppers were scattering and looking for cover.

  “Finn, cut her loose!” Palmer yelled to his partner who still held their arrestee. David tried to chase after the man, but carts and people were running into him. The man made it to the door as Palmer got free of his entanglements. Several other shoppers saw what the gunman did and seized on the idea to mount their own charge out the door. David arrived just in time to be bowled over by a cart. He quickly scrambled to his feet and pressed himself against the lotto machine as a stampede both in and out of the door began. Finnegan ran up with his gun drawn.

  “Put it away!” Palmer yelled. “It won’t do you any good.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Nothing. Keep people from trying to kill each other.”

  An elderly woman rushing in the store stumbled and fell. People poured behind her, stepping on her prone body, trampling her. Palmer turned around and grabbed an empty shopping cart. “Get in!” he ordered Finnegan who jumped in the basket without hesitating. Putting his back into it, Palmer ran full speed into the human stampede, hitting people right and left, but breaking it up enough to drag the woman to her feet and safely to the side of the onslaught of desperate people.

  A heavily tattooed man, incensed at being hit in the deputies’ cart charge, punched Palmer in the face with a closed fist. Palmer fell to his knees; however, the man forgot or didn’t notice the diminutive Finnegan kneeling in the cart behind him. Finnegan rose to his knees and hit the man over the head with the best bludgeon he had available, his pistol. The man collapsed to the ground, his head over his arm as if he was asleep.

  “Thanks Finn.”

  “You okay? Looked like he got you pretty good?”

  Palmer rubbed his face below his eye. “I’ll have a nice shiner, but no worse for the wear.”

  Finnegan got out of the cart. The ruckus had dispelled the stampede. “What do we do with him? Do we write this up?”

  “Nah. Leave him there.” Palmer checked the man for a pulse. “He’s out cold. He’ll come around. You clocked him pretty good.”

  “Thanks,” Finn said with a grin.

  Palmer made a bizarre radio call. “Station 1, 3-Robert-53, riot in progress at Ralphs on Victoria. Code 4.” No further assistance necessary.

  “Code 4?” came the dispatcher’s incredulous reply.

  “Affirmative. What are we going to do, start shooting people?”

  Silence for a moment. “I’ll move some units towards your location anyhow.”

  All they could really do was stay out of the way while people grabbed, fought over, and ran out with whatever was left in the store. It was like a pack of hyenas trying to steal a wildebeest carcass away from a pride of lions, except this carcass was already picked clean. The store was virtually empty. The strong stole from the weak. One can of peas might have changed hands four times before it went out the door. Displays were kicked down and cold case glass broken by those frustrated at not being able to find any food.

  “Man are they going to be disappointed when they go in the back,” the manager said.

  A sergeant and another deputy walked in. “What happened to your face?” Palmer explained. “You just let him go?”

  “Well, Finn here gave him a heck of a whump with his pistol,” Palmer said, pointing to the unconscious man on the floor. “Figured he got better than I got, so no point of hauling him up to VCMC for a medical clearance and wait forever.”

  The sergeant shook his head as if to say, Okay, whatever you think is best. “He’ll think twice before he swings at a cop again.”

  “You want us to write it up Sarge?” Finnegan asked.

  “Why bother? Looks like a war zone in here.”

  “You have no idea,” Finn said, wiping a fleck of barbecue sauce from his uniform.

  Half an hour later, it was over with. Nothing that wasn’t broken, squashed, or smeared remained. Nothing edible, not even a crumb, was left in the whole place. Even some fixtures had been stolen. It was like the deputies weren’t even there. The unlucky walked forlornly through the desecrated aisles pawing through the wr
eckage of what had been a grocery store. One woman found an undamaged shaker of salt and quickly tucked it in her clothing, out of sight of any potential competitor for her precious find.

  Palmer and Finnegan left and walked back to their car. It was a little early, but they decided to eat. David parked in front of the Palmer residence and the two went in through the back gate, following the delightful scent of cooking meat.

  “Dave, what happened?” Mr. Palmer said on seeing his son’s face.

  “Nothing Dad. Just a frightened guy. Finnegan here took care of him.”

  Mr. Palmer introduced himself and made Finnegan tell him what happened.

  “Crazy, just crazy. Sad too. Just absolutely unbelievable.” Mr. Palmer was not surprised, just disappointed. “Guess you guys could use a beer.” David nodded and his father pointed to the cooler. “Too bad you’re working. Your mom was smart and went out and bought all the ice she could fit in the trunk yesterday. I know I married a good woman. I love you Barbara,” he yelled.

  “Want one Finn?”

  The jail deputy shook his head vigorously. Is this really happening? Yesterday, everyone told him the world was ending. Today, he used potentially lethal force in the middle of a riot, isn’t asked to write so much as an FI card, and now his partner was offering him a beer on duty! In his defense, Palmer forgot that you couldn’t mess with green deputies brand new to patrol. They had no sense of humor and took everything seriously.

  “Suit yourself.” David grabbed two Cokes and tossed one to Finnegan.

  “What’s on the grill, Dad?”

  “Got the chicken breasts on now. The steaks are for your mom and me. You two and Brooke can eat the ribs and chicken. Speaking of the ribs, go inside and make sure your mom doesn’t use all the barbecue sauce. I need some for the chicken.”

  Barbecue sauce, David thought with a smile.

  Finnegan felt awkward, still not sure how to handle his de facto FTO. His experience of the morning was hard to quantify. Being out of the jail so soon and thrust into such dramatic circumstances without any lead up gave him the same feeling on waking from a strange dream. He thought a lobster dumped into a boiling pot felt the same way.

  Palmer read his mind. “Chill Finn. In a year, 90% of the population is going to be dead. I doubt anyone will care about cops in a week.”

  Brooke walked out of the kitchen. “Here,” she said handing out two shop towels. “Tuck these into your shirts so you don’t get your uniforms dirty.”

  Finnegan took his and mumbled a thanks. David stared at him.

  “Finn, you look like you’re going to be sick.”

  Finnegan fumbled for words. “It’s all so surreal. I feel like I’m in a dream.” He paused. “It’s like the first time my high school girlfriend and I—,” he made sure Brooke had gone inside “—had sex. I couldn’t quite believe that it was happening and afterwards, I wondered if it happened at all.”

  Mr. Palmer came over and sat down. “That’s how I felt yesterday. I saw all the cars stop, but then I kept driving. Passed a pile-up around Topanga Canyon, dismissed it, and still kept driving. It didn’t set in on me what happened until my truck was blocked in down the hill in another pile-up. At that point, I could have stood around waiting for someone to tell me what I already knew was going on or try to deny what was happening right in front of me. That’s a natural, normal response. For guys like my son and me, we’ve thought about this, read about it, studied it, and prepared. Not so much you, correct?”

  Finnegan nodded. “I never really heard about it until now. Just remember stuff from video games and that James Bond movie.”

  “And that’s not your fault,” David said. “Just like the average person who never thinks about all the crime and danger around them. ‘I’ll never happen to me,’ right? You know better. You’ve been trained. You look at the world and think ‘It may happen to me, but I’ll be prepared.’ You’ve thought about defending yourself. When the mind is presented with new information or an unexpected situation, often it freezes up trying to process the information and find a past experience to guide your response. Well, you’re too young to remember the 1994 earthquake, the closest thing to this, so it’s not a big deal for you to not know what to do.”

  “That sounds very profound, David,” Mr. Palmer said.

  “Thanks. Anyway Finn, people who are getting mugged think ‘This can’t be happening to me!?’ They didn’t prepare for or expect a mugging to happen and had no plan to deal with it. They don’t fight back or see the guy with the hoodie around his head on sneaking up on them. So their brain stalls out, giving the bad guy a momentary advantage. In this case, you get a dream like effect. Part of it is the brain protecting you from the terrifying fact that what you saw today was just small potatoes in what’s about to become a real-life horror movie.”

  Mr. Palmer got up to take the meat off the grill. Finnegan thought for a moment. “What are the other ways of dealing with it?”

  “Coping mechanisms? You mean like alcohol?”

  Finnegan smiled weakly. Mr. Palmer yelled that the meat was ready. Brooke and Mrs. Palmer started bringing out sides of frozen vegetables that had defrosted in the freezer. Brooke sat down next to her husband.

  “What happened to your face?” she exclaimed.

  “Uh, I got punched. Thanks for paying so much attention to me.”

  Brooke said something sharp to him and retrieved a cold, now slushy, bag of frozen vegetables. “Hold that up to your face to control the swelling.” David did what he was told.

  “How on Earth did that happen?” Mrs. Palmer asked.

  Finnegan explained, going backwards from the riot to the barbecue sauce incident. At the mention of barbecue sauce, David started laughing.

  “Barbecue sauce,” he sung, just like the refrain from the Chili’s baby back ribs commercial of many years ago. He kept this up until mom and his wife told him to quit it.

  Punch drunk? Guess I’ll be driving this afternoon, Finnegan thought.

  Emergency Powers

  Church found Captain Turner working the grill on the small balcony off the East County station lunchroom.

  “Sam, good to see you.” The captain gave Sam a hug. Turner was the most jovial person Church had ever worked for. He was Sam’s favorite patrol sergeant back in the day. Turner was never in a bad mood, always had a joke and a kind word. “You want a bacon wrapped hotdog? Everyone brought something in from their freezers.”

  “No thanks, Cap. I had a bunch of meat for breakfast. I’d kill for a bowl of cereal.”

  “What are you doing here? Any sensible person would have headed for the hills.”

  “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  “Well then, welcome!”

  “I couldn’t sit this one out. This is what I was made for.”

  “That loyalty is nice to see. Some of these new kids see this just as a job. Everybody wants to be a cop these days, but so few of them are cops. Know what I mean?” Church nodded. “Are you here for patrol?”

  “How many of the reserves are jail trained, besides me?” he asked rhetorically. “Captain Kohler sent me over. Fair warning: I begged him to let me go out with Stackhouse.”

  Turner shrugged. “Calling up favors? Kohler’s had a hard-on for Marines ever since his son joined up as a Navy corpsman. Good guy. You want a partner?”

  Church shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. I can get along by myself.”

  “Go see Margaret inside. She’s keeping a list of who’s working out of here. Then stick your head in Dispatch. They’ve got a jerry-rigged system. Get a call sign and find a car. If I recall correctly, we could use someone on this side of town. Cover everything east of the 23 freeway.”

  “Got it. Thank you, sir. And it’s good to see you again.”

  “Sam, I’m glad to have you back.”

  “Amen. Oh, hey. Did they enact any price freezes?”

  “Absolutely. Lots of stuff like that. Cliff notes are posted in the briefing roo
m. Take a look at it before you go 10-8.”

  Sam checked in with the station administrative assistant. She gave Sam a master key to the station. Without electricity there was no need for an electronic access white card. All Sam needed were some citations and forms that he could find himself. He did help himself to an old edition of the Thomas Guide map. Without GPS, there was no computer mapper to give him turn-by-turn directions. He was pleased that there was no need to wear the bulky bodycam that always seemed to get in the way.

  In the briefing room a bevy of notices were taped to the white board. Some were in the purple ink he remembered from elementary school homework assignments and others were actually typed and printed. Someone in headquarters got access to a working computer and printer, most likely in one of the command posts. He read the orders from the governor, the Villareal, and the Board of Supervisors. One paper held great interest for him:

  5323-2 - Emergency powers.

  In the event of the proclamation of a "local emergency" by the Board or the Director, the declaration of a state of emergency by the Governor or the Secretary of the California Emergency Management Agency, or the existence of a "state of war emergency" as defined in Government Code Section 8558(a), the Director is hereby granted the powers set forth in the following subsections:

  5323-2.1 - To make and issue rules and regulations on matters reasonably related to the protection of life and property as affected by such emergency; provided, however, such rules and regulations must be confirmed at the earliest practicable time by the Board.

  5323-2.2 - To obtain vital supplies, equipment, and such other property found lacking and needed for the protection of life and property and to bind the County for the fair value thereof and, if required immediately, to commandeer the same for public use.

  5323-2.3 - To require emergency services of any County officer or employee and, in the event of the proclamation of a "state of emergency" in the County or "state of war emergency", to command the aid of as many citizens of this County as he or she deems necessary in the execution of his or her duties; such persons shall be entitled to all privileges, benefits, and immunities as are provided by state law for registered disaster service workers.