by Mark Johnson
“Got at least two at the crossroads,” I whisper. “Start backup.” I pocket the phone, rise, and creep to the road. The adrenalin dump begins. It’s not really fear, exactly. (After all, I remind myself, I’m armored and armed and have the element of surprise, even if I’m outnumbered.) Whatever it is, it always happens, and the tactical breathing quells my quaking in seconds. Crouching down so they won’t see my silhouette, I can make out theirs, twenty yards away, dragging the cable bundles up from the ditch onto the road.
I stand up and stride toward them and yell, “Freeze! Mobile Police!” as I shoulder the 12 gauge. I see the two silhouettes jerk upright. One drops a cable bundle and dives into the woods to the right. The other tosses what may be a backpack into the air and crashes into the brush to the left. Without thinking I point the 12 gauge up at a 45-degree angle and fire a round into the air. There’s a long bright flash from the barrel and a really, really loud report. I had forgotten how damn loud the Remington 12 gauge is. We’re always wearing ear protection at our yearly qualification with them at the range. And the kick: I still feel it in my shoulder. I rack another round into the chamber. I feel invincible.
I run to the crossroads, flicking on my headlamp, and pull my foot-long Stinger Streamlight from my belt, sweeping both sides of the road. Silence. So I know they gotta be laying down, and not too far off the road. Silently, slowly I retrace my steps looking for signs of entry into the woods: bent grasses, broken branches, a reflected flash of my beam from a pair of eyes.
Nothing. I stop and listen for heavy breathing, rustling leaves, snapping twigs.
Nothing. I walk all the way back down the road to my own path, from where I had just sprung out of the woods, without seeing any sign or hearing any sound from either of them. Was I seeing things? Am I dreaming? How’d they disappear so fast? I reverse direction and slowly, carefully approach the crossroads again.
A flash of reflected light from the ditch startles me but turns out to be just a discarded beer can. How did I miss this the first time? Another twinkle of light winks at me: shards of broken glass. Then I spot the knapsack that one of them had tossed and retrieve it from the ditch. This is not a dream, I think. The bag is heavy, filled with clanking tools, probably hacksaws. A step beyond that, my eyes are drawn to twin bright rectangles in the weeds, about the size of postage stamps, a foot apart. I step to the edge of the road to try to make sense of them. Whatever they are, they’re made of reflective material. I continue to puzzle over them, my headlamp, Stinger, and shotgun trained on them.
With a start I realize I’m looking at little reflective squares of rubber on the heels of a pair of sneakers. Occupied sneakers.
“Let me see your hands!” I bark.
“Don’t shoot! I surrender! Don’t shoot” comes a muffled voice about six feet beyond the sneakers, deep in the undergrowth.
“I want you to crawl backwards on your belly, slow, like a snake, toward the sound of my voice. Keep your hands spread out wide and just scooch toward me, backwards, up to the road. You do anything stupid I will blow your ass off.”
“Yessir! I’m comin’. Don’t shoot, sir.”
I stand back as he inchworms his way on his belly, up out of the ditch and onto the road, all the while sweeping the Streamlight all around in case his partner tries to spring out from somewhere while I’m focused on this one. I place a boot between his shoulder blades and order him to join his hands as if to pray, behind his back. He complies and I holster my Stinger light, sling the 12 gauge over my shoulder, and snap the cuffs on, then fill one hand with my Glock and pat him down with the other.
“I got nu’n on me, sir. You ’bout made me crap my pants when you fired that round, sir. Thought I was dead, honest to God, sir!”
“What about your partner? He got any weapons?”
“What partner, sir? I’m by myself.”
I put more weight on the boot in his back, holster the Glock, and unsling the shotgun. “Don’t even start with the lies. I saw the both of you. He jumped to one side, you to the other. And he didn’t get far. Does he have any weapons, or should I just start popping off rounds in the direction I saw him jump?”
“I swear to God, sir, I don’t know where he went. But he don’t have any weapons on him, sir. We were just walkin’ over to the canal to do some fishin’, sir, I swear!”
I nuzzle the Remington’s barrel to the back of his neck. “You fuckin’ moron. ‘Fishing’? Are you just trying to piss me off? ‘Fishing,’ with a sack fulla hacksaws and a hundred pounds of copper cable? Who’s your partner, dickhead. What’s his name?”
“Harley. Harley Draper. It was all his idea. He used to work here.”
A flash of headlights is bouncing toward me along the two-track from Rangeline Road: my backup.
“Harley!” I shout. “Oh, Harrr-ley! Harley Draaa-per! Come out, come out, wherever you are! Your bro here just gave you up, Harrr-ley!”
Tyrone Anderson rolls up in a cloud of dust, followed closely by Heavy Harry Claggett, then Sergeant Edwards.
“Look at you, all ninja’ed up in camo with a headlamp on,” Roney says as he gathers up the midnight angler to stuff into his cage.
“Your ghillie suit at the cleaners, Detective?” Claggett cracks.
“There’s another one, jumped into the woods about here,” I say. “He’s gotta be layin’ down, not too far in.”
Harry and Roney set off to search the woods, while Sarge and I dump out the contents of the knapsack. Sure enough, among the hacksaws and pry bars that come clanking out is a wallet containing the Alabama driver’s license of Harley Davidson Draper, white male, forty-three years of age.
“This should be all you need to sign a warrant on the one that got away,” Sarge says. “That is if Claggett and Anderson don’t flush him out.”
“Yeah, but we can get ’im, Sarge. He couldna gotten far; I heard him crashing into the woods for no more’n a dozen steps or so, then quiet. He’s probably got eyes on us right now. And this is the fourth lick these guys have hit at this place this month. Into ’em for over fifty grand already.”
“Say no more,” Sarge says. Then, into the radio, “One Sam Four, start canine unit to our location. We have one in custody, and one still at large in the woods. Advise units on Rangeline and Hamilton to hold the perimeter and switch to Tac channel.”
The canine unit arrives about a half hour later, just as Claggett and Anderson come straggling back from bushwhacking through the woods, covered in brambles and sweat.
Heavy Harry’s breathing hard, his pants slathered in oozing muck up to his knees. “Shit, Mark, you didn’t tell me it’s nothing but swamp back in there!”
“Sorry, Harry. I assumed you went in with a flashlight and could see what you were stepping into.”
“You guys have been out tramping through the woods?” the canine officer demands in disbelief. “Dammit, you’ve fucked up my scene. Dog’s trained to follow the freshest scent, and now that’ll just be you guys! It’s not even worth it to take him outta the car.”
“You gotta be woofin’, man,” Roney says. “I’m tore up from the floor up, uniform’s fulla stickers, spiders still crawlin’ in my hair, and you ain’t even gonna let the dog loose?”
“I got shit up to my knees and I’m covered in mosquito bites, motherfucker,” Harry says. “I say the dog gets a chance.”
“I agree,” says Sarge. Then, to the canine officer: “Let the dog do his thang.”
The canine guy grumbles under his breath as he fetches the dog from his car. Fritz comes back straining at his leash, yelping and whining to get to work. Sarge offers Fritz a sniff of Harley Draper’s backpack, and the animal bounds off into the woods, jerking the canine officer along behind.
“Har-ley, oh Harrr-ley!” I shout in a singsong voice. “Ollie ollie in free! Last chance before the dog gets ya!”
In minutes Fritz is going crazy and has bounded into a shallow pocket of swamp water. Snarling and thrashing, the canine has pounced on t
op of a prone, submerged figure, which rises struggling from the goopy water. Cries of pain fill the air.
“Bad dog! Down! Call him off! Get him off me! I surrender! Bad dog!”
Harry and Roney crash through the woods toward the yelping, growling, and screaming and return moments later with a handcuffed, waterlogged, muddied, and bloodied Harley Draper, who is unceremoniously tossed into Harry’s cage as we all cheer the triumphant return of the muddy, dripping shepherd with lavish praise, shouting, “Good dog!” “Way to go, Fritzo!” “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout, take a bite outta crime!” singing, “Who let the dog out, who, who?” and doing coyote howls at the moon. Fritz joins in the merriment with his own howls and yelps, flinging swamp muck all over us as he shakes his fur and wags his tail.
“I’m amazed,” the canine officer confesses. “The guy was completely underwater! Never woulda seen him. I had no idea what Fritz was after, but he went right in at a full gallop and the guy comes up screaming and fighting like a gaffed gamefish. Never seen anything like it!” There are high fives all around, and I give the last of my jerky to our four-legged hero.
Back at the precinct as the sun comes up, it turns out Harley Draper is the no-good ex-con brother-in-law of Aggregate manager Roy Mullins, who was shamed and enraged by the revelation. Harley had quit in a huff six months ago because he felt disrespected by Roy and was working at a better-paying job over in Pascagoula at the Exxon Refinery. What Roy didn’t know was, Harley’d gotten fired from Exxon last month for failing a drug test and returned to Theodore to support his meth habit by scrapping copper cable cut from his old employer’s conveyors.
To his credit, though, Harley manned up and wrote a full confession, including an expression of remorse and apology to Roy, knowing full well that this offense would violate the terms of his probation and put him back in Atmore for several more years.
As they were taking him away to Metro, Harley stopped and said to me, “That was a good piece of policin’ out there, Detective. Don’t know which is more dedicated: you or the dog.”
I think it’s one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said to me.
During the next few months, I have three more solo stakeouts. Directly across Rangeline Road from Theodore Aggregate is an old chemical refinery that was shut down eight years ago by the EPA and declared a brownfield. As the Justice Department’s lawsuit against McGrue-Tromax Corporation drags on, a skeleton crew of about a half-dozen dismantlers and salvage workers, as well as a couple of unarmed contract security guards, roam the sixty acres of rusting metal buildings, equipment sheds, and huge chemical storage tanks during daylight hours. After dark, there’s a lone night watchman at the entrance guard shack. On any given night, four or five scrappers are on the grounds stealing whatever they can strip and carry off to the salvage yards.
My first night out there, I took two scrappers into custody at gunpoint. The second stakeout produced another arrest, but one (or more) of his accomplices got away. The third stakeout netted three scrappers. As I sat in my office back at the precinct typing up the paperwork on the night I hit the Tromax trifecta, Lieutenant Daniels came in and sat down in the chair at Earl’s desk, behind me.
“Y’know, Mark, I’m concerned about all these stakeouts you’ve been doing down there on Rangeline Road. You really shouldn’t be out there all by yourself.” Daniels is a career cop, well liked and respected in the department. I stop typing and wheel my chair around to face him.
“I appreciate that, LT, but Captain authorized it. And I don’t see anybody lining up to spend their nights out there with me. Besides, I’ve been pretty successful with it so far.”
“Right—so far. That’s exactly my point. Tonight, with three guys out there, y’know, there are so many ways it could’ve gone wrong. They coulda triangulated, and one of ’em coulda got around behind you, and—”
“Nah, don’t worry, El-Tee, I wouldn’t hesitate to use the 12 gauge at point-blank if I feel like I have to.”
“I get that, I know you’re capable and you can handle yourself. I know you’d do what you hafta do.”
“Besides, these guys I been catching out there, they aren’t exactly criminal masterminds, or they wouldn’t be scrapping for a living. But I appreciate your concern.”
“You’re not hearing me, Mark. It’s more than that. It’s not sound tactically, and it’s just not worth the risk. It’s not like they’re bank robbers, they’re not endangering the public. Do you think those big corporations like Aggregate and Tromax don’t have insurance? Frankly I think the captain’s wrong to let you do it, and I’ll tell him so if it comes down to that. You’re one of the most conscientious officers I’ve ever seen in this department, and I admire you for it, Mark. And I also know how fun it is to go out there and make so many collars. In some ways it’s like huntin’ over a baited field.
“But it’s not safe, and it’s not smart, and unless you can get somebody to do it with you, I really don’t want to see you go out there again. It’s just not worth it, man.”
Without another word, Lieutenant Daniels got up and left the office. I was grateful, because if he had lingered he might’ve seen my damn eyes moisten up.
22
Slocumb’s Theorem
Like the dog that returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.
—Proverbs 26:11
Earl Slocumb was my informal FTO for general investigations. Informal because it was not officially designated by the chain of command or addressed in the department’s General Orders, as it was with Porter in patrol. But Earl took me under his wing, let me shadow him, and shadowed me in my first few months as a detective.
Other than about eight classroom hours covering such topics as how to get your search warrants signed by a judge (be specific), how to get your arrest warrants approved by the DA’s charging office (be thorough and complete), and how to tell when the guy handcuffed to the table is lying (basically, when his lips are moving), there was no training for investigations.
Earl never acts like a know-it-all, but he’s generous with his accumulated wisdom, which is considerable. Though he’s only about half my age and has less than half my time as a street cop, he clearly has a knack for detective work. That Officer of the Year plaque above his desk was awarded for just nine months’ worth of investigating.
And well deserved it was. I’ve never known a more effective interrogator than Earl. (Excuse me, “interviewer.” Today’s kinder, gentler police don’t interrogate, we “interview.”) Earl develops near-instant rapport with victims, eyewitnesses, suspects (er, “persons of interest”), their accomplices (I mean “associates”), even with their mamas and baby-mamas (“mamas” and “baby-mamas”) better than anybody I’ve seen. He’s not above deception, manipulation, even intimidation, but mostly he just puts people at ease, talks their language, exchanges sports opinions or fishing stories like he’s talking to a neighbor over the back fence, gets them to like him, believe him, trust him. No matter if they’re white, black, young, old, tweaking, terrified, or full of attitude: Earl’s an equal-affability investigator.
His modesty leads him to attribute his success simply to his informal outward appearance and laid-back style rather than any particular insight into the hearts of men or superior technique. He insists it’s all about his faded Levi’s and unkempt appearance. Says he’s read professional studies that back him up. I don’t doubt him, but there’s no way I could emulate him, either in appearance or demeanor. According to Earl, my buttoned-down, coat-and-tie formality, my vocabulary, and especially my gray hair work to my disadvantage.
“You look like an authority figure,” Earl said in my first week as an investigator. “Like a Clint Eastwood cop. Must be the boots and suits. I don’t know, maybe you can get that workin’ for you—e’rbody’s got they own ways—but you sure ain’t gonna pull off my ways. When they see you, no matter how you dress, they be thinking: Authority.” (He said it with a long y, like the kid in the South Park cartoo
ns.)
“Now, they see me, it’s more like anti-authori-tye. They think, He got no agenda, got no evidence, no suspects, shit, he ain’t got a clue. They’re like, Here’s somebody pays no attention to the rules, somebody I can relate to, mebbe he can understand my side a things. They think I’m just like their-selves: barely civilized.
“But I never really think about it much. I just come by it naturally, I guess.”
Eventually, I learned that “come by it naturally” is more than just a figure of speech with Earl. As I got to know him better, he told me about his growing up around Brewton, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle, one of seven kids in a family of rednecks (his word) on a hardscrabble farm.
“My daddy was a constable in Wetumpka, up in Elmore County, before I was born. Then the family moved down to Escambia County and tried farmin’. That didn’t pay real well, either, so mostly he made a livin’ mechanicin’, fixin’ people’s trucks and farm equipment. But we had horses, and some cattle, and chickens, and crops when I was growin’ up. And daddy was all the time havin’ run-ins with the deputies. Not for anything really criminal, but it seemed like he just couldn’t get along with them, so they kept hemmin’ him up on stuff I now know is bullshit, like animal cruelty because they thought our horses were too skinny, or not havin’ a permit to build a pond, or the right zoning to fix cars. It coulda been because he’d been a constable, and knew they were fulla shit, and told ’em so, that they kept pesterin’ him, I don’t know. That’s my theory anyway—some cops can be dicks that way, y’know? Anyway, he was killed when I was sixteen. Vehicular homicide.
“A family friend—I called him Uncle Dwayne, but he wasn’t really my uncle—had just got outta prison, came back home to Escambia County. Dad was tryin’ ta help him out, let him stay with us awhile. One night Uncle Dwayne got drunk, or high, I don’t know which, and he stole my brother’s car. Dad went out to try and stop him and got ran over by him. That was a long time ago. Matter fact, I think Dwayne’s due to get out again early next year.”