Badge of Betrayal

I sat there for a few moments before putting the big Ford in gear and pulling out of the driveway and onto Rattlesnake Road. As I looked in my rearview mirror, I could still see her form by the front door as I crested the hill before my home disappeared from sight. As I approached US Highway 120, I wondered if that was the last time that I would see my home before I made a decision to divorce my wife.

It took over three hours to drive from my house outside of Red River Falls to the Twin Cities. I hit the tail end of rush hour traffic and made very good time to get to the hotel. Luckily, the conference was at the same hotel so I wouldn't need to go far for anything. The Sheriff's department paid for my room, meals at the hotel and I was given an expense account at the hotel for dry cleaning and laundry service during the time I was going to be there.

Bud Roberts was also going to be attending so I thought I would look up his room as I approached the front desk to check in. It was just after 9 am and the conference didn't begin for almost another hour.

"I'm sorry," the desk clerk said. "I'm not showing anyone by that name as a guest here."

"Really?" I said puzzled. "His actual name is William Roberts. Maybe there is a Will or Bill Roberts?"

The desk clerk typed away on his computer. "I'm sorry, sir. I'm not showing anyone with that last name as a guest in the hotel at this time. I don't even show anyone with that name as having a reservation here."

Weird, I thought. Maybe bud had decided to check into another hotel instead. Oh, well. I guess I would have to see him at the conference instead.

I took my belongings directly upstairs to the 8th floor where my room was. I slid the key card into the slot and pushed the door open. The room contained a single king size bed, sleeper sofa, deluxe bathroom with Jacuzzi tub and a small office work station with in-room Wi-Fi. There was also a large-screen TV, microwave, refrigerator and a coffee maker with about two dozen varieties of coffee to choose from. All in all, it wasn't a bad place to have to shack up for the next two weeks. It would be tough, but I was pretty sure I could handle it!

At 9:45 I made my way down to the conference center. I wasn't dressed too official but it didn't take much to make me as a law enforcement officer. I had a miniature badge pin on my right lapel, a US flag on my left lapel and my official Sheriff's badge secured to my belt which was in plain view.

A handful of the other participants were dressed in their work uniforms but most were dressed like me. The brochures for the conference stated expressly that firearms were absolutely forbidden on the hotel property and that no excuses or explanations would be accepted for carrying a weapon during the conference.

I looked around at the registration table as I signed in for the conference. I was able to locate Bud's name tag, so he had obviously not signed in to the conference yet. I decided to wait near the entrance to the main conference hall for him to show up. It was difficult to stand there because I had been handed an arm load of course materials for the entire two weeks of the conference.

At 9:55, Bud still hadn't shown up yet and I decided to go ahead and take a seat. The conference kicked off punctually at 10:00 with the keynote speaker, a retired Deputy Police Commissioner for the City of Chicago who spoke until 11:45. The conference broke early for lunch with the afternoon seminar scheduled to begin again at 1:15.

I left my seat in the conference room and went out into the vacuous main lobby of the hotel to try and give Bud a call and find out where he was at.

The phone rang twice before picking up. "Bud Roberts," he answered.

"Hey, Bud. This is Patrick. Where are ya? I missed you at registration."

"Aw, hell, Patrick. I've got a mess to take care of back here," he replied. "I have an emergency meeting with the County Supervisors. They're looking at amending the budget for next year and looking at the possibility of cutting three deputies! I've gotta try and convince them to pull their heads out of each other's asses and get a dose of reality. I'm hoping to get to the conference by tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest. How's is going there, anyway?"

"Oh, fine, I guess," I said. "We only had the first session this morning and it was a former Deputy Commissioner from Chicago who talked about leadership excellence and stuff. You know, the usual rah-rah stuff to fire up the troops," I said pacing the lobby floor.

"Well, it should be good experience for you, Pat. I'm sure you'll come home with all kinds of ideas we can use."

Odd, I thought. It almost sounded like he wasn't planning on coming here at all.

"Anyway," he continued, "wish me luck dealing with these assholes. Hope to see you later this week. Bye!"

"Yeah, take care now," I said ending the call.

Great, just fucking great. My home life was in a world of shit and I was hoping to at least have a friend I could talk to about it while I was here. I was going to have to wallow and stew in my own self-pity for the next few days at least. And that was only if Bud decided to show up at all.

I had a light lunch in the smallest of the hotel's three restaurants. There were a few other people from the conference in there eating as well but I chose to sit at a small table by myself so I could think.

The afternoon session ran from 1:15 to 4:30 and the first day of the conference had come to a close. I attended an evening mixer in one of the banquet halls and nursed a Jack and Coke while I made small talk with some of the other attendees. I knew a few people here and there. The world of law enforcement can be fairly small at times and you tend to meet officers from all over. The majority of the attendees were from Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, the Dakotas, Nebraska and Wisconsin but at least three of them came all the way from Denver, Colorado. For a few hours, at least, I enjoyed the kinship that can only be found among the fraternity of police officers.

I retired to my room around 8:30. I made a call home so I could talk to the boys and we got to chat for about half an hour. Nick had decided that he wanted to play basketball this winter and asked me if we could go shopping for new basketball shoes as soon as I got home. Jake repeated the story of Nick playing basketball along with the fact that he was pissed that he didn't get to play too. I told him that if it made him feel better, I would buy him a pair of basketball shoes, too, and that I would put a basketball hoop in the hay barn so we could shoot baskets inside even during the winter. Even as I told him that, I silently asked myself if I wasn't in fact lying to my son as I spoke the words. Even still, Jake was satisfied and promised that he would stop hating his brother for getting to play basketball.

Nick got back on the phone to say goodbye after I got done speaking with Jake. Nick asked me if I wanted to talk to their Mom but I said that tonight I just wanted to talk to my boys.

"Are you and Mom mad at each other?" Nick asked pointedly.

Even from several hundred miles away the question hit me like a punch in the gut.

"Why would you ask that?" Kids are a lot more intuitive than we ever give them credit for.

"It just seems like it," he said quietly.

"Don't worry," I tried to reassure him. "There's nothing for you to be concerned about."

"Then why don't you want to talk to Mom?" he asked point blank. Damn. This kid wasn't going to let me off easy.

"Well," I began, "your Mom and I get to talk all the time. We talked a lot last night and I got to see her this morning before I left." It wasn't a lie but it wasn't the whole truth. I hoped it would at least be enough to get me by for now.

"Yeah, okay. Will you call tomorrow?" Nick asked.

"Absolutely, I will buddy. Already looking forward to it. You get some sleep now. You're gonna need it if you decide to play basketball," I encouraged.

"Okay, Dad. Talk to you tomorrow. Love you."

"I love you, too, little buddy. Give your Mom and your brother a hug for me, okay?"

"I will. I promise," he said.

"Good night," I replied as I hung up the phone. Jeez. Even the kids were starting to pick up on the tension. Things needed to change between my wife and they needed to change fast. The question was, would they change for the better or change for the worse? I guessed that I wouldn't have my answer until I got home next week.

Sleep came quicker than I had anticipated, helped in part, I'm sure, to the Jacks and Coke that I had imbibed at the conference mixer.

Much to my relief, Bud finally showed up the next morning. He ended up getting a room at an adjacent motel for some reason but he and I were still able to have breakfast and lunch together in my hotel. In the evenings, Bud ended up spending time with a number of other police chiefs and sheriffs who were also in attendance. Some of them he knew and some of them he met at the conference. A large group of them got together in the evenings for drinks and dinner, which was fine with me. It was just good to have a friend to hang out with.

I didn't talk much about my issues back home. Trying to put the best face on things for my boss seemed like a good idea. I had decided when I left for the conference that I was just going to leave all my problems back on the farm. Either things between Clarissa and I would improve while I was gone or they wouldn't. And if they didn't, then I guess it would make what I was contemplating a lot easier to allow happen.

Bud and I sat next to each other during the class session but didn't chat much at breaks. Bud was big into "networking", or basically just shaking hands and greasing palms. He told me that you had to be a bit of a politician to be sheriff and know how to understand and work with the other elected politicians. In Mason County, that meant working with and dealing with the board of supervisors. They had been the reason for his delay in getting to the conference in the first place. There were only three of them Bud had to deal with but, in his words, every single one of them was a proctologist's dream - a major asshole!

The next three days of the conference went by quickly. The weekend seminars for the conference were morning sessions only so that the attendees could have the chance to see some of the Twin Cities while they were in town. There was even a group trip to see the Minnesota Wild play at the XCel Energy Center, which all of us were greatly looking forward to.

Friday at lunch Bud received a phone call just as we were getting ready to order. He left our table to take the call and was gone for about ten minutes. When he came back he was visibly upset.

"Bad news, Pat," he said sitting back down. "I'm gonna have to eat and run. More trouble with the supervisors. If I don't meet with them they're not going to put the new jail proposal on the ballot next year."

"Ouch!" I replied. "Can they really do that?"

"Damned right they can," Bud said taking a sip of coffee. "Anything that goes on a referendum for a county election has to be approved by them first. And God knows we need that new jail."

I knew that Bud was between a rock and a hard place. He was absolutely right about the new jail. Currently, a good chunk of the corrections budget was going towards housing prisoners in prisons out of the county. Prisoners were currently being housed as far away as Choctaw County, when they had the room themselves, and several more were being held in Lakota and Iroquois counties as well. Both of those counties charged Mason county approximately $80.00 per day to house one prisoner. Considering the fact that we currently had ten prisoners being housed in Lakota County right now with an average stay of ten days a piece, it was costing the taxpayers an average of $800 per day and $5600 per week and over $20,000 per month. And that was just for one county.

Still, it seemed odd that Bud would have to leave right this moment. By the time he fought through afternoon rush hour traffic in Minneapolis, it would be well into the evening before he got home. I chalked it up to the old adage that a lawman's job is never done. But the thought still bothered me and I wasn't quite sure why.

The Friday sessions ended, as usual, at 4:30 and I headed straight up to my room to change. I had decided to head over and check out the Mall of America and hit up a store there called Lego Land that one of the attendees had told me about. Both Nick and Jake were huge Lego fans and I thought that I would surprise them and get them each something super cool to put together and play with when I came home, sort of a "sorry I was gone for two weeks" kind of gift for them.

When I reached my hotel room, I noticed that one of the lights on the hotel phone was blinking, indicating that I had a message. I picked up the phone and contacted the front desk.

"Front desk, this is Adam speaking," came the greeting over the phone.

"Yes, this is Patrick Quinn in room 832. Do you have a message for me?" I asked.

"One moment, please," the clerk replied as he searched for the message. "Mr Quinn?"

"Yes, I'm here," I replied.

"Yes, Mr. Quinn, I have a message for you. A Ms. Caroline Bennett called for you and asked that you return her call as soon as possible," he replied.

Caroline? My mother-in-law? What in the world could she possibly want? I hadn't seen much of her since she moved to the cities.

I grabbed a pen and quickly jotted down the number the desk clerk gave me. After he hung up, I sat for a moment and pondered the implications of calling her. For the majority of my marriage, I had experienced a fairly innocuous relationship with my mother-in-law that was typical, if not vanilla. All that had changed one hot, sunny August afternoon and sparked a fire that resulted in almost a month of burning, flaming sex sessions between us that the mere THOUGHT of which could still spark a raging erection in my pants. And here I was...a couple hundred miles from home...in a hotel...in the same city that my mother-in-law now resided in with her new significant other.

Only one thought entered my mind; absolutely NO good can come from this. Ashamedly, that thought did not deter me from punching in the number of Caroline's phone. I couldn't help myself as I nervously anticipated the call. The phone rang almost 5 times before it picked up.

"Hello?" came a female voice.

"Caroline?" I asked almost sheepishly.

"Patrick! Oh, I'm so glad that you returned my call!" She sounded genuinely excited.

"Well, the afternoon session of the conference ended and I thought I would give you a shout before I headed out for some dinner in a bit," I explained.

"Oh, dear. Did you have plans this evening?" she asked.

"Oh, no, no," I half stammered. "There's several restaurants in the hotel plus the Mall of America is almost within walking distance from here"

"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed. "Stay away from the mall. Nothing but an overpriced tourist trap and an eyesore. Even the airport is more pleasing to look at than the mall," she giggled.

"Okay," I chuckled. "If you say so."

"Speaking of dinner," she went on. "If you don't have plans tonight, then Martin and I want to treat you to dinner. It has been ages since I have gotten to see you and I need to catch up with you on how Clarissa and the boys are doing."

"Well," I reasoned, "sounds good to me. Where would you like to meet?"

"I hope you don't mind," she started, "but I already took the liberty of getting a reservation at the Chez Stefan." The Chez Stefan was the high-end restaurant located here in the hotel. It was the restaurant that was NOT one of the dining choices that I was given by the department and not the type of place frequented by someone collecting a tax-payer funded salary. It was the kind of restaurant where the prices weren't even on the menu because if you had to ask how much it cost, you couldn't afford it.

"Uh, well, that's a little out of my league," I reasoned.

"Nonsense, luv. You came all this way and you deserve a hero's welcome and a meal fit for a king! And Martin and I are going to treat you as such while you are here. I won't hear otherwise and your money is no good as long as you are with us!" Well, I guess it was decided.

"Okay, okay, Caroline. You win. I'd be delighted and I'll be looking forward to seeing you and meeting Martin. When should I plan to be there?" I asked.

"Martin and I will be arriving for drinks around 8:00 and our dinner reservation is for 8:30. Martin detests early meals and so do I," she finished.

"Okay, great. Eight it is. I'll see you there," I said getting ready to hang up.

"Perfect. Oh, and Patrick?"

"Yes," I replied. There was a pause before she continued.

"I am really, really looking forward to seeing you tonight," she said with a voice full of anticipation.

"Me, too," was all I could say.

"Okay. See you soon," she nearly purred.

I hung up the phone and let out a long, slow breath. Wow! Her voice had sounded so... so... anticipatory. Yeah, that was about right. But anticipating.....what? It surely couldn't be sex, although I more than half-hoped it would be. But she was bringing the new man in her life with her so there was no way it could be that.

But if not sex, then what? Just to torture me? Sitting there across the table looking amazing, smelling amazing and just plain being amazing? It sure as hell wasn't just to find out how Clarissa and the kids were. Hell, she could call and talk to her daughter any time to do that. And she did. Even after her move to the cities, she and Clarissa still spoke on the phone for an hour or more at least 4 to 5 nights a week.

I let the thoughts ponder in my head while I took an extra long, hot shower. I tried to push all the thoughts of what was going on back home to the back of my mind and focused only on making a good impression at dinner and being a respectful and grateful guest of Caroline and Martin.

I decided to put on my dark charcoal gray suit with a royal blue pattern tie and my freshly polished and shined Tony Lamas. With a hot shower, fresh shave and a sharp set of clothes, I felt ready to take on the world.....and Caroline Bennett. And Martin, whoever the hell he was.

I made my way down to the main concourse and lobby of the hotel and arrived at the Chez Stefan just before eight o'clock. The maitre d' looked me up and down and gave me a full screening. I could see in his eyes a look of "he doesn't belong here", especially when he spotted the large golden badge affixed to my belt.

"Welcome to the Chez Stefan, sir. Is there something I can assist you with?" he asked with a plastic smile. Damn. He wasn't even gonna ask me if I had a reservation.

"I'm expecting some people," I replied.

"Perhaps you would like to wait for your party outside," he suggested. God, I really wanted to punch this guy in the throat.

"Any reason I can't wait inside, instead?" I asked, challenging him.

"I'm sorry, sir, but the Chez Stefan only takes reservations and all of our seatings are booked for the remainder of the evening. Perhaps..." he tried to finish.

"Patrick!" Caroline interrupted. The maitre d' immediately stood at near attention. It was obvious that he knew Caroline and the man with her. "Patrick!" she exclaimed again as she embraced me. "Oh, so good to see you!"

"It is good to see you, too, Caroline," I replied.

And it was. Caroline looked incredible for a woman just shy of 55 years of age. Her hair was freshly styled and she wore an incredibly form fitting black velvet western style dress that hugged her body and hung just below her knees. She wore a set of black stylish high-end ankle high cowboy style boots as well as a spectacular string of pearls around her neck. She smelled incredible, of a scent I wasn't familiar with but was quickly overtaking my senses and replacing it with lust. Her make up was flawless and she looked so incredible that most women half her age would kill to look half as good as she did right now.