Problems in the Ponderosas Ch. 02

We nodded and made little affirmative noises, still wondering what was coming and glad to be a part of it but cautious about what this was going to cost us.

"When I got here and met all the people in this command, I was surprised to find that they were all middle aged. The reason is simple. That idiot Mueller had made it so hard for everybody that all the younger guys who had their careers ahead of them took off like rats leaving a sinking ship, and went where they could work under a commander who would do their careers some good. Mueller should never have been put in a position of command. Now I've got to unscramble it all, fix it up so this is a functional precinct again.

"A big priority for me is to get in touch with the kids, high school age and younger. If we don't make a positive impression on them now, we'll never have their cooperation when they get older, running businesses, owning property, joining civic organizations, raising kids of their own. Normally it's a snap to get kids interested in the police department, but they tend to trust people younger than their parents, and all my people are older than their parents, maybe even the age of their grandparents.

"Now because of the way Mueller screwed this place up, and you don't know the half of it, I've got a free hand to make almost every change I want to make. In fact, my bosses are holding their breaths waiting for me to tell them the wonderful, way out things that I want to do to fix the place. And the people who work here feel the same way. I've never been in this sort of a situation before, with so many people eager to hear what I want to change. But I can't do it alone. I have lieutenants who are wonderful, and sergeants who can't do enough for me, but I need to know what the world looks like from the eyes of younger people who live around here.

"So I want to offer you both jobs in the police department. I want to hire you as police cadets, let you get to know our people, ride along on patrols, work all shifts, get to know the people in the schools, and the boys and girls clubs, and then with that as background, attend the police academy and come out as full fledged police officers. You'd do regular police work, and when the opportunity arose for contact with kids, you'd be thrust into it, usually along with more experienced officers. The idea is to let young people know that their interests and our interests are the same, that we're trying to build a world for them that they can trust and feel safe in. And it's just as important to find out what they think, and what it will take to make them feel comfortable. Take a minute to think about that and tell me what you think."

Val said it first, and she spoke for both of us. "Wow!"

I took a deep breath and tried to collect my thoughts. "Look, Captain," and that's all I got out before I was silenced with a wave of her hand.

"You see that uniform hanging over there. When I have that on, I'm Captain Winston and I expect to be addressed that way. When I'm in these clothes with a few friends, my name if Bobby."

"Okay, Bobby, first I want to say that you're far above and beyond any authority figure we've ever met. I don't know much about the police department but I'm sure that with your clear view of the world around you, you'll go a long way beyond captain. I think it would be exciting to work for you, be involved in what you think is important, and do whatever we could to help your career along. My impulse is to jump in with both feet and do whatever you think is best. Val, what do you think?"

"Amen. Look, it's simple. Suppose we do this and it turns out to be a mistake. No big deal. We're young. We've got years and years to recover from it. But even though we don't have any details yet, I don't see how we could possibly make a career move that would be as wonderful as this. Count me in." And she gave my hand her special squeeze.

"All right. You don't have details yet because we haven't worked them out yet. In the days to come you'll be given papers to fill out and have interviews and all that. But all of it will be pre-cooked because everybody wants to help me make changes. So don't sweat the administrative chores, just ride with them and know that it's all going to come out all right.

"I want you to know that we can and will be good for each other. This place will be a good place to work again, and people will enjoy coming to work here. You've seen me on the job, talking with my fellow officers. Everybody smiling. The detectives sharing a laugh with me. They don't work for me, you know. They're in the detective bureau, with their own command structure. But you can see how we all get along. We have to work for a living but I believe it ought to be fun, too.

But on a more personal note, you'll be doing me an immense favor to take these jobs that I'm offering you. You will be the first people in the whole precinct that I have personally brought in here. I've never forgotten one single person who helped me since I came into this department as a cadet many years ago. And they've never forgotten me. In police work, you quickly come to know your enemies. But what makes it all work, year after year, case after case, is knowing your friends."

That sounded to me like a benediction line, so I was prepared to stand when she did. I reached over and took Val's right hand in mine, and then reached for Bobby's hand. "Friends," I said as we did a three way handshake.

"Friends," repeated Val.

"Friends," said Bobby.

SPIFFING UP OUR PAD AND OUR LIVES

The insurance company was very helpful, directing us to people and companies they'd done business with in the past, and our home was gradually getting back to normal. The carpeting was so messed up that it finally was all taken out and replaced. The amount of dirt that was in it, just the normal accumulation over the many years it had been getting walked on, was astounding, and we were glad to get it out of the house. Drywall was cut off three feet up from the floor, and everything below that was replaced. That meant repainting the rooms and hallway. It seemed that every day some room or rooms had all their furniture taken out and stacked somewhere else, while repairs were made. But finally it was all done and the place looked almost like new.

We had filled out enough Police Department paper to fill a file cabinet drawer, and yet every few days another form came along. We had both given notice at our jobs and would be starting at the police station the following Monday. We both knew that our lives would never be the same again, but for once we were pursuing careers, not just changing jobs, and that sense of building toward something permanent felt good.

The freshening up of our house came at a good time. From now on we would make fairly good money, but we would be faced with working overtime, sometimes on a moment's notice, and there would be other demands on our free time that a lot of so-called "civilians" never have to put up with. In all likelihood, we would take night school courses to increase our knowledge of the art and science of law enforcement. So having the house in good shape would make it easier to concentrate on learning to be cops.

Officially, our career goals were identical: to be the youngest police chief in the city's history. So much for what we wrote down on the forms. Privately, we thought about the future a little differently. I really did want to become police chief some day. Val wanted to work hard to be a good cop for fifteen years, into her mid thirties, and then take an extended break to bear and raise kids, possibly going back to work when they got out of high school, either in the Police Department or in some some related field.

You may be thinking that these are pretty fancy plans for a couple of kids who had no interest in police work a week earlier. We'd have to answer that there's nothing wrong with aiming high. Compared to some of the kids we'd known in school, just the idea of working steadily was a great leap forward. We were a couple of middle class kids, pursuing the traditional middle class dream of getting into a field that we could gradually work our way up in, and selecting an employer who would be there over the long haul. With the economy in turmoil those employers were hard to find. But going beyond that practical reasoning, we were glad to get into something that was good for our city and the people around us, and we were just idealistic enough to make that an important part of our decision.

We spent hours talking about this sort of thing, exploring every aspect of law enforcement as we went over literature we'd been given, and chewed over what-if scenarios to make sure we hadn't missed anything. What it all brought out in my mind was how serious we both were, how much we'd grown beyond the beer drinking, party going, sex crazed scene we'd been part of just a few months earlier. Val expressed it one night when we were lying in bed. "Ken, remember that conversation before I moved in with you? Remember how I was resisting becoming a real adult, like my parents? What happened to me? I'm becoming my parents, and it's not scary at all. I'm proud of it. The things that seemed important to me back then already seem shallow and unimportant. Is this really me? Do you still love me as much as you did then?"

"Sweetie, I'm proud of the transition we've made. Of course I still love you, in fact more than ever. I dreamed of having you beside me all my life, and now that we're looking at everything in a more adult way, I can see that you're the perfect girl for me."

ALWAYS SOMETHING ELSE TO LEARN

Police work can be intense at times, and you can never be too good at it. Our lives became dominated by non-stop training of one sort or another. We were assigned to Training Officers, who took us under their wings and taught us the basic moves of the trade. We had it pounded into our heads that doing the right thing the right way at the right time had to become absolutely automatic, as much a part of our lives as heartbeats and reflexes. When we had learned the lessons that our first TO's had taught us, we switched TO's and learned from a different viewpoint. We had checklists to memorize, and we tested each other on them. Then when we were starting to get a little confident, we went off to the academy, and found out all over again how little we knew and how much more there was to learn.

We became somewhat obsessed with becoming expert with our weapons and hand to hand combat. We practiced at the gym, at the range, and even at home. One idea had been in the back of my head from the beginning, that I would learn to do everything that would make me a survivor, not for me but for Val, so that I'd always be there for her, a real helpmate instead of a stone in a cemetery.

Gradually, we were looking like star pupils in our academy class, not always the best but always pretty close. It didn't seem to me that we were smarter than our classmates, but we were highly motivated and genuinely interested in the lessons we were being taught by veteran police officers. And we were learning that it felt good to excel. We made friends with our classmates and their wives and girlfriends, and a few times we entertained at cookouts in our backyard. These were the people who would be staffing police agencies all over the state, and we'd be running into them over and over for years to come. They would become part of our network of friends who would look out for each other, and at times they might be as valuable to us as our families. From our TO's, from our supervisors, from our academy instructors, and from other rank and file officers, we kept hearing one message over and over: "You can't do it alone!"

Finally, on graduation day, we were given another ominous bit of advice: "You have now scratched the surface of what you will need to learn. As you go out to take your place as an academy graduate, understand that you have been prepared to start learning on the job to be professional police officers. Be prepared to keep learning all your life, to stay constantly alert to what your surroundings can tell you, to learn something new every day from now until you retire."

Val and I had been wondering which of us would outscore the other, so it struck us as funny when all the grades were averaged and rounded off, and we came out in a dead tie for third place in our class of 24 graduates. In the practical exercises, we were neck and neck. Val was better than I was at driving on the skid pad. I credited that to her superior sense of timing, which I had noticed a long time earlier on the dance floor. She excelled at waiting until just the perfect millisecond to apply brakes or power or twist the wheel, while I was just a little more impatient. I guess you'd say that I was very good, but she was excellent, in fact the best in the class. At the range, I scored better with the pistol and shotgun, while she did better with a rifle. If Riley were still around he could say "I told you so!" I had better upper body strength, being a whole lot bigger than Val, and that made me better at most unarmed combat. But in tactics that depended on speed and coordination, Val did better than I did. I had trouble accepting that anybody, man or woman, large or small, could be as quick as she was!

Back at the precinct, we were assigned experienced partners and started in as patrol officers. Before going off to the academy, we'd made friends at the precinct, and once we were back there to work our circle of friends grew wider, and the friendships deepened. At least twice a month, when the weather was good, we had a cookout in the backyard for as many guests as we could squeeze in. These affairs weren't all shop talk, but we kept up on the rumors that fly so fast at any police station, and there wasn't much going on that we didn't know about. Part of the reason that rumors were so important had to do with the absolute dread of surprises that is a natural product of fighting crime. Val and I compared notes every night, and if I hadn't heard a juicy bit of news she'd tell me about it, and vice versa. We batted almost a thousand at knowing every move the department made before it was announced.

Occasionally we would go with our partners to a school function or a community function that was heavily slanted toward young people. Then there were craft shows and carnivals and street fairs, at which the department always had at least one booth. We were regulars at those affairs, and our pictures were often in the paper, showing us setting up our booth or helping to staff it. The department wanted us to be highly visible, and the community was getting to know us. High school kids knew our names, and we couldn't walk into a supermarket in uniform without getting greetings by name from people we didn't even know.

We got mail from strangers, too. Unfortunately it wasn't all fan mail. One day I got back to the station house a few minutes early, and had time to go over the stuff from my mailbox before the end-of-shift meeting. There were a couple of memos announcing changes in policy, a notice of a picnic planned by the PBA, reminders of this and that, and then three letters. One was thanks for helping to man the booth at a carnival a week earlier, but the other two were a little harder to understand.

In large capital letters, drawn carefully by hand in pencil, one said, "Watch your back." That was all. Then I opened the other one and saw a crude ink sketch of a police cruiser exploding, with flames and smoke coming out.

I collected the letters and their envelopes and took them to my shift supervisor. He immediately went to the mailboxes and checked Val's box, where he found envelopes that matched mine. Val came in right then, and Sergeant Johnson simply asked us both to stick around after the meeting. As the officers were filing into the meeting room, the sergeant pulled Adam Myers, the senior man on the shift, aside and spoke with him quickly, gesturing with my mail in his hand.

The meeting was entirely routine, with nothing unusual to report. At the end, as usual, some guys were anxious to get out and go home, while others were talking with friends for a minute. Adam was over near the door, saying just a few words to each one as they left, without making it look staged or artificial. Then Adam, Val, and I sat down for a quick conversation with Sergeant Johnson. He advised us to handle each envelope we received by the edges, to avoid smudging fingerprints. Adam explained that this is not a new thing, and every officer receives some hate mail some time in his career. The mail would be turned over to Captain Winston, who would pass it on to the lab for detailed examination.

Adam said, "I know this is hard to take when it first happens to you, but try not to let it worry you. People try to rattle you with mail like this. If they wanted to blow you up, it would have happened by now. A picture can't hurt you.

At home that night, we talked the whole thing to death. At the end of the conversation, we decided that we should have a chain link fence around our property, and that our cars should be locked up in the garage every night. At work we would get there early and park right up against the building. But when we got there next morning, Sergeant Johnson took Val's car keys and said the car would be ready for her at the end of the shift. I asked what he was going to do with it, but he acted as if he hadn't heard the question.

Val's car was a two door sport sedan, which is a polite name for a coupe. It had a back seat that was really just a small shelf to park grocery bags on, and not very many at that. It was a good little car, but there wasn't much that they could do to it, so neither one of us gave it much of a thought all day. We were both pretty busy anyway. My partner and I were working on a string of burglaries that had been happening over the last two months. The things that were being stolen were just trinkets, nothing of very much value, and we suspected that the thefts were being pulled by kids, just seeking the thrill of getting away with something. Val was across town, helping her partner to evaluate the plan for a new security system for a small shopping mall. So we both had enough details at hand to occupy our minds, and we forgot all about the mystery of what was happening to her car.

We both were called in the afternoon and asked to report in a few minutes before the end-of-shift meeting. When we got there, Sergeant Johnson was at Val's car with Max, the head electronic tech from the police garage. The car was where we had left it except parked facing out. Max was wiping an imaginary smudge off the driver's door and looking smug. "Hey, Val, here are your car keys. You'll notice that you've got a new little key fob. From now on, that's what you use to lock and unlock your car. Right now it's unlocked, so go ahead and lock it up, with that little padlock button." The car gave a little beep. "Good. Now you're coming back to your car from the supermarket, so you unlock it with the open padlock button." Val did and we could hear the door locks click. "Okay. But suppose that while you were shopping somebody messed with your car. Hold on and I'll simulate that. All right. Now push the unlock button." There were three quick beeps. "Look at the key fob. Notice anything?"

"It vibrated in my hand and now there's a little red light showing."

"That means you're in danger. Somebody's been messing around. What you do now is get far away from the car and call the duty officer because until it's been swept and cleared, your car's a job for the bomb squad."

"Wow! Pretty fancy! What's this going to cost me?"

"Not a penny," said a familiar voice from the doorway. Captain Winston came out and waved both hands at all the officers milling around the parking area, to gather around. "These two kids have been getting a lot of exposure recently, as part of a public relations effort aimed at teenagers and their families. It's been effective, but like a lot of medicines, it can have unwanted side effects. The threats they've received indicate that they've been noticed by some unfriendly residents, too. The reason I'm telling all of you about this is that it could happen to any of us, so it's nice to know that the department takes care of its own. This security system is the same as the ones we've installed on the chief's personal cars. So if any of you get any unwanted attention, let us know and we'll do what we can for you, too."