Peril in the Pines Ch. 06

Vince asked, "Anything else? I get the impression that there's something you want to know but you're hesitant to ask."

Kathleen sat and looked nervously at Vince, then at me, and then at her mother. I got the idea and said, "While you two talk, I'm going to go to the kitchen with Mrs. Cafferty for a private conversation."

I got up and took Mrs. Cafferty by the hand and we walked out. As we entered the kitchen I could hear Kathleen say, "What's been bothering me is..." I let the swinging door swing shut and we were alone.

"Now if you'll pour me another cup of tea, Mrs. Cafferty, you can share with me what's been bothering you that you couldn't ask in front of Kathleen."

"What makes you think I've got something bothering me?"

"Because if I were sending my daughter out to be a cop, I'd be worried sick."

"Look, Chief..." I stopped her there.

"There's nobody in the room except you and me. My name is Jack."

"Oh, all right, Jack. I want Kathleen to be happy, do what she wants to do, and be good at it. Will she be in danger? Will she be accepted? Will she be able to do the work? Will she be an outcast in the neighborhood?"

"That's a lot. Let's take it a piece at a time. In some situations, a woman cop may be targeted by some criminals who think they can pull something over on her. Face facts: she's smaller than most male cops, and there are some people out there who still don't believe in treating women the same as men. Here's my answer. First, she'll be learning daily from the best in the business, and they just don't come any better than Vince. Second, she's very smart, might have the top IQ in the department. Third, her skills as tested at the academy are up at the top. Fourth, I won't let her go out on her own until I'm sure she's ready. She'll probably come home and complain to you that she's being held back, and it may be true because I'll want her to be even better prepared than most of the men. So yes, she'll be in some danger, same as we all are. And yes, she'll be able to do the work and excel at it.

"Next, I think she'll be accepted. Our deputies are skilled and they know it. Once they see that she is, too, they'll welcome her into their ranks. If I find that we have any who are reluctant to do that, Vince and I will make it our personal goal to take care of that. Now, about the neighbors: unless you've got a bunch of drug peddlers or pimps living around here, I think they'll be proud of her. She may become sort of a neighborhood celebrity. You'll just have to wait and see. If there's a problem, tell me or Vince. We deal with problems every day. Now what else is on your mind?"

"Oh, I guess that's all, Jack. I just want everything to go well for my little girl. She's all I've got."

"Well, then it's my turn. This is in strictest confidence. I'm still very new at police work. My background is in leading men in combat in the Army, and I got thrust into this job by a quirk of fate. A very lucky quirk for me, as it turned out. I'm anxious to do a good job, and I thought I had a good handle on it until this unexpected challenge named Kathleen came up. I have to make this work out all right or I'll be in a world of trouble. My men, and the Sheriff, too, expect me to be able to figure out how to handle everything that comes along, and I expect the same of myself. I don't want to let anybody down, including Kathleen, you, the Sheriff, or my deputies. So I'll depend on you to tell me if anything is off key. You know Kathleen inside and out, and if there's a problem you'll sense it first. Even if you don't know what it is yet, let me know if there are any signs of uneasiness or trouble. Her career may depend on it, and maybe mine too. Make no mistake, I'm very good at leading and supervising and managing, but this is different and I've got to show that I can make it turn out right. Now here's the deal I'd like you to agree to with me: you watch my back, and I'll watch out Kathleen's. Is that a deal?"

"Yes, it sure is. I think you and I are going to get along very well, Jack. And we'll just keep this little conversation to ourselves, won't we?"

"Yes, we sure will. Seal of the confessional."

"Right. How about another cup of tea? Or something stronger?"

"Tea, yes. The other, not while I'm working, thank you. But maybe some other time." Mrs. Cafferty busied herself with the tea, and then I said, "Oh, before we leave, there's one other thing I was going to ask you. It might be that Vince will want to invite you and Kathleen to his house for dinner or maybe just for a drink, to get better acquainted with you, and for you to meet his fiancee. If you would feel funny about that, let me know. But I've got to tell you, Vince is a wonderful guy, and Rose is simply a delight."

"Oh, I think that would be nice. Is this something that is commonly done?"

"Depends on the people involved, but it's pretty common for partners to get to know each other's family because they work so close together every day. They get to feel like relatives in an extended family, and that's good for them, because in a tight spot it's only natural to protect a family member more aggressively than you would a business associate."

"Is all police work dangerous?"

"No, in fact most of it isn't. Policemen do a lot of work with school children, and they do things to help the underprivileged. They direct traffic. They investigate crimes daily, long after the bad guys have left, because before we can try to get justice done we have to know what happened. They help people whose cars have broken down. If people are injured, they give first aid. Oh, that reminds me, I helped deliver a baby last month. Boy, was that a thrill! You've probably heard the saying, 'we protect and serve' and it's true. Sometimes it seems that the police are the people who jump in and take care of situations that nobody else can handle. Think of us as the people who give you the ability to sleep through the night instead of lying awake worrying."

"Why do we have Sheriff's deputies patrolling our streets instead of city policemen?"

"It goes back to the Great Depression. The city was about bankrupt and couldn't afford to pay for a police department. The county stepped in and hired the policemen as deputies, and has patrolled the city ever since. It costs a lot to run any police department, and if the department is small, it can be prohibitively expensive to operate. Piggybacking it onto a county department saves a lot of salaries, like the chief, dispatcher, phone operator, armorer, and so on. The bottom line is better protection and better service for everybody."

"Jack, for a young man you have such a wonderful grasp of everything. You must be a very exceptional person."

"Thank you for the compliment, but I assure you that any of our deputies could answer your questions just as well as I can. They're very good at what they do, and they know a whole lot more than you'd expect. Remember what I told you: we want the public to be well taken care of, and we want our deputies to go home safe and sound after every shift. And you can be sure the Sheriff expects Vince and me to work hard to make it happen."

We went to rejoin the conversation in the other room, and Vince and I left shortly after that. In the Jeep, Vince said, "That girl is going to be a wonderful cop. I think she'll make our transition from all male to coed a lot easier than I expected. We can give the Sheriff a good report on this recon trip."

"Her mother is okay, too. She'll be a big help. I'm feeling good about this, and I'm anxious for it to happen. Hey, the Sheriff filled me in on the legal hassling over Kathleen. Has he got a burr under his saddle for Pike County?"

"You're seeing the residue from some shady stuff they tried to pull on him many years ago. Remember when the Commander said he remembers his friends and his enemies? That goes double for our Sheriff. And he has a very long memory.

At home that evening I was telling Jan about the conversations with Kathleen Cafferty and her mother. She asked, "What kind of a person is this Kathleen?"

"Seems like a very normal young lady. Quite determined to get into police work. She's a habitual hard worker and overachiever, and she has a driving ambition to the best that there is. I'm afraid that's going to be hard for her to satisfy, because it's not that kind of work. You never know what the day will hold, and a call that you could excel at may go to somebody else while you get to spend the afternoon directing traffic around an accident. I just hope that after spending so long preparing for this, she's not disappointed."

"How'd Vince take to her?"

"Seemed to me that they both liked each other right away. I think they'll work well together and she'll learn a lot from him. The lack of a women's locker room is going to rankle her, and we talked about it, but that will be taken care of in a year. She's not a kid, really. She's only a few years younger than I am, but she seems idealistic. I'm sure it's the same for beginning teachers. You get on the job and it isn't quite the way you pictured it, but you take a deep breath and plunge in, and eventually you find that you've mastered it. I talked with her mother privately for a few minutes. She's very nice, and I'm sure she'll be a big help to Kathleen as she gets settled in. She'll need somebody to talk to, somebody who's willing to listen, and it's hard to beat a mother for that."

"Any idea when she'll be able to start work?"

"No, it depends on the legal razzle dazzle with Pike County. The Sheriff got our county attorney involved with that, and I guess they're out to settle some old scores. The Sheriff isn't the only one nursing old wounds from the Pike County people. If the case goes to court, it could be a while. I'm hoping that they'll settle and we can get on with it. The longer we wait, the harder it'll be. I just want to stop waiting and start doing something. And I think that the longer we wait, the more the rumor mill will get fired up, and everybody will know that we're planning a significant move and not telling anybody about it."

"Maybe you ought to go ahead and tell the guys what's coming. Well, I suppose that has to wait for the legal issues to be cleared up."

"Yeah, it's a shame to delay it like this. We'll talk about it tomorrow morning, I'm sure. The Sheriff will want to know how it went when we visited the Cafferty house, and I'll let the conversation roll around to my impatience."

"Do you want to have the two of them over here some night?"

"Seems a little much. I think Vince and Rose may have them to their house, which would be a natural thing since they're going to be partners for the training period. Having them here would seem like making a celebrity out of Kathleen, and I don't want to do anything that would make her feel funny about working for us. I think I ought to stop fixating on the whole issue, because I think I'm blowing it out of proportion. What we're doing is hiring one new deputy. Period. And it's probably going to go smoothly and there won't be any problems."

DECISIONS, PLANS, AND NEGOTIATIONS

When I got home that evening Jan mentioned, "My car was making a funny noise today, on the way home. Will you take it out after dinner and see how it sounds to you?"

"Sure. If you want, we could switch cars tomorrow and I could have our mechanic give it a once over. But let's wait till I listen to it and then we can decide."

There was a crashing noise outside. Actually two crashing noises, one right after the other. We both jumped up and I reached for my pistol and went out the door. I took a quick look and turned back to Jan. "Call 911 and then give me the phone."

What had made the noise was a large SUV that bounced off a car parked across the street and then careened across to our side of the street, right into Jan's little sedan. It had come to rest almost completely in our driveway, with the front bumper of the SUV about where the driver's seat of the sedan should be. We wound up with a crowd scene with deputies, a fire truck, an ambulance, three tow trucks, and all the neighbors from our street, the next street in each direction, and who knows where else. The drunken driver of the SUV was hauled away to the hospital after taking and failing a field sobriety test. The firemen cleaned up the broken glass, shards of torn metal, spilled gasoline and oil, and then left. The tow trucks had a tough time separating the SUV from Jan's car, but finally left with the parked car that had been hit first, the SUV, and Jan's sedan, plus an assortment of loose parts that had been dislodged during the impacts. The onlookers seemed disappointed that the show was over, and after looking around to see if any other cars were going to come crashing into things, they slowly trudged back to their homes. We were left looking at skid marks on the street, the driveway, and our lawn, and one car where there were usually two.

Jan took the disaster in stride, but when we came back into the house and locked the door behind us, she buried her face in my shoulder and cried. I took her over to the sofa and held her while she sobbed, with her shoulders shaking, until there weren't any more tears left to shed. I held her close to me then and got her calmed down. Finally she looked up at me and said, "What am I crying for? At least I wasn't in it."

I was quick to add, "And now we don't have to figure out the cause of that noise you heard driving home."

The book value of Jan's car was so low that the insurance payment for totaling it wasn't enough to pay for a set of tires. I didn't want to go deeply into debt right then, so we shopped for used cars the next weekend, coming away with a pretty good notion of what we could afford. But I had already put out feelers to a few people I knew, and within a week we had a very nice eight year old sedan, quite luxurious, with low miles. It certainly wasn't the usual sort of car that a school teacher would drive, probably more like a principal's or a bank branch manager's car. It wasn't in high demand because it got low gas mileage, maybe eighteen mpg in city traffic on a good day, but for Jan's daily commute of four miles each way it was entirely suitable. Most important, Jan liked it.

Weathering that crisis without our family finances becoming totally unhinged, left us in a good position to go ahead with wedding plans. We seriously considered bypassing the engagement ring and going directly to the wedding ring. This was a major decision, and the result would be to slide the wedding date forward or back by several months. I left it entirely up to Jan. To me it made less difference than tomorrow's weather forecast. Finally, after talking it over with her mother and all of her friends, Jan announced that she'd rather be married sooner and go through life with one ring on her third finger instead of two.

The result of Jan's decision was that, as weddings go, she was months behind the curve in planning and preparing. The frenzy of making all the decisions and signing contracts and writing checks shifted into high gear. And was it ever frantic! The shop that she wanted to get her gown from went out of business. The Church was available on the Saturday when she wanted to get married but the party house where she wanted to have the reception wasn't. I stepped in on that one, and suggested that she talk to a hotel about getting their ballroom for the reception, with guest rooms on one floor tentatively reserved for the wedding party and guests so nobody would have to drive home under the influence. It seemed to me that with all those rooms rented, the hotel ought to throw in the ballroom free and even a free bar for the first two or three hours. Jan was shocked by my suggestion, and said that no hotel would go for such a deal, so I asked her if she wanted me to talk with them. Of course, I knew how to pull it off, because the hotel I had in mind was where the Sheriff's office held two training seminars that I intended to make annual affairs, and we also had a longstanding, unwritten understanding with them about being discreet in our handling of occasional problems with their guests who had imbibed unwisely. It was definitely in the hotel's interest to sweeten the deal for our reception as much as they could. At the same time, I was bargaining with two outside caterers and allowed the hotel to bid against them on the dinner as well.

Vince and I went there in uniform to sit down with the hotel's general manager to rough out the scope of the proposed contract with the hotel. We already knew the terms that the hotel would try to base their proposal on, simply boilerplate that they used for every contract. Vince and I had agreed in advance to object to three of the caveats that the hotel had stipulated as if they were laid down by God. They didn't really mean much for our wedding reception, but our real motivation was to let the GM know that we were writing the agreement, not his staff. When we had finished explaining that we weren't about to agree to those three items, the GM sat back in his chair and looked from me to Vince and back to me again without saying a word. Then he shrugged slightly and said, "Let's not make these issues a deal breaker," and went on down the list of items in our proposal. In the end, we let the hotel have the whole thing: ballroom, hotel rooms, food preparation, food service, wine with the meal, and an open bar before and after the meal. With so many services provided, they could shave their prices here and there and still make a profit, and they gave us a price for the package that nobody else could have come even close to. Compared to the tentative budget we had put together, we saved a shade over two thousand dollars, and we emerged as heroes in the eyes of our ladies.

It made sense that there would be couples at the wedding who had small children at home, so they would need to get home that night instead of staying overnight at the hotel. I got hold of the outfit that provided limousine service for weddings, and arranged that they would provide three smaller vehicles with drivers to take guests home, and if necessary take their baby sitters home as well. Nobody had thought of that, and it seemed like a safe, sensible service to offer to our guests, with the understanding that the number of vehicles was limited and they might have to wait a half hour for their ride or share a car with another couple. To help guests decide whether or not they ought to drive, I arranged for a team of Explorer Scouts to give breath tests in a room near to the ballroom, with a rotating group of deputies to supervise. We made a donation to the Explorers program, and even with that included our total transportation package was roughly what we had budgeted for the limo alone.

When we had all the plans together, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Jan called the society editor of the newspaper and we set up an interview to outline all the features of our wedding plan that were designed to let our guests enjoy themselves without worrying, and without compromising their safety. This was run in the paper a week before the wedding, and since it turned out to be a slow news day, it was run with a big headline on the front page of section two of the paper, with a continuation inside to the society page. Our plans were detailed enough, and showed our concern for our guests clearly enough, to make our wedding the big event of the season in the mind of the society editor, and the whole county had long ago accepted her judgment in such matters the absolute last word.

Our friends and relatives, my friends from the law enforcement community, county attorney's office, and leading politicians, and Jan's friends among schoolteachers and administrators, made up a sizeable guest list, but we invited everybody we thought might want to come and help us get our married life off to a good start. As the date drew closer, instead of getting more nervous we were getting more relaxed. Everything had been planned so carefully that we were completely sure nothing had been left out, and everything was going to be perfect.