We get them all the time, especially during warm weekends.  People get out and have a good time, talking and laughing until late at night.  Not a big deal.  Or sometimes it’s the dogs.  They’ve been cooped up all winter and now it’s warm and they’re outside and so start barking.

(Which I’ve always thought of as the canine version of standing on a street corner shouting at random passers-by: “Hey!  Hey!  Hey hey!  Heeeeeeyy!”)

Regardless, noise complaints are usually pretty benign.

Except when they’re drunken parties.  Those bastards get ugly in a damned hurry.  Wanna feel uncomfortable?  Jump into the middle of 15 or 20 young drunks, all beer-brave and bullet-proof.

Best way to handle young drunks is stride right up to the toughest, meanest son of a bitch you can find and beat his or her ass.

Metaphorically.

‘Cause literally?  Yeah, that’ll get you fired, sued, maybe thrown in jail.  There’ll be a ton of paperwork.  Plus, you take the chance that maybe you aren’t quite as tough as you think and you end up fired, sued, thrown in jail, drowning in paperwork, and on the bloody and bruised bottom of the pile while a bunch of drunks laugh at you.

Or you go the other direction.  Surprise them not with fear and awe, but with something so stupid they simply can’t believe that’s what their seeing.

Which would be my strength.

So I get to this noise complaint, find the only house on the block surrounded by cars, climb outta my crime cruiser, straighten my gunbelt a la Barney Fife, and get to work.

The problem is…there’s not any noise.

Seriously.  I have to strain to hear anything.

In the deep, dark distance, I can finally make out a thump.  A rhythmic thump.  A deep, rhythmic thump.

Dude, that’s a bass drum!

I’ve played drums for the better part of 32 or 33 years…plus, I’m a trained observer…and I can sniff out a clue when I have to.

Not only a bass drum, but an entire kit.  Banging snare, crashing cymbals.  And damn if there isn’t a guitar and bass laid right over the top.

Now, you gotta understand how excited I get about live bands…even shitty ones.  That someone is up there, wailing away on whatever music they love best, exposing themselves, just gets me off every time.

Here’s the thing: this band is playing some good old R & B but I can barely hear them.  So 1) the person who complained about the noise is probably just jealous they didn’t get invited and 2) this band needs me to teach them how to WAIL!

(which means, first of all, turning those damned amps up to 11, obviously)

So I wait until they finish a tune, then I bang on the door.  And what do I hear, yelled through the closed door?

“We got enough beer…thanks, though!”

Finally, someone yells for me to go to the other door.  I get around to the other side as the garage door comes up.  Five or seven big drunk boys…well, boys with bellies and gray beards and at least one walker are staring right at me.

One of them looks at me and in one of the most hilarious stage whispers I’ve ever heard, says to everyone else, “It’s the fucking cops.”

I tore past them like a stiletto blade through flesh down to bone, and headed into the main room.  Acting like I actually was in charge, like I knew what I was f’ing doing, like I was Johnny Law.

And almost crapped a brick.  At least 20, probably closer to 5,264.  All drunk.  All whooping and hollering and ALL staring at me like I was the local leper working as a waiter.

So, rather than trying to figure out whose ass to kick, I went to the drums.

And started playing.

Have you ever seen 5,264 people stroke out at once?  It’s a helluva sight.  They had no idea what the hell was going on.

Which is a pretty good place for a herd of drunks.

So I’m banging away, just noodling around, playing a few licks, showing off just a touch.  Then I stop and they cheer.

And that’s when I tell them there’s been a complaint and ask if they can pull the noise (which wasn’t all that damned much, remember) down a touch.

Then I get up to head out and the birthday girl cornered me, pummeling me with both beer breath and too-tightly packaged and too-heavily displayed boobs, and said, “Where you going?  You can’t sit down and then leave.  You gotta play a soooooooooonng.”

Okay, not what I’d expected.  Not even close.

The guitar player started playing, the bass player fell in with him and they hit ‘Mustang Sally.’

Hey, I know that song.  One of my old bands played it.

I hesitated, I’m still on duty after all, but then said, “Fuck it,” and dove in.

It was the best 3 1/2 minutes I’ve had in I can’t remember how long.

(though it was incredibly difficult to play wearing  a gunbelt, ballistics vest, and trying to hear my radio in case I got called to…I don’t know…a traffic crash or murder or something slightly more important than a noise complaint)

When we finished, everyone cheered and clapped and when I asked again for them to tone it down, they all assured me everything was fine, the party was mostly over anyway ’cause “We’re all old,” one of them said.

They were, too.  Gray hair, stooped shoulders, the walker.  And they weren’t playing very loud, either.  Sort of embarrassing for a band, I thought.  Damn sure not playing at 11.  At best, they were turned up to maybe 8.

And as I drove down the road, my back hurting and my right hand slightly numb even from just 3 1/2 minutes, I realized my ears were ringing and my head hurt.

Damnit, next time I bust and play at a party, I’m going to have to turn it down to 7, maybe 6.

In this case, it’s true.  It was just another traffic stop.  I’ve made a million of them.  They’re memorable for about half a second.

In this case, I had Deputy Amy Reuter with me.  She’s a rookie, still training, and so everything is still new to her, still surprising and shocking.

Recently, I put more of our traffic stops on her shoulders.  I’d ask her to recognize the probable cause, decide if the car needed to be stopped, figure out when it was safe to stop the car due to other traffic, blah blah blah.  Lots and lots of internal poh-leece stuff that bores the crap outta regular people.

But I also decided that she should actually handle the stop.  In other words, don’t just watch me, but actually make contact with the driver.

“What?” she said.

“Yeah, it’ll be fine,” I said.

“Uh…what?”

“Just introduce yourself, ask for their license and insurance.”

“Uh…uh…what?”

“Don’t sweat it, chances are nothing crazy will happen.”

“‘Chances are?’”  She stared at me and I think if she could have figured out where to dump my body…she would have.

So we found a car and lit it up and made our stop.  I followed her to the car and everything started okay.

“Good evening.  I’m Deputy Reuter with the Sheriff’s Office.  Can I see you license and insurance?”

An older guy stared back at us.  His gaze moved back and forth and he seemed really embarrassed.  It was just a burned out plate light, not a big deal, but some people get stopped so rarely they actually are embarrassed.

No big deal.

“The reason I stopped you is your registration light is burned out.”

And so the guy said, “Can I get out and look?”

Okay, let’s stop right here for just a second.  Letting people get out of their cars on a traffic stop is bad bad bad.  As long as I’ve got someone detained, I am their total caretaker.  Everything that happens is my concern or liability. The safest place for any driver, therefore, is generally inside their car.

Also, every once in a while, a driver wants to get out so they can shoot you more easily…so, yeah, want to avoid that.

But sometimes, especially in rural areas and when we’re talking about headlights or taillights, people want to get out and see.  It’s not that they don’t believe us (though I’m sure some think we just make shit up and stop them based on that), it’s that they’re just curious.

So there are a couple of pros and cons an officer has to weigh. Reuter looked at me and my decision?

Yeah, pretty sure I shrugged.

Top shelf, Training Officer, freaking top shelf.  Support your trainee with all your years of experience and wisdom.

“Sure,” Reuter said.

So the guy got out and looked and Reuter said, “Okay, sir, have a seat for just a minute.”

Okay, let’s stop here for just a second.  In law enforcement, we see all kinds of things.  We hear all kinds of things.  Things that make us angry and sad and anxious, that make us long for cosmic justice rather than what might pass for legal justice, that make us want to move Heaven and Hell to help someone, or to make sure they get every single day of prison time they’ve got coming.

We peek into people’s lives with a scrutiny they absolutely would not allow anyone else to have.  They impart secrets to us that sometimes they can’t even admit to themselves.

And understand this: people will say anything to get out of a ticket.

“Do I have to sit down?” the man asked.

“What?”

“Well, this is humiliating,” he said.

We didn’t say anything.

Then he said, “Well, just before you stopped me, I thought I farted.”

Again, silence from us.

“Actually, I think I pooped my pants.”

More silence.

“I really don’t want to sit down if I don’t have to.”

I hadn’t known what was coming, but I knew something was.  So I watched my deputy.  This first time that something sort of surprising, sort of shocking, maybe a little disgusting, certainly embarrassing, came her way, I wanted to see how she handled it.

She never even cracked a smile.

“That’s fine, sir,” she said.

All the way back to the squad?  Not a sound.

Ran the guy’s license?  Not a sound.

Back to him, finish the stop, and send him on his way?  Not a damn sound.  Didn’t say anything, didn’t laugh, didn’t even smile.

She was professional, polite, the very picture of a highly-trained law enforcement officer.

And I thought: what the fuck?  It was all I could do not to bust a colon I wanted to laugh so hard.  I didn’t but I sure as hell wanted to.  I mean, I felt for the guy, don’t get me wrong, but I’m pretty sure my heart stopped I was working so hard not to laugh at the situation.

And she never even broke a sweat.

Damn, I thought, she’s really good.

Until…we left.

Then I thought she was going to drive me into the ditch.  She laughed and laughed and I think she even cried a little she laughed so hard. She laughed so hard she might have even snorted.

Then she stopped suddenly and wondered if it was bad to laugh.

Hell, no, it’s not.

Sometimes, laughing at the absurdity of it all is the only thing that gets me through the day.  Sounds horrible, sounds harsh and hard and that’s fine, I don’t really care if you think it is.  But after spending a week learning how to investigate piles of human shit who take pictures of themselves having sex with tied up six-year olds, I’ll take the release of laughing at a guy who inadvertently pooped himself.

By the way, this is exactly how the stop happened…mostly…though I suspect if you asked Deputy Reuter, she’d have a completely different version.  Probably one in which the training officer who’s driving her crazy is…somehow…more of an idiot.

That’s all right, ’cause I still got pooper-guy and I’m still laughing about it.

(yay! my favorite subcategory of humans…blah….)

Had a ball.  Met some good officers, saw some old friends, and found some top-shelf barbeque (a requirement of off-site training, as far as I’m concerned).

But there was just a bit of a problem at the end.

United Airlines.

Understand, my history with United is not brilliant. About 15 years ago, I flew Lubbock to Denver and was invited not to fly with United because of a…uh…disagreement with a woman at the ticket desk. Somehow, I managed to avoid not one, but two, sets of handcuffs and cowboyed back to Denver on Continental.

That particular lesson cost me something like $600.

I wouldn’t have chosen United but the flights were set up by the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and so I was stuck.  Not a biggie, the previous problem was more than a decade a go and hey, we’ve all grown up.  I’ve learned a bit of tact and United has learned to communicate better with its customers (remember that….)

So I got to Houston just fine.  Coming home however, things got a bit dicier.  When I arrived at Houston International I learned the Chicago flight was delayed a bit so I checked my connection to the Quad Cities.

No problem, the gate guy said.  The flight to the QC is also late. Originally scheduled to leave at 8:49 p.m., it was now scheduled to leave at 10:19 p.m.

Okay…well…whatever.

In Chicago, the boards all still say 10:19 p.m.  The two women at the gate say the flight is 10:19.  The website says 10:19.

It’s a mechanical difficulty, the women say, but there’s another plane coming.

Suddenly, at 9:30, they announce the plane’s on its way and we’ll hit the skies at 10 p.m.

Whoop whoop, right?

Hah, naive reader.  This is United, remember, capable of fucking up not only a free lunch (which they don’t serve anymore, by the way) but damn near a free drink of water (which they barely serve).

So the plane arrives and we all get ready to board….

And 10 comes…and goes.

The two gate women announce the flight will leave now at 10:20. Except it’s after 10 and ain’t nobody being allowed to board.

At 10:15, they announce a new departure time of 10:30.  But still the doors are closed and still they ain’t letting anyone on this plane.

Now, remember, some of these people have been waiting on the original flight, scheduled departure at 8:49.  So by this time, some of the natives are starting to get a bit restless.

About 10:25, the two gate women leave.

And never come back.

Seriously, we never saw them again.

At 10:30, the gate marquis magically changed to 10:45.  No one came and told us, we just happened to see it on the board.

Still…we’re not boarding.

And at 10:45?  Hard to believe I know, but the board magically changed to an 11 p.m. departure.

Remember, the plane is at the gate, the luggage is aboard.

By this time, passengers are getting pissed.  There are three flight crew members in the gate area and customers keep asking what’s going on. Each said they didn’t know, or they refused to say anything. Nor did they bother to call someone from United who might have told those pesky paying customers what the hell was going on.

By 11:00, mutiny began to percolate around the gate lounge. A guy with dirty blond hair, surfer skin, and a harsh attitude stirred the troops by randomly pointing to passing crew members and saying, “Get them, they can fly the plane,” or “Grab that one, they can be the flight attendant.”

There was a flight attendant in full uniform waiting with the passengers. She was obviously done on her hours and was flying to the Quad Cities, but the problem – like the rest of United last night – was that she refused to say anything.  She also refused to go find someone on duty who could talk to us and let us know what the hell was going on.

So between the two still missing gate women, the three pilots standing around, and the waiting flight attendant, the passengers were ignored by six United employees.

What’s the Ratt song? ‘Lack of Communication?’

This was the exact same bullshit that got me booted from United way back in Lubbock 15 years ago.  Exactly nothing had changed for this corporation.  And so I responded nearly the exact same way.

Nearly.

There was a woman hovering around the gate, orange reflective vest and work pants, who I finally talked to.  Got in her face a little, but it wasn’t anything like that fabled day so long ago.  Why crank off on her?  She didn’t work for United, she was runway help, guiding planes in and out and directing the food, sewer, and fuel services.  She had no horse in this particular race.

So I apologized even as I got in her face and tried to ease up.  But I’m guessing I scared her because she immediately disappeared.

The difference between her and the United employees, though, was that she came back.

With a United supervisor in tow!

Things happened fast after that.  The guy took a second to have a small stroke as he realized there was no one around and a plane sitting at the gate.  He snatched up a radio and filled the airwaves and within five minutes we were boarding.

Yay!  Champagne all around, yes?

Uh…no.

I have no idea if he moved mountains or his timing was perfect enough to make it appear he moved mountains.  Either way, he should have moved a few more.

We boarded about 11:15 and everything looked great.  Except the pilot told us the plane (which had been scheduled originally for a longer flight) had too much fuel.  Couldn’t get off the ground with this much fuel and the passengers so it was going to be ten or twenty minutes while the tanks were emptied out a bit.

I sat in my seat, belted up, and ground my teeth.  We were on the plane so I was closer to home than I’d been in a week, but still….

Then the fuel truck pulled away.

Yah!  Cheap wine all around, yes?

Nyet.

Then the captain said the generator in the back of this small plane, the one that started the engine, was hosed.  What he said was, “…on the fritz.”

I ground my teeth and dug my nails into the arm rests.  It was 11:40, about three hours after this thing was supposed to be wheels up, and we were hostages to the corporate incompetence of fucking United Airlines.

Eventually, a generator truck twaddles up and started our engines. We were overjoyed!  There was nothing to keep us from getting home.

Salvation was at hand, brothers and sisters, and all we had to do -

What’s that you say?

No crew?  I don’t understand.  The crew is on the plane.

Hah, you naive reader.  Takes more than one crew to get off…the ground.  We also need the ground crew to physically push us away from the gate.

And apparently, during the wait for the generator truck, and the fuel truck before that, and whatever else before that, the ground crew…um…left.

Yes.  With a plane at their gate, one they knew needed a push, they left.

Thus stranding us at the gate.  The captain said, “…we’re stuck here until they come get us.”

When we eventually left the ground, at almost exactly midnight, the pilot put the freakin’ hammer down.  What was scheduled as a 59 minute flight took us exactly 36 minutes.  Son of a bitch found himself a tailwind and blasted the hell off.

Ultimately, I got home about 2 a.m.  Had United not had its collective corporate head up its arse, I would have been home by 11:30.

The point here is not the delays.  I understand delays.  Weather happens and sure as hell happened yesterday.  Mechanical problems happen and I want the airline take the time to solve that particular problem so I don’t…you know…die in a fiery crash.

But you gotta talk to your customers.  You gotta communicate.  I think most paying customers would be able to deal if they were simply told, straight up, what’s what.  Hell, in this case, even the website knew what was going on before the customers did.

What we had was no communication, two employees who fled for burger breaks or something, and a constantly changing departure time that was never attainable.

(another hint, United, don’t constantly change the time by 15 minutes when that’s never going to happen.  Figure out how long it’s really going to take and tell us.  That way we can go eat or piss or make a call, rather than having to stick around because hey, in 15 minutes the flight’s going to leave)

Getting treated like this, it’s absolutely no wonder people are protesting corporations.  (And if corporations really are people, per the Supreme Court decision in Citizens’ United, then I’d punch this motherfucking person right in the balls…hard…and repeatedly.)

I don’t think any of last night’s passengers were protest-types, but they sure as hell won’t have anything good to say about United.

Which is worse, Corporate America, the protesters who not a lot of people pay attention to?  Or the middle Americans who fly a few times a year and have lots of friends and co-workers who also fly a couple times a year?

On the upside, bravo to the flight attendant who worked her ass off to lighten everyone’s load. Jokes and comments and great Motown on the air before we left.

Lastly, no, I’m not equating getting a late flight with Mrs. Lincoln seeing her husband blown away at a play.  That’s just hyperbole.

Which is something I never use.

Actually…limping.

Slowly.

And carrying a heavy backpack.

I pulled up behind him, gave him a little blast of my horn.  When I climbed out, I asked, “Where are you headed?”

He stopped walking and stared at me, a chuckle rumbling deep in his throat.  “Well…Texas.”

Didn’t surprise me.  I’ve had all kinds hitchhikers going all kinds of distances.  Cross county, cross state, across the country.

He wore dirty jeans, a couple of shirts, a coat.  And a ballcap of the U.S. Navy ship on which he had served.

“A Navy veteran,” I said.

“Yep.”

“Must not have been a navigator.”

He stared at me, brows furrowed.  “What?”

I pointed east.  “That’s where you were going.”

He looked.

Then I pointed south.  “Texas.”

He pointed, southward, at the empty farm field.  “No road.”

I shrugged.  “Okay, fair enough.  Tell you what, I can’t take you to Texas, but maybe I can get you a little closer.”

He stared at me.  “Yeah?”

“A big ‘ol truck stop…and an Interstate headed south.”

He looked doubtful.  “Well, I know the best rides are on the big roads, but so are the crazies.  Feel safer on smaller roads.”

Seemed like, to me, hitchhikers weren’t particularly safe on any road, but I didn’t want to dim his spirit of adventure.

So he looked east, then back west, then at me, and nodded.

“Okay,” I said.

I took a step toward him to do a pat-down (I don’t let random people off the road in my car…behind me…without checking for weapons or drugs or old pizza or whatever, just how I do things).

He held up one arm and told me to go ahead.

“Do your best,” he said, laughing.

The arm he didn’t raise?  Yeah, ’cause it wasn’t there.

Sort of felt like I was in ‘The Fugitive.’

So I did what I could, we piled in the car, and headed out.

“Where are you walking from?”

“Iowa City.  Left yesterday.”

I whistled.  For a fairly frail, one-armed, limping guy that was impressive.

“And what’s in Texas?”

“My son.  He’s got cancer.  I want to see him before he dies.”

So we talked for a while about cancer.  I shared my experiences and he shared some of his own.  He’d had cancer, too, when he was younger.

And by younger, I mean years ago.

“How old’s your son?”

“Fifty-nine.”

“Which makes you?”

He laughed.  “I’m just about 80.”

I nearly pissed myself.

Obviously, I’d known he was old.  Hell, his cap didn’t just list a naval ship, it said ‘Korea.’

That was a clue.

And we talked about how he’d gotten caught at Chosin Reservoir.  Google that, it was a hairy nightmare where nearly every American soldier died.

Dude was getting stronger every moment I talked to him, one-armed limping or not.  Still, he was 80 and hitchhiking along the highways to get to a dying son.

And I started to get concerned.  I had no plan other than moving him a bit further down the asphalt.  There was, in fact, damn near nothing else I could do even if I had a better plan.

All I could do was hope he made it to Texas in one piece.

He won’t.  Mankind simply isn’t built that way.  The times he’s in a cop car, and most of the times he’s in a big truck, he’ll be fine.

But when he’s walking down the highway, through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, someone will find him.  Someone will realize he’s an old man with one arm.

Someone will victimize him.  And maybe they’ll just rob him, knock him around a little, and be done.

But because I’m not only a not ‘glass half full’ guy, or even a ‘glass half empty’ guy, but actually a glass is smashed and someone’s going to use the shards to open up some third party’s jugular, I think what’s going to happen to my Korean War vet is going to be nothing but ugly.

Hell, he might already be dead.

Except there’s some little part of me…some tiny, little, microscopic shred of me that thinks that old dude might actually already be sitting at his son’s bedside.

He might be holding his son’s hand, whispering to him about family vacations when everyone was younger; about school pageants when his son forgot his lines; about the prom when his son embarrassed himself trying to pin a corsage to his date’s chest without grabbing her.

‘Cause if anyone can get on down the highway and not take any shit from anyone, it’ll be that tough old bird.

Would that I could be half as tough as that frail, old, one-armed limping vet.

- Guns and boobs.

I’m totally good with this one.  I enjoy the odd gun and the occasional boob so we’re good here.

-  Dreams of getting shot five times.

I’ve had dreams of getting shot – though I don’t remember a specific number – and it’s entirely possible I’ve written about those dreams.  I don’t remember this particularly but okay.

-  Trey Baker Big Tex Trailers

Uhhhh….  What?  I think that was a misdirect.

- trey president george bush

Hehehehe…haaahaaa…bwaaaaaaahhaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaa….  Oh, stop…my side hurts.  That’s hysterical.  Not sure I’ve ever written about my interaction, in 1984, with the future president George W. Bush, but I’ve told a shitload of people.  Perhaps that story is worth an entry.  Involved both Bushes, the Secret Service, Thomas Eagleton, a high school marching band, parking ticket, being thrown out of an event, etc.  In other words, a standard story of mine.

- Execute sex offenders

Wow.  Harsh.  I’d like them to go to prison, certainly, but I’m not sure I’ve ever said they should be executed. Seriously, I’m not sure where I stand on the death penalty.  Sometimes for it, sometimes against it.  Sort of like taco pizza…sometimes for it…sometimes against it.

-  Larry the Crime Donkey

Funny.  I wrote about this, and posted a picture, nearly two years ago.  It was something I discovered during my book tour on the way back from Texas.  I want to say at a Jack in the Box in Missouri somewhere.  A giant poster hanging on the wall of Larry the Crime Donkey.  It was pretty funny.  Would have only been funnier if it had been a signed poster….

-  Cowboy cocksucker

This came from Bouchercon 2011, in St. Louis.  Lori Armstrong, Sean Doolittle, Karen Olson and I had our Not-Usually-Annual-But-Sometimes-Annual drink.  Each time, someone else chooses what the drink will be.  It started years ago in Madison when that particular group and I had a shot of Jack Daniel’s as a non-memorial shot.  It was non-memorial because at the time I was fighting cancer, but wasn’t yet quite dead and so one of my dear, dear friends (luckily can’t remember which), said, “Hey, your friends are mostly glad you’re not dead.”  So we had a celebratory, non-memorial shot.  The Cowboy Cocksucker was Lori’s pick this year.  Actually wasn’t half bad….

And the most interesting, most off the wall random search term?

-  ”pvc pipe” “bicycle inner tube” penis

I have not a single freakin’ clue what any of that means…or how it gets anyone to my website.

But I’ll certainly take the traffic.

Someone could crash their horse and buggy into a creek and I could jump in and save them.

Or maybe a troop of Boy Scouts could get attacked, en masse, by a horde of garter snakes.  I could whip out my handy-dandy duty knife, slice said Boy Scouts open and suck out the snake poison, thus saving their lives while nearly dying doing it.

Ah, the hero.

Sometimes those fantasies are just a weeeeeeee bit more mundane.

Maybe a DUI will happen right in front of me.  Maybe someone will toss out their McDonald’s bag right in front of me.

Or maybe a red car will come up behind me and tail me for the better part of five miles.  Maybe I’ll watch it in the rearview, wondering why his headlights are getting larger…smaller…larger…smaller.  Wondering why his headlights are dancing left…right…left…right.

I got excited ’cause both of those are the telltale signs of a DUI.  Been a while since I had one so this was going to end a fabulous day on an even more fabulous note.

(a fabulous note for me…’cause really, a DUI ain’t fabulous for the driver.  Not even close.)

(see…I have an odd job…when I’m having a good day then someone else is having, by definition, a really REALLY shitty day)

So I’m watching this red car in my rearview and talking to my rider and what the hell happens?

Yeah, he passes me.

I’m sorry, let me back up a little bit.

He passes me…while my cruise is set at 55 miles per honking hour.

In a 55 zone.

For a second, I was too stunned to even react.  Passing me while I did exactly the speed limit?  Surely no one is that stupid?

See, I’ve got no problem if I’m traveling below the limit and you want to pass.  Totally legal and totally cool with me.  But if there is no room between how fast I’m going and the top of the limit?

Well, then, that’s just stupid, int’nit?

Welcome to the world of a stupid kid.

To his credit, he did realize he was passing a cop.

Just as he got about halfway through the pass.  I’m guessing he looked up finally, and saw all the purty badges and stars and giant SHERIFF’S POLICE lettering reflected in the soft glow of his blue-white headlights.

His car’s front end dug down deep into the asphalt as he suddenly tried to stop.  As he suddenly tried to get back behind me.

Problem was, he was already out there, baby.  Already flying – going commando – in the opposite lane.

And knew I’d seen him.  Or assumed it.

Dumbass hesitated.  Cars are coming toward him and he was running next to me like we’re racing.  About 736 hours later, he finally committed and completed the pass.  Sort of like making a pass at your best friend’s girl.  Once you’ve started, the intent of the deed is already done.  Gotta keep going.  No way you can take that back

Plus, I’d already lit him up.  Soon as he’d gotten halfway through his particular version of dropping trou, I banged on my lights.

And he instantly jammed on his brakes.

Dude….  Really?  Go around a cop, get back in front of him, and brake immediately?

So we get stopped and me and my rider go up to the window.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Uh…going to work.”

And he finally looked up at me and into my flashlight.

Hah!  Busted!  DUI!  Eyes glassy and bloodshot and I was dancing a little jig.  Right there on the side of the road, dancing the DUI jig.

Okay, not really ’cause that would have looked bad.  Would have looked like I was gloating over someone’s misfortune.

Turns out he worked at Wal-Mart (should have arrested him then and there for servicing Satan, but everybody’s gotta work…if you can dig it)

Also turns out he wasn’t drunk, just a dumbass kid.

“Why’d you pass me?”

“What?”

“Why did you pass me?  I was going 55.  This is a 55 zone.”

“Uh…I was going 52 behind you.”

“And how fast did you have to go to get around me?”

“Uh….”

His answers sort of petered out after that.

But his texting never did.  Phone sitting right on the passenger seat, within easy reach.

Hmmmm…texing on a dark night, maybe?  Texting while heading to work in the belly of Satan, perhaps?

Texting up until that very scary moment when you bothered to look up and realize that car next to you wasn’t just a white sedan, but the poh-poh?

So maybe, just maybe, if all that happened, and he was a decent kid, I’d let him go with a warning not to be quite so stupid in the future, though I probably wouldn’t say it quite like that.

If all that happened.

And if it did, I’d finish up, then see about that thing with the horse and buggy in the creek.

Hero indeed.

Even as it awed me.

He was a 20-year old loser, previously convicted of sex with an underage girl, in my sights for sex with more underage girls, for sexually explicit contact via text, for setting up young girls for meetings, for whatever else I could think of.

And yet as I read his 28,492 text messages from that three month period between when he was released from jail after serving his first conviction and when I picked him up for playing basketball on school grounds and began my investigation, I couldn’t help but be horrified and amazed by what he’d done.

Understand that there were so many text conversations it was impossible to keep track of them individually.  Every test was presented to me in chronological order.  So one conversation might be texts 1, 4, 15, and 53 while a second conversation was texts 2,6, 38, and 103.

I had a programmer friend, Jim Van Fleet, write me a program that separated out each conversation.  He gave me a file for each phone number and made it incredibly easy to follow each conversation.  But he also gave me a master file that he programmed to be color-coded.  The conversations were all jumbled together in chronological order, but were identifiable by color.

What rocked my socks when I looked at the color-coded file was how many conversations my offender could juggle at any given time.  Put this fucker in Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey, juggling burning things and he’d make a mint!  He was bouncing between four, five, seven, ten young women at once.

What stunned me was that every conversation was somewhere different.  One girl he’d just met, while another he’d known for a few months and still others he’d known for years.  His conquest had a very specific trajectory and he knew where every girl was on that trajectory.

Not once did he get confused about who was who and who was where.

I immediately understood the trajectory when I noticed the patterns in his use of language.  Crouched and hidden in the middle of all these seemingly random conversations -

(…u goin 2 skool 2day….)

(…go bowling 2night….)

(…gotta wk w/dad 2mrw….)

- were very particular phrases that I began to see repeated with every girl.  Subtle at first, then more explicit as the girls responded favorably, until he was asking them to sext him and send him pictures so that he could get off.

Long before he got to the size of his unit and the size of their breasts, he spoke of romance and roses.  Each girl was the girl of his dreams, each was the one he wanted to spend his entire life with. Every girl was the only recipient of the secret knowledge of his three month stay in jail.

They were all guinea pigs, too.  This guy would try a phrase or a question with one girl.  If she responded the way he wanted, he’d then apply that same question or phrase with all the girls.  If she didn’t respond how he wanted, the question was gone…never to be seen again.

Yet even within those repeated questions, he tweaked language.  Subtler, sleeker, with power words at the ends of the questions rather than buried in the middle and surrounded by pointless verbiage.

Those questions and phrases, though, were designed for young girls who had mental challenges, who were from broken homes with little parental support, who were victims of previous sexual abuse.  Thus his language was intended specifically to allay their fears and offer them a vision of how they believed life should be.

In one case, my guy texted an adult woman, her number given him by his enabling mother.  He used the same language with her, the same conversation trajectory, and couldn’t understand why it didn’t work.

It was because this woman saw the train wreck coming.  She’d been around the block a time or two, had probably heard these lines when she was in junior high school, and knew precisely where his texts about working out in jail and “getting bigger” were leading.

And she was right.  With the younger girls, his funny, joking texts about exercising and getting bigger invariably led (in as straight a fucking line as I’ve ever seen) to texts about his cock getting bigger while in jail.

The older woman shut him down immediately and never answered his texts again.

The younger girls, being on the harsh side of desperate for contact and for male attention, never stopped answering him.

He took the young girls from general questions to specific questions, from general statements to specific questions, used poetry along the way, and kept them on the string.

Don’t get me wrong…Shakespeare this fucker ain’t.  His use of language was a clunky, high school level use of language, but for those particular girls (girls he sought specifically, I believe, because they did have emotion and mental issues) the language was beautiful.

One of his victims, a 14-year old girl who I interviewed five times, told me repeatedly that he loved her more than anyone had ever loved her.  She got angry at me, cried at me, yelled at me, told me to fuck off constantly, stormed out of interviews (and when she did finally tell everything, it wasn’t to me).

But she could quote many of his texts verbatim.  The promise of forever, the promise of a marriage, the promise of love, the poems, the promise of a ring (which he did eventually buy her and reminded her of constantly in later texts).  She could recite so many of those texts off the top of her head it made me want to throw up.

(There is nothing so sad as interviewing a 14-year old at her school, in a counselor’s office, while the victim eats lunch, and listening to her recite bad love poetry as though it is the key to the universe.)

But in all his manipulation of language, I found the key to him.  I used his use of language to try and get him to tell me everything.  While I don’t think he ever did, I managed to get quite a bit…including his admission of having sex with the 14-year old.

So for the next five years, he’ll be using his language in the Illinois State Prison, though I don’t think it’ll go over as well as it did with those young girls.  In fact, I suspect he’ll get an entirely different reaction.

We got a call of a registered sex offender playing basketball at a local school.  I arrived and found the offender doing exactly that.  Ultimately I arrested him and it was during the jail interview that things got interesting.

From another deputy, I’d heard there was an underage girl who not only knew the 20-year old offender, but who the offender had been texting.  During the interview about playing ball, I casually asked if he knew this particular 15-year old girl.

He grinned.  ”Oh, yeah, I text her all the time.”

Quickly, I moved on.  Damn sure didn’t want him realizing that he’d just admitted violating a major part of his particular set of sex offender restrictions.

No contact, in any way, with anyone under 18-years old.

But he knew immediately.  While we talked, while he futzed with his Miranda rights form and tried to justify being on the school grounds, he got less cooperative.  Every answer, even to basic questions about his job and car, became vague and pissy.

The fact that he’d realized it annoyed me.  I’d wanted to be smooth and casual, as though it was a random question.  Sometimes, in investigations, I want the subject to know I’m hunting them.  I want them to hear my footsteps.  I want them nervous and scared and filling their head with thoughts of prison and boyfriends named Bubba and Tyrone and Hector.

But sometimes, I have to dance with more subtlety, more delicacy.  This seemed to be one of those cases.  I wouldn’t know until weeks later that everything he would go to prison for had already happened and the proof was safely locked away by a telecomm company.

So I began with that one girl.  Her interview led me to another girl, which led me to another and another.  Each of them, and the list grew exponentially in a matter of days, had been pressured for sex via text.

Eventually, I subpeonaed my offender’s texts.  They covered mid-December, when he got out of jail on his first sex offense conviction, to the day I arrested him for being on the school grounds three months later.

Twenty-eight thousand, four hundred, and ninety-two.

Scores of conversations.  Some with Mom, some with friends.

Most with women.

Nearly all underage women.

Reading those conversations was when I realized what a predator he actually was.  It wasn’t just about the girl he’d previously been convicted of molesting, who’d been four years younger than him at the time of that conviction.  It wasn’t just about having sex with a Special Olympics athlete (which was a theme I’d find again and again in this investigation).  It wasn’t just about sex (which was his ultimate excuse…that he was a sex addict).

It was about manipulation.  It was about exploitation.  It was about self-gratification, the consequences be damned.

The problem with the texts was that they were in chronological order.  In other words, if he was carrying on eight or ten different conversations at once, those texts came in the order he sent and received them.  It made following the through-lines of each conversation incredibly difficult…at least for a Luddite like me.

So I asked a programmer friend to write a program which would separate those conversations.  I figured it’d take him a few days, maybe a week.  Yeah, it was like a half hour.  Write a few lines of code, run the thing, write a few more lines to tweak, done.

His program blew me away.  It separated out a file for each individual conversation, still in time order, so I could easily follow any conversation I wanted.  But it also gave me a total file that color-coded the conversations, each recipient with a different color.  Seeing those colors piled on top of each other in a such frenzy reminded me of one of Pollock’s drip paintings.

I read those messages for weeks.  Built white board displays so I could cross reference them.  Made lists of names and numbers that appeared randomly, tried to hook those to known names and numbers.  Compared messages sent on a particular date to a  particular friend with others sent at a different time to a different friend, but referencing the same incident.

What I found, ultimately, was a man with a desperate need for sex, but one that he was unable to consummate with adult women.  Therefore, he went after girls who hadn’t the tools to put him off.  These girls were Special Olympics athletes, they were from broken homes, they were victims of previous sexual abuse.

One victim, a 14-year old, had been victimized, in fact, by her father and stepfather.  I believe she also had been by one of her mother’s boyfriends, though I could never prove it.  This girl, so fragile and yet one of the toughest people I’ve ever met, told me over and over and over again that they loved each other.

He seduced her with marriage plans and even bought her a ring.  He texted her hundreds of times a day, spinning out a fantasy world where she would never get hurt again.

Of course she responded to that. Of course it was exactly what she wanted to hear.  She’d grown up in a sordid world, one filled with depravity and darkness and painful, stolen sex masked as love and when she had a chance at love that didn’t hurt, she jumped at it.

Of course she refused to tell me.  She refused to lay out what he’d done because even though she knew it was probably wrong, it was the only love she’d ever been shown that didn’t come with pain automatically attached.

So I kept digging and interviewing and asking and talking and thinking and then…in the midst of those 28,492 texts, I found a short conversation between the 14-year old and my offender.  She mentioned stomach pain.  He asked why she hurt.  She said he knew exactly why.

And he answered that it couldn’t be his fault because he hadn’t gotten it all the way in.

Sometimes I’m not a particularly smart cop, but that is what we in the trade call a clue.  Hell, that is what we in the trade call a fucking smoking gun.

The investigation wrapped pretty quickly after that.  I interviewed him a last time (on video tape).  He denied.  I showed him the series of texts.  He rationalized, justified, obfuscated.

Then a grand jury, some negotiations back and forth, and a plea agreement that will leave him in prison for five years.

So this case that was about manipulation and exploitation was, for me, about self-control.  Because I never throttled him, nor did I put a double tap behind his ear and dump him in a ditch for the vultures to dine upon.

That would have just made him a victim of cannibalism.

So the education is over.

For now.

In March, 2008, I began working on my Master’s.  As of a few days ago, I finished it.  Three and a half years, twelve classes, one thesis, and something like 1800 written pages later, I’m all smart.

I feel smart, too.  Witty and wise.

And I’m sure the world is now at my feet.  I’m sure I’ll get a gigantic raise and promotion, that young officers will flock to me to take advantage of my experience and knowledge.

hehehehe…haaaahhhaaa…bwaaaahhhaaaaaaaa….

Oh, stop, you’re making my side hurt.

I will get nothing practical out of this education and believe it or not, that’s perfectly okay.  I love education for the sake of education.  If I could, I’d be enrolled in one class or another every day for the rest of my life.  And if I learned anything useful, great.  If not, that’s fine, too.

Here’s the thing: while I make fun of having gotten a degree in a place that will never, ever reward me for that extra education, I do believe education is the silver bullet.  I believe, without reservation, that education can solve most, if not all, of this country’s problems.

I don’t care if the education comes from an Ivy League university, a state college, a for profit place like Kaplan, or a technical school.  Any place that puts knowledge in someone’s hands can only be a good thing.  Any institution that teaches people how to think critically can only be a good thing.

A friend of mine recently finished snatching up an associate’s degree.  She managed to do it while in a house with a husband, three youngish kids, three dogs, and a pile of other animals.  She grew up in a tough household and wanted to move beyond her formative experiences.  She took the hard road and managed to complete her education in spite of all kinds of people – including people close to her – telling her it was a waste of time or money or both.  Now she’ll get a job in her chosen field and eventually will move far beyond those formative experiences.

Education is the silver bullet.

And I can’t figure out why there are people who disagree.  I can’t figure out why there are people who think education is simply a waste of time…or money…or both.

Had a supervisor once.  I asked him if I could go to a training class, one that was specific to my job and that would yield results within days.  He looked me dead in the face and said, “I’m tired of people taking time off for training.”

I remember standing there, stunned speechless, and staring at him.  He dared me to say something and then didn’t give me the days off.

At the other end of the spectrum is some training I’ve got coming up in Houston.  The sheriff found something he thought I’d enjoy and would be good at, and he’s basically ordering me to go.  It’s going to be amazing and interesting and I can’t wait to jump head first into it, though it makes me nervous because it’s a whole new set of skills; something I’ve never ever done before.

Something I’ve never done before is good.  Paths not only not taken, but unknown to me until recently, are the most interesting paths.  Find me the darkest forest…one with no trail, no light, no map at all.  Then get the fuck outta the way because that’s where I’m going.  I’ll find the trail and I’ll figure out the light. I’ll bring a flashlight or a box of matches.  Or I’ll make some matches, or set a woodland creature on fire or something.

But that place where I’ve never been is where I’m going.

And hey, right now, that place I’ve never been is hiding down in Houston, where I have been.  But Houston in February has got to be better – and much warmer – than Illinois in February, right?

Plus, it’s Texas!  Barbeque…Tex-Mex…pick-up trucks with gun racks in the windows….  Ah, my homeland.

So when it comes to inanimate objects, I generally assume I’ve got ‘em licked.

Uh…no.

Let me back up a little.

I’ve got a yen for abandoned things.  Barns, houses, corn cribs, cars, whatever as long as it’s been left to the vicissitudes of time and memory.  To me, for whatever reason, abandoned places represent lost hearts and spirits; maybe searches for the solid in life that can never truly be found.  I find myself melancholy and wandering through my own imagination about what once might have been.

When I find those places, if they show me their hidden selves, I spend hours with my camera trying capture what I think I see.

A few weeks ago I found a farmhouse.  What I noticed first were the windows, broken and jagged things.  They seemed, in that particular sunlight, like tears on a granite face…as hyperbolic as that sounds.

After getting permission from the owner, I scoped the place out, tramping through the rooms and across the piles and piles of broken and dead furniture, past the giant tractor tires stored in an interior room, on top of the long orange pipes stacked neatly in an upstairs bedroom, past the rusted child’s toy left in the other upstairs bedroom.

The two downstairs rooms were a jumble of old textbooks (the owner had been a teacher) that had long since decomposed into a sort of gray confetti that hid the condition of the floor.  So when I stepped hard into a pile of confetti, I didn’t see that the floor was soft.

Sank a couple of inches.  Broke just a bit of floorboard.  I chuckled and thought about how lucky I was to have not gone through the floor into the unexplored, but completely pitch fucking dark, basement.

So on my next day off, I bundled up some water and extra batteries, memory cards, tripods, filters and lenses, all manner of bullshit and off I went, snapping photos off like .22 shells from a varmint gun.  Then the inside.  Up the stairs and into the bedrooms and out the upstairs windows.  I banged out about a million and a half shots and was feeling really good.

And then, back downstairs, I found that soft floor.

Not the same spot, mind you, ’cause I’m smarter than that.  Remember all that education?  All those classes and tests and papers and projects and bullshit made me more than smart enough not to put my foot in the same damned place, right?

So I stepped a foot, maybe even two feet, beyond the soft spot.

Gotta tell ya, that soft spot was a damned sight bigger than I’d thought.  Son of a bitch ran probably another foot beyond where I stepped!

And yeah, I went crashing through.

Left foot went through and my left leg followed.  Right leg folded up like a card table and when I realized the toes of my right foot were just behind my right ear, I knew I was having a problem.  Both arms came out flat and slammed against the part of the floor that didn’t collapse, thus insuring almost perfectly equal bruises on the insides of my biceps.

But mostly?  My upper back jammed hard between two joists.  Hard between them.

HARD!

My howl split that still afternoon air and pain rocketed up into my brain like somebody had heated up some piano wire and jabbed it straight into my eyeball.

And then I realized, as I sat there, that no one in the world – the world – had any friggin’ clue where I was.

Hehehe…see, when I go photograph, I just go.  No place to be, no time to be there.  Just me and where ever the winds take me.

Which also means that when I die in an abandoned farmhouse, nobody’s going to know until some kids looking to scronk find my desiccated bones.

So that sucks.

I take a long breath.  Then a shitpile more, thank the Cosmos I’m not dead, and start to climb out.

When my phone goes insane.

Because less than two miles from where I’m standing over a big-ass hole in the floor, some mope is robbing a bank in one of my towns.

Literally at that second.

Everyone’s reaching out and touching me with the news.  I figure I’m right there so maybe I can help.  I jumped…okay, limp slowly…into my truck and race to town.  I give the detectives a few minutes of help tracking down witnesses and video, and that was about all I could do.

‘Cause I hurt.

Like a mofo!

Ultimately, I ended up with the biggest bruises of my life.  Huge one on my back, both biceps, my left ankle and foot, a few other smaller abrasions.  And pain that lasted for three weeks in my left ankle and knee.

Plus, I got yelled at, if you can dig it.

A lot.  By everybody.  It generally went like this: “Are you stupid?  You go wandering around and almost kill yourself and no one knows where the hell you are?  What if you get hurt?”

But then one dear, dear friend said, “If you die, can I have your police gear?”

It was a lesson learned.  I always want to appease my friends so in that day, I learned to let them know when I’m going to be somewhere.

Hah.  Hehehehehehe!  Haaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!  Bwaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, stop, my side hurts!  Telling people where I’m going is not usually how I play.

Couple weeks later, photographing in an abandoned corn crib, about twenty or twenty-five feet off the ground, with my fetish model thirty feet away and handcuffed to the -

Hang on, wrong fantasy.

Standing on a joist that what?  You got it, ladies and gentlemen, cracks beneath my very feet.

Got to another one safely but it scared the crap outta me.

And I’m up there, praying none of them break and I don’t go tumbling to the ground, and I’m thinking: son of a bitch, once again nobody knows where I am.

Why?  ’Cause apparently all that fancy, expensive education didn’t take.