Harder Ground Page 6

  “He have a name?” she asked.

  “Caputo,” her sergeant said. “One of your people.”

  “Not mine.”

  “Drove up from Milwaukee to kill his estranged wife. She was in the trunk.

  “The blood,” she said. “I thought it was a deer.”

  “Three months off on medical leave, then three months on light duty,” the sergeant said.

  She tried to grit her teeth, but could barely feel them. “No way,” she said. “Back on duty as soon as possible.”

  “There’s no rush,” the lieutenant said.

  “I don’t get back quick, I won’t be back at all,” she said, and all the men nodded and patted her and she fell into a deep, drug-induced, and dreamless sleep.

  FTO

  “Oh good, they sent me a princess instead of a recruit. Call me Sang-Froid and I’ll call you Perky. Word is you are perky, engaging, the sort of officer who believes in world peace and inclusiveness, whatever the hell that shit means.”

  It is the last Saturday of April, the traditional trout opener for what has seemed like forever to Dogtek, and this year is a real miracle, no snow, which is unheard of. It could mean a lot of potential business for us, thought Dogtek, so why am I standing here giving the hate-eye to my probie?

  “My name’s not Perky. It’s Devin, Devin Cottin, and I’m supposed to report to CO Shelby Dogtrack.”

  “It’s Dogtek, Perky, but you will call me Sang-Froid.”

  “You seem a little overanxious this morning, Officer Sang-Froid. Do you even know what that word means?”

  Shelby Dogtek grinned outwardly and seethed inside. She had eaten male shit for years and these young chicks were prancy-dancing out of the academy, thinking everything was hunky-dory, no clue what getting to this point had cost the women who came before them. Most of the new ones she could melt down in less than a minute, but this Cottin chick hadn’t even blinked. Worse, she was shooting back.

  “Listen, Miss Perky, here’s how this world operates. In this phase I do the heavy lifting and you watch and keep your yap shut. You got questions, ask after a contact, not during. You are to be seen and not heard unless I say otherwise. Got it? I don’t see a notebook. Why don’t I see a notebook? I wear a Praline Fifth generation recorder with a lapel camera. When I get home at night I dump everything into my laptop, which gives me permanent sound and video. Then I submit it to a program that listens, types a transcript, corrects it, and saves it.”

  “Miss High Tech.”

  “No Ma’am, this shit is low-tech toy class compared to the really good stuff out there. Some of the newest professional apps are major slick.”

  “This job isn’t about slick.”

  Standing beside Dogtek’s Silverado. Cottin says, “So far this job seems mostly about standing around trying to bust each other’s chops. Are we going to work, or bullshit all day?”

  Cottin got into the passenger seat and stared straight ahead.

  Book on this kid says her appearance doesn’t square with her attitude or her skills. She looked prissy and perfect and almost delicate and pampered, where in reality she’s some kind of a hard case, and top of her class. Her greatly perplexed instructor Bill Quall, called a couple of days ago. “Ring her ass out, Shelby. Everyone here thinks she’s the new you and I ain’t buying that.”

  Dogtek found the recruit staring at her. “What?”

  “Safety belt, Officer Sang-Froid.”

  Dogtek clicked her lap belt into place, started the engine, pulled out into the street. Her rookie looked straight ahead.

  “Rule one,” the field training officer said, “when you’re in the truck or in uniform, keep your head and eyes on a swivel, and keep your mind on the task at hand, no exceptions.”

  “We’re just leaving a hotel parking lot at the butt-crack of dawn,” Cottin said, “the only vehicle moving at this hour. The streets are empty for Pete’s sake. The game at hand seems to boil down to seeing who can dis the other one the most.”

  “Ah, you have how long on the job, four minutes?”

  “I have common sense.”

  Mild weather, the morning disclosing blue skies, the two officers bumped their way north along rotten dirt roads that paralleled the Escanaba River, which was murky and swollen with snowmelt. In deep summer the same stretch was a long shallow glide of water clear as vodka. Today it was ugly and agitated.

  “Pack a lunch?” Dogtek asked her partner around noon. They had checked more than twenty licenses, but found no one actually fishing because of the high water. They had not exchanged fifty words since the opening salvo in the parking lot. Dogtek wanted to impress on the new officer that this job had been almost exclusively a male domain until twenty-nine years back. And it had not been easy. Still wasn’t in some places, but she felt secure that the men she worked with gave her credit for the job she did and the good cases she had made, mostly alone because for a long time many officers refused to partner up simply because she was a woman.

  “I adhere to a special high protein diet,” the rookie said.

  “Of course you do,” Dogtek said. “High-end energy scams and vitamins in pretty packages. All crap.”

  “Whatever,” Cottin said. “I need to use the ladies.”

  Dogtek laughed. “Yes, Miss Perky.” She stopped the truck in the middle of the two-track.

  Cottin started walking into the woods.

  “Yo, Perk, you take front right tire, I take rear left. Always this way, never varies and gender of your partner doesn’t matter.”

  “Like we’ve got secrets?”

  “Like you will rarely be with another female partner and unless you want to get a rep for flashing Miss Puss, take the damn tire you’re entitled to and try not to piss on your pants. I can’t stand the smell of urine in my truck. The average mammal takes two seconds to micturate, but you can take longer and be accurate.”

  Task complete, the recent grad stood beside the truck and started to put on her service belt. “I can see this is somewhere between an art and acquired high skill,” she said.

  “You’ll learn you can do it without taking off the belt.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yah I’m fucking with your head.” Dogtek sniffed.

  The rookie actually smiled.

  They sat in the truck and ate in silence. It wasn’t unusual for rookies to be hesitant and introverted by the sudden reality of being on the job, but this one chewed and stared straight ahead, saying nothing. No questions, no pass-the-time girlie inanities, nothing.

  “What’s your background, Perky?”

  “Army brat, college, Army five years.”

  “Army what?”

  “Engineers.”

  “Choo-choos?”

  “Boom-booms.”

  “Ordinance?”

  “Affirmative EOD specialist, B9D.”

  “Deployments?”

  “One, Baghdad.”

  “You don’t look old enough.”

  “Looks lie.”

  “College?” Dogtek asked.

  “Northern. Go Wildcats.”

  “Hometown girl?”

  “Alpena. You?”

  Dogtek almost smiled. A question in a civil tone? Really?

  “The Soo.”

  “Lake State?”

  “Hard Knocks, no college for my lot in those days.”

  “Military?”

  “Forest Service, Idaho. Hot Shot crew.”

  “Many fires?”

  “One is too fucking many.”

  “I hear that,” Cottin said. After a pause she offered, “Maybe we like got off on the wrong foot this morning?”

  “Are you apologizing?” Dogtek said.

  “Are you?” Cottin shot back.

  Dogtek bowed her head, made a decision. “You w
ant the straight shit?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I got a call from your top dog at the academy.”

  “Corporal Q?”

  “Yes, Quall. He asked me to ring you out. Tops in your class but the instructors can’t figure you out.”

  “Can anyone figure out another person?” Cottin asked.

  Dogtek nodded. “Quall thinks you’re another me.”

  “That good or bad?”

  “Twenty-nine years on patrol, no promotions, I had enough points four years back to hang it up.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Dogtek shrugged. “Corny. I love this job, what we do, the whole damn idea of it.”

  “Not corny to me,” Cottin said. “You’re a legend.”

  “Some legend. There’s a long line of haters.”

  “Your being among the first women, it’s to be expected. Pioneers always pay the price.”

  “Hate doesn’t evaporate like summer rain.”

  “More in your generation, I think. Mine isn’t so hung up on gender.”

  “Even with all your hip-hop crap?”

  “That’s behind us, not ours. You married?”

  “Troop,” Dogtek said. “Takes a cop to live with a cop. You?”

  “Nah, I need my space right now.”

  “Took me a long time,” Dogtek said.

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  “Don’t be. Why are your instructors befuddled?”

  “No clue. They tell me to do something, and I do it. They say I don’t look like I’m trying, and I say, how’s my score? That shuts them up.”

  “Similar experience,” Dogtek said. “They don’t just want you to perform, they want you to look like you’re going all out in the effort, even if what you’re doing is a breeze.”

  “How did you handle it?” Cottin asked.

  “Didn’t. Just kept on keeping on.”

  “Do it differently if you had to do it again?”

  Dogtek nodded. “I’d act tired, grimace a lot, show some emotion.”

  “Even if you didn’t feel it?”

  “Even if.”

  Cottin said, “The Deli Scene, ‘I’ll have what she’s having.’ Meg Ryan. I screamed!”

  “So did she,” Dogtek said. “Sometimes fake is real.”

  “Why can’t the world be straightforward?”

  “Because half of us are men.”

  “Mars-Venus crap.”

  “There it is.”

  Cottin said, “Where to from here? Us, I mean.”

  The CO held out her hand. “Shelby Dogtek.”

  “Devin Cottin.”

  “We work together, do the job.”

  “I’m all over that, Sang-Froid.”

  The two women laughed.

  “The distaff side,” Dogtek said. “It’s not for sissies.”

  Midsummer Day’s Night

  “Titania, that’s an interesting name,” the defense attorney said. “Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.”

  The conservation officer in the witness chair sat passively, looking off into space, not responding, as she had been coached to do by the assistant prosecutor.

  “Objection,” the prosecutor said drolly.

  “Objection to what?” the judge asked.

  “Shakespearean quotes wrong-courtly, un-courtly language, ad infinitum and so forth.”

  “Overruled,” the judge said, smiling. “Take another swig of coffee, Mr. Prosecutor. In a case about reptiles it’s nice to hear something of a more pleasant nature, even if it’s irrelevant. Mister Sabato, those’re real nice words, but let’s stick to the case, okey-dokey?”

  “As you wish, Your Honor.” Sabato turned back to the conservation officer in the witness chair. “Officer Titania, I assume you had reason to be in the home of the accused, would you please explain to the court how you came to violate the privacy of my client?”

  “Objection,” the prosecutor said. “Posing a charge in a question’s clothing.”

  “Rephrasing,” Sabato said, before the judge could jump in. “Please tell us your name and how you came to be at my client’s home.”

  “My name is Titania Flato. Mrs. Lanie Nougat stopped me outside Walmart in the Soo one afternoon to ask me a number of questions about illegal hunting and penalties for violations. While we were talking her daughter Joanie held up a plastic gallon jug filled with copper belly snakes. There were air holes in the lid and the five-year-old held the jug up for me and said, ‘Chink Stripes.’ I explained that the proper name was garter snakes, but she said, ‘No they’re chink stripes ’cause they shit dollars!’”

  Flato looked at the defendant. “I looked at Mrs. Nougat and said, ‘Chink Stripes?’ and she told me that it was just child gibberish, kid talk and I asked her what the deal was with the snakes, why did her daughter have a jar-full and she said she would have to talk to her husband and their lawyer before she could say more.”

  “Did you confiscate the snakes?” the defense attorney asked.

  “I could have. It’s illegal to make pets of any wild creatures, but I didn’t want to disappoint the little girl.”

  “That’s very considerate of you, Officer Flato. No big deal, right?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I had a strong suspicion that something was just not right, and I looked at the little girl and asked her, ‘You like snakes, honey?’ ”

  “She told me, ‘Not the bitey-bite ones–Bzzzzz!’”

  I asked her, “Do you know what a bitey-bite snake looks like?”

  Flato paused for effect. “The girl pointed at the van. ‘They’re right there in that door. Bzzzzz!’ ”

  The defense asked, “What happened next?”

  “I asked Mrs. Nougat what her daughter was talking about.”

  “Did she explain?”

  “She told me it’s kid talk and drove away. I wrote down her plate number, called it in, got an address, and went to that address.”

  “Had Mrs. Nougat done anything illegal?”

  “There were wild snakes in captivity and she was acting suspiciously.”

  “In your opinion,” the defense attorney said.

  “My opinion based on training and experience.”

  “Oh, you have a lot of experience with reptiles?” the defense attorney asked.

  “I wrote my senior research paper on Upper Peninsula reptiles,” Flato said. “Does that count? And I have a lot of experience reading human behavior.”

  “Well and good, but it reduces to your opinion. In fact I might very well have more reptile experience than you.”

  “You’re a lawyer, so that wouldn’t surprise me,” Flato said.

  The courtroom erupted with laughter and the judge had to gavel them to silence. He pointed to Flato, said, “Good one, please continue.”

  “You might have more experience but it was my professional judgment.”

  Sabato said, “That’s what this case comes down to, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, judgment or the lack of it.” Sabato moved close to the CO. “You chased the defendant with no probable cause.”

  “The garter snakes were probable cause,” Flato said.

  “But you told the jury you were going to ignore those snakes.”

  “I was until the girl raised the issue of the bitey-buzz snakes.”

  The attorney puffed his cheeks. “What did you think the child was referring to?”

  “Rattlesnakes.”

  Sabato said, “Bitey and buzz equal rattlesnake? That’s a heckuva leap made pretty fast, officer. You jump over California king snakes, pacific gopher snakes, and long-neck snakes, all of whom rattle defensively and impressively by vibrating their tails in dry grass and leaves.”

  “Only rattlesnakes buzz in this state,” Flato said.


  “Not hognose snakes?”

  “Only in fall in dry leaves. This was June. There were no dry leaves and the girl said the buzz was in the doors of the van.”

  “Suddenly you’re a herpetologist?” Sabato proclaimed dramatically.

  “I get paid to use my judgment.”

  “And it was your judgment to follow Mrs. Nougat and her six-year-old daughter home.”

  “They didn’t go home.”

  “No?”

  “No.” “Where did they go?”

  “They crossed the bridge over to Soo, Ontario.”

  “Did you follow them?”

  “No, I have video records of the time they went over and when they returned.”

  “Ah, do you pursue a lot of people with such zealousness?”

  “The bridge records were subpoenaed later, after Mrs. Nougat failed to return home. I waited for some time, and then I called the prosecutor and explained, and he called the security and customs on the bridge and we drove over there and they showed me tapes and I got search warrants for the van and any other vehicles at Mrs. Nougat’s house, the house itself, and their hunting camp out by Trout Lake.”

  “All over harmless snakes you were going to ignore?”

  “Yes.”

  “So this escalates at light speed, from a situation where you were going to ignore garter snakes to a full-time full-court press using the garter snakes as your probable cause.”

  “Yessir, that’s true.”

  “What happened when you got into the house?”

  “The Nougats’ lawyer—you—met me. You had obtained a show-cause to block the search writ.”

  “Did you search then?”

  “No, the warrant was under the challenge you filed.”

  “Did you ever search?”

  “Yes.”

  “When was this bogus search, Officer Flato?”

  “Objection,” the prosecutor said.

  “Sustained,” said the judge. “Stick with facts, Mr. Sabato, minus adjectives. They give me stomach acid, agita in the language of my kinfolk from the old country.”

  “Four weeks later.”

  Sabato looked at the jury. “Find any bitey buzzes, didjas?”

  “No,” Flato said.