"It was somewhere between 'At that time' and 'this officer did'," Marcus said with a quick smile.

  The judge shot him a look, and Marcus nodded that he understood to knock it off.

  "Okay," Carter said. "Here it is. The laboratory report confirmed the controlled substances to be fourteen separate baggies of marijuana containing between five to ten grams each. Based on this officer's training and experience, this is consistent with someone who has intent to distribute controlled substances. Further, he had a folded roll of United States Currency in his right pocket in denominations of fives, tens, and twenties, totaling six hundred dollars. This is also consistent with this officer's training and experience as being evident of narcotics distribution." Officer Carter put down the page and looked up at the judge and said, "Nothing further, your honor."

  "Mr. Horatio, do you have any cross examination for this witness?" the judge said.

  "Just a few questions," Marcus said. He stood up and bent forward on the table, "Officer Carter, you mentioned your training and experience multiple times in your testimony. What exactly is your training and experience in narcotics investigations?"

  Carter folded his hands together on the stand in front of him and said, "We received training in the Police Academy in narcotics, and I attended a three-day class put on by the DEA in investigating international drug traffickers."

  "I see," Marcus said softly. "And during your three-year career, how many arrests have you made for distribution of controlled substances?"

  Carter swallowed dryly and said, "I've made multiple arrests for possession of drugs. This is my first one for possession with intent to distribute."

  "Did you ever ask my client if he was a drug dealer?"

  "No, I didn't, because−"

  "Did he ever say he was going to sell the drugs you found?"

  "No, obviously."

  "Did you, in fact, conduct any further investigation than to pat down my client and remove his personal belongings and then submit them to the lab?" Marcus said.

  "I consulted with officers from surrounding agencies who have made these kind of arrests before and asked them for their opinion," Officer Carter said.

  "Are you aware that the possession with intent to deliver charge is a felony, Officer Carter?"

  "I wrote it in the charging section, didn't I?" Carter shot back.

  Marcus smiled thinly and said, "No further questions, your honor."

  The judge told the officer he could step down and asked him if he had any more witnesses. Carter said no. Marcus smiled at the judge and said, "I do. The defense calls Mr. Frank O'Ryan."

  Carter's face fell as Frank walked into the courtroom and headed for the witness stand. Frank raised his right hand to be sworn in and sat down. He looked at the cop and nodded his head, careful to acknowledge him before anybody else in the room. "Please be seated," the judge said.

  "Mr. O'Ryan, what is your experience as a narcotics investigator?"

  "I've arrested over thirty people for possession with intent to deliver over the past two years," Frank said. "I've conducted at least one hundred covert operations using confidential informants to purchase controlled substances and also acted in an undercover capacity to do the same. I have attended over ten classes that dealt specifically with the sale of drugs, and am a graduate of Top Gun. Further, I'm a recognized expert witness at the district court level in both narcotics investigations and the crime of possession with intent to deliver controlled substances."

  Marcus held up his hand and said, "Your honor, I submit this man is an expert witness capable of rendering an opinion for the purposes of this hearing."

  The judge looked at Carter, who simply held up his hands in defeat. "So granted," Judge Buhl said.

  Marcus walked Frank through the facts of the case as the officer had laid them out and said, "Is it your expert opinion that Officer Carter established prima facia evidence that my client was going to sell the marijuana he had in his possession that night?"

  Frank looked at the kid sitting next to Marcus. Young, white, not too scared looking. Maybe a little entitled, but not a scumbag. He glanced over at Officer Carter sitting directly in front of him, probably just a few years older than the defendant. His pale face was red and splotchy with either anger or embarrassment. Probably both, he decided. It's okay, kid. You'll live to fight another day.

  "No, he did not," Frank said.

  Officer Carter let out an audible sigh and rocked back in his chair, clenching his hands together across his waist. Marcus came around the table, "What makes you say that?"

  "The intent to deliver cannot be established by quantity or packaging alone. The defendant could have bought the marijuana like that, or simply bagged it up in small quantities to control how much he smoked at any given time."

  "Oh, come on," Carter said.

  The judge shot him a glance that was enough to silence the officer.

  "And what about the money?" Marcus said.

  Frank shrugged, "Certainly a large amount of money in small denominations is one of the factors we look for in establishing delivery, but it has to be corroborated with other factors. For all we know, the defendant is carrying around money he got for cutting grass or shoveling snow."

  "Nothing further, your honor," Marcus said.

  The judge looked at Officer Carter and said, "Any cross?"

  "No," Carter said.

  Neither side offered closing statements, and the judge lifted her gavel and said, "In the charge of possession of a controlled substance, the Commonwealth has proved prima facia and it will be bound up to county court. In the charge of possession with intent to deliver, the charge is dismissed." She knocked her gavel against the bench and got up to head into her office.

  Marcus immediately spun in his chair to face Alcott and said, "The tough one's out of the way. Now all we have to do is knock down the possession charge in a suppression hearing and you're good to go."

  "Thank you so much, Mr. Horatio," Alcott said, pumping Marcus's hand.

  "Don't thank me," Marcus said, spinning in his seat to find Frank. "Thank that man."

  Alcott leaned over the railing to shake Frank's hand and said, "I owe you my life, sir. Thank you so much."

  "You can thank me by never doing this shit again," Frank said. "If you ever sell drugs again, I'll help the cops nail you to the wall, you understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Marcus chuckled and put his arm around Frank, leading him away from the table. "We don't scare away our repeat clients in this business, Frank. It's how we stay paid, you feel me?"

  Frank was too busy watching Officer Carter collect his things, stuffing all his reports into a case file. The kid stormed past Frank and hit the swinging doors so hard at the exit that they cracked against the stoppers on the wall. "He'll get over it," Marcus said. As he reached into his suit jacket he said, "And so will you."

  He handed Frank an envelope with a check for two hundred dollars. "Now that's friend prices for witness testimony. Plus, I hooked you up with Doctor Lassoff. The firms I'm going to set you up with pay five, six hundred a throw. You always put me ahead of them first though, okay?"

  Frank looked down at the check and thought that he might buy Dawn some flowers on the way home. He shook Marcus's hand and said, "I think I might like civilian life after all."

  "My man," Marcus said.

  Officer Carter was standing by his patrol car, smoking a cigarette as Frank walked out into the parking lot. The kid had his Oakley's on, trying to get back into cop mode. Frank nodded at him as he walked past, trying not to rub it in, but Carter called out, "I had two dead kids last week from overdoses. Both heroin. One was a tenth-grader."

  Frank put his keys back in his pocket and came around the side of the police car, leaning back against the fender. "That sucks. You all right?"

  Carter blew the smoke out the corner of his mouth and smirked, "You kidding? Course I'm all right. The fuck do I care if some junkie wants to kill himself. Saves me the trouble of dealing with him later."

  Frank nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on the dark mirrored surfaces of the cop's sunglasses, wondering what the eyes looked like behind them. "You got any kids?" Frank said.

  "No."

  "It changes things when you do. You start looking at people differently, especially young people. I didn't care too much until I had them either."

  "My sister's a junkie," Carter said quickly. "Heroin. Pills. My grandmother was dying of cancer and that bitch stole her pain meds, can you believe that? She couldn't afford to get her morphine refilled and spent all night screaming in agony because of her own granddaughter."

  "I'm sorry to hear that," Frank said.

  "So now I'm trying to take a piece of shit drug dealer off the street, just like the big badass narcotics investigator Frank O'Ryan and what does he do? You show up here and fucking torpedo me. Why? For some money? How about I take up a collection from the local cops and you just stay the fuck away from now on?"

  Frank took a deep breath, trying to control his temper, feeling like every subsequent word was a steel needle into his chest. "That kid in there, he wasn't a drug dealer," Frank said.

  "Whatever," Carter sniffed. "We both know different."

  "No, I mean, he might be selling small amounts of weed, but he's not out there killing people. You can't pop one guy like that and call yourself a narcotics investigator, son. It's not just another thing you tick off on your resume, you understand? If you were serious about it, you'd take a kid like that and flip him. Make him work for you. Use him to go after the guys selling the heroin and morphine. Use him to get a hold of the people killing those kids in your town."

  "And how the fuck am I supposed to do that?" Carter said. "Do you know how many arrests my department made for delivery in the past five years? One. This one. And it just got tossed out. Who am I supposed to learn how to do this shit from, if I'm supposed to go up against guys like you?"

  "I don't know," Frank said. "I'm sure there's someone out there, if you look. I could probably make some calls."

  "How about you?" Carter said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "How about you? You're over here working for the dark side, maybe you could spend a little time teaching mopes like me in your spare time. At least that way, you're giving us a fighting chance."

  "I'm not much of a teacher," Frank said.

  "That dude Reynaldo says you taught him plenty. He's working with ICE on some big caper that he says is going to make the newspapers. I guess you did something right."

  Frank looked down at the ground and said, "Yeah, I guess we could go over some stuff. I don't know if your boss will go for it, though. I'm not real popular with administrators these days."

  "Bosses?" Carter said. "Fuck the bosses. We'll do it unofficially. I know ten different guys from ten different PD's who will want to come."

  "You had me at 'fuck the bosses,' Chuck." Frank stuck out his hand and the officer squeezed it before getting into his patrol car. He watched the car pull away, able to hear the incessant radio chatter from dispatch coming through the car's open windows. People calling 911 about other drivers cutting them off in traffic, about their kids not listening, about a missing bicycle. For every radio dispatch, a bored-sounding cop replying they were en route. The police radio was an ever-spinning roulette wheel of barking dog calls and unfounded alarms, right up until the point the ball accidentally landed on a maniac with a brick who was bashing his disabled daughter to death, or a sixteen year old kid breaking into houses who was willing to shoot two police officers rather than be arrested.

  Frank let the keys sit in his pocket and he kept walking past the other cars in the parking lot, heading into the township park just beyond the courthouse. There was a playground and dog trails that wound around a wide pond that was filled with ducks. Frank found an open park bench and sat down, watching the birds float gracefully along the water.

  Given enough time, there will be no more dreams, Frank thought. Given enough time, I will forget all that I have seen and come to know about the worst in all of us. I will find peace.

  In two hours he had to pick up the girls, and after that Dawn would be home. Maybe he'd take them all out to dinner instead to celebrate his first official paycheck as a civilian.

  After that, who knew? Maybe he'd join the gym and work off some of his paunch. Maybe he'd take a class at the local technical school and learn how to do plumbing, or carpentry, or how to weld. Building things sounded like a fine pursuit, he thought. A fine pursuit indeed.

  He wondered how many cops would really show up like Officer Carter had said. Even if it was just a few, that would be enough. He had too much knowledge, too much information, too much to share not to try and find some way to pass it along. Otherwise, what was it all for? Otherwise, he was simply handing everything over to the bastards in charge, to all the bastards that had ever been in charge, probably since the very beginning of time.

  They weren't the real police. They were who got to make the decisions and stand in front of the cameras and write the policies. They were insurance flunkies and gears in political machines and overly egotistic dictators who saw their personal fiefdom, regardless of how small or insignificant, as a glittering universe for them to lord over. And no matter what else it entailed, they always wanted more.

  Meanwhile, there were streetcops working twelve-hour overnight shifts on four hours of sleep who were missing their kids birthday parties and recitals and graduations, or getting yelled at for checking off the wrong box on one of a dozen administrative forms, or for not tracking down an uncooperative victim, or for not saluting their boss. And still those cops gave enough of a shit to step on the gas to save a little kid from choking. Still, there were investigators digging through somebody else's trash to get enough probable cause for a search warrant. Somewhere, a detective was putting his soul and sanity in jeopardy yet again as he sat down to hear a man talk about how much he loved sucking the genitals of small children, and the cop was nodding and playing along as the man talked, because it needed to be done.

  What about them? Frank thought. Who's going to speak for them?

  A small kernel of an idea formed in his mind, almost too implausible to consider, and yet, from that very first instant, he somehow knew it was what he intended to do. Fuck it, he thought. I'm going to write a book.

  Epilogue

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  A car zipped through the intersection a little late on the yellow, catching red before its back tires crossed the white line. The camera attached to the traffic signal activated and the large light assembly sitting on the median strip popped and flashed so bright that drivers stopped at the oncoming lane squinted, even in the daylight.

  That's new, he thought. He looked at the sign posted next to the light that read: This prototype red light camera was installed for your safety.

  He pulled into the police station parking lot, but it was full with Manor Farms Township motorcycles and Highway Enforcement cars. A group of police officers he did not recognize from their department were standing in a loose circle talking about the stack of tickets in each of their hands. "You should have seen this dude's face when I pulled out the tire pressure gauge and started going around his car. He didn't know whether to shit or go blind when I cited him for all four."

  "That's nothing. I grabbed a truck this morning hauling a whole thing of frozen seafood. His weight was fine but his log book was all fucked up and his fire extinguisher wasn't correctly fastened. I had him park it. Everything in that trailer is going to be melted by the time they get another truck down there. That driver is screwed."

  "Awesome pinch."

  He found a spot at the back of the lot and eased himself out of the car, careful not to lose his grip on the handle above the door or his cane. He stiff-legged it across the parking lot, feeling the pins and bolts holding his bones together with every step. He was careful not to grimace as he made his way across the parking lot. None of the officers standing there would have noticed, they had not bothered enough to look in his direction, but he did for himself.

  He wondered if his electronic code still worked or if it had been changed. He decided it was better to limp across the entire building than to walk up and try and fail in front of the highway heroes. He put cane to asphalt and continued on. The Township entrance was around the other side of the building. Step by painful step he slowly made progress.

  By the time he reached the front door he was winded and sweating lightly through his nylon windbreaker. He balanced on his good leg as he switched the cane in his hand and pulled the door open, limping through. The girl at the front desk smiled benignly at him and said, "Can I help you?"

  "Jim Iolaus, here to see Mr. Jones and Mr. Frederick."

  "Of course," she said, suddenly remembering where she knew him from. "They're in the meeting room now with Chief Tovarich and his men."

  "Thank you," he said. And his men. The words rankled him more than all the descriptions of what had happened to the police department since his accident. "Awesome pinch," the highway cop had said. Son, if that's your idea of a pinch you don't belong wearing a gun and a badge.

  Iolaus opened the meeting room door only to see a seated Chief Tovarich, dressed in full uniform. The Chief's eyes narrowed, making it plain he hadn't known Iolaus was coming. "Hello, Jim. How are you feeling?" Tovarich managed.

  Iolaus nodded and said, "Much better, Wally. Thanks."

  The Chief was sitting in the audience seats while the Deputy Superintendent and Corporal Donoschik faced the two supervisors. Both Jones and Frederick had their hands folded on the desks of their platforms as the two men spoke, their faces impassive. Donoschik looked down at the notepad in his hands and said, "Therefore, ticket production is up thirteen percent last month, which was up nine percent from the month before. All in all, it is a marked increase since the traffic initiatives were put in place."

  Junior straightened his back as he jumped in to say, "The estimated revenue for the Township in just the past month alone is more than the entire annual gross for last year. And the projections from the red light camera are going to put us so far over the top, your eyes will spin." He bounced up and down a little when he spoke, like the achievement might actually cause him to begin levitating.

 

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