‘My nightmare is losing an officer without knowing he’s lost,’ I overheard her telling Ned one day.
‘Has that ever happened?’ Ned asked. ‘Just . . . losing a guy?’
‘Once,’ she said. ‘Before my time. Look here, Ned, I made you a copy of the call-codes. We don’t have to use them anymore, but all the Troopers still do. If you want to run dispatch, you have to know these.’
Then she went back to the four basics of the job, running them past him yet again: know the location, know the nature of the incident, know what the injuries are, if any, and know the closest available unit. Location, incident, injuries, CAU, that was her mantra.
I thought: He’ll be running it next. She means to have him running it. Never mind that if Colonel Teague or someone from Scranton comes in and sees him doing it she’d lose her job, she means to have him running it.
And by the good goddam, there he was a week later, sitting at PCO Pasternak’s desk in the dispatch cubicle, at first only while she ran to the bathroom but then for longer and longer periods while she went across the room for coffee or even out back for a smoke.
The first time the boy saw me seeing him in there all alone, he jumped and then gave a great big guilty smile, like a kid who is surprised in the rumpus room by his mother while he’s still got his hand on his girlfriend’s tit. I gave him a nod and went right on about my beeswax. Never thought twice about it, either. Shirley had turned over the dispatch operation of Statler Troop D to a kid who still only needed to shave three times a week, almost a dozen Troopers were out there at the other end of the gear in that cubicle, but I didn’t even slow my stride, let alone break it. We were still talking about his father, you see. Shirley and Arky as well as me and the other uniforms Curtis Wilcox had served with for over twenty years. You don’t always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify. You know it, and I do, too.
When I was out of his sightline, though, I stopped. Stood there. Listened. Across the room, in front of the highway-side windows, Shirley Pasternak stood looking back at me with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in her hand. Next to her was Phil Candleton, who had just clocked off and was once more dressed in his civvies; he was also staring in my direction.
In the dispatch cubicle, the radio crackled. ‘Statler, this is 12,’ a voice said. Radio distorts, but I still knew all of my men. That was Eddie Jacubois.
‘This is Statler, go ahead,’ Ned replied. Perfectly calm. If he was afraid of fucking up, he was keeping it out of his voice.
‘Statler, I have a Volkswagen Jetta, tag is 14-0-7-3-9 Foxtrot, that’s P-A, stopped County Road 99. I need a 10-28, come back?’
Shirley started across the floor, moving fast. A little coffee sloshed over the rim of the Styrofoam cup in her hand. I took her by the elbow, stopping her. Eddie Jacubois was out there on a county road, he’d just stopped a Jetta for some violation — speeding was the logical assumption — and he wanted to know if there were any red flags on the plate or the plateholder.
He wanted to know because he was going to get out of his cruiser and approach the Jetta.
He wanted to know because he was going to put his ass out on the line, same today as every day. Was the Jetta maybe stolen? Had it been involved in an accident at any time during the last six months? Had its owner been in court on charges of spousal abuse? Had he
shot anyone? Robbed or raped anyone? Were there even outstanding parking tickets?
Eddie had a right to know these things, if they were in the database. But Eddie also had a right to know why it was a high school kid who had just told him This is Statler, go ahead. I thought it was Eddie’s call. If he came back with Where the hell is Shirley, I’d let go of her arm. And if Eddie rolled with it, I wanted to see what the kid would do. How the kid would do.
‘Unit 12, hold for reply.’ If Ned was popping a sweat, it still didn’t show in his voice. He turned to the computer monitor and keyed in Uniscope, the search engine used by the Pennsylvania State Police. He hit the keys rapidly but cleanly, then punched ENTER.
There followed a moment of silence in which Shirley and I stood side by side, saying nothing and hoping in perfect unison. Hoping that the kid wouldn’t freeze, hoping that he wouldn’t suddenly push back the chair and bolt for the door, hoping most of all that he had sent the right code to the right place. It seemed like a long moment. I remember I heard a bird calling outside and, very distant, the drone of a plane. There was time to think about those chains of event some people insist on calling coincidence. One of those chains had broken when Ned’s father died on Route 32; here was another, just beginning to form. Eddie Jacubois
— never the sharpest knife in the drawer, I’m afraid — was now joined to Ned Wilcox.
Beyond him, one link farther down the new chain, was a Volkswagen Jetta. And whoever was driving it.
Then: ’12, this is Statler.’
’12.’
‘Jetta is registered to William Kirk Frady of Pittsburgh. He is previous . . . uh . . . wait . . .’
It was his only pause, and I could hear the hurried riffle of paper as he looked for the card Shirley had given him, the one with the call-codes on it. He found it, looked at it, tossed it aside with an impatient little grunt. Through all this, Eddie waited patiently in his cruiser twelve miles west. He would be looking at Amish buggies, maybe, or a farmhouse with the curtain in one of the front windows pulled aslant, indicating that the Amish family living inside included a daughter of marriageable age, or over the hazy hills to Ohio. Only he wouldn’t really be seeing any of those things. The only thing Eddie was seeing at that moment — seeing clearly — was the Jetta parked on the shoulder in front of him, the driver nothing but a silhouette behind the wheel. And what was he, that driver? Rich man? Poor man? Beggarman? Thief?
Finally Ned just said it, which was exactly the right choice. ’12, Frady is DUI times three, do you copy?’
Drunk man, that’s what the Jetta’s driver was. Maybe not right now, but if he had been speeding, the likelihood was high.
‘Copy, Statler.’ Perfectly laconic. ‘Got a current laminate?’ Wanting to know if Frady’s license to drive was currently valid.
‘Ah . . .’ Ned peered frantically at the white letters on the blue screen. Right in front of you, kiddo, don’t you see it? I held my breath.
Then: ‘Affirmative, 12, he got it back three months ago.’
I let go of my breath. Beside me, Shirley let go of hers. This was good news for Eddie, too.
Frady was legal, and thus less likely to be crazy. That was the rule of thumb, anyway. :
’12 on approach,’ Eddie sent. ‘Copy that?’
‘Copy, 12 on approach, standing by,’ Ned replied. I heard a click and then a large, unsteady sigh. I nodded to Shirley, who got moving again. Then I reached up and wiped my brow, not exactly surprised to find it was wet with sweat.
‘How’s everything going?’ Shirley asked. Voice even and normal, saying that, as far as she was concerned, all was quiet on the western front.
‘Eddie Jacubois called in,’ Ned told her. ‘He’s 10-27.’ That’s an operator check, in plain English. If you’re a Trooper, you know that it also means citing the operator for some sort of violation, in nine cases out often. Now Ned’s voice wasn’t quite steady, but so what? Now it was all right for it to jig and jag a little. ‘He’s got a guy in a Jetta out on Highway 99. I handled it.’
‘Tell me how,’ Shirley said. ‘Go through your procedure. Every step, Ned. Quick’s you can.’
I went on my way. Phil Candleton intercepted me at the door to my office. He nodded toward the dispatch cubicle. ‘How’d the kid do?’
‘Did all right,’ I said, and stepped past him into my own cubicle. I didn’t realize my legs had gone rubbery until I sat down and felt them trembling.
His sisters, Joan and Janet, were identicals. They had each other, and their mother had a little bit of her gone man in them: Curtis’s blue, slightly uptilted eyes, his blond hair, his full lips (the nickname in Curt’s yearbook, under his name, had been ‘Elvis’). Michelle had her man in her son, as well, where the resemblance was even more striking. Add a few wrinkles around the eyes and Ned could have been his own father when Curtis first came on the cops.