Andy Brazil had been waiting for this day for an entire year. After endless hours of bone-aching work, he was at last launching his first installment of a special series of essays that in several hours would be posted on an Internet website he called Trooper Truth. The project was both ambitious and unlikely, but he had been quite determined when he first approached his boss about it inside her formidable office at Virginia State Police headquarters.
“Just hear me out before you say no,” Andy had said, shutting her door. “And you’ve got to swear you’ll never tell anybody what I’m about to propose.”
Superintendent Judy Hammer had gotten up from her desk and been silent for a moment, looking like a publicity portrait of power as she stood in front of the Virginia and United States flags, her hands in her pockets. She was fifty-five years old, a striking woman with keen eyes that could penetrate body armor or empower a crowd, and her smart business suits could not hide a figure that Andy had to resist openly staring at.
“All right.” Hammer had begun her characteristic pace around her office as she considered what Andy intended to do. “My first reaction is–absolutely not. I think it would be a big mistake to interrupt your law-enforcement career so soon. And I’ll remind you, Andy, you were a cop in Charlotte for only a year, then a cop here in Richmond for only a year, and you’ve been a state trooper for barely six months.”
“And during that time I’ve written hundreds of crime columns for area papers,” he’d reminded her. “That’s my most important accomplishment, isn’t it? Hasn’t your major agenda been to use me to inform the public about what’s going on and what the police are doing about it or, in some instances, not doing about it? The whole point has always been to enlighten people, and now I want to do that in a bigger way and to a bigger audience.”
Andy’s was an unusual career and always had been. He’d gone into journalism right after college and had gotten involved in law enforcement as a volunteer, riding with police and writing eyewitness pieces for the city newspaper. This had been in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Hammer had been chief at the time, and she had eventually hired him as a sworn officer who enforced the law while continuing to write crime columns and editorials. Hammer had allowed him this unprecedented opportunity because she was in an unusual position, too, having been given a grant by the National Institute of Justice that allowed her to take over troubled police departments and straighten them out. She had always seen beyond boundaries and had become Andy’s mentor, faithfully bringing him with her as she moved on in her career, but as he sat in her office and watched her pace, he sensed that his plan struck her as ungrateful.
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” he had said to her. “I’m not turning my back on you and disappearing.”
“This isn’t about my worrying that you’re going to disappear,” she had replied in a way that made him feel that if he vanished for months she wouldn’t miss him in the least.
“I’ll make it worth your while, Superintendent Hammer,” he promised her. “It’s time I have more to say than just who robbed who or how many speeders were caught or what’s the latest crime wave. I want to put criminal behavior into the context of human nature and history, and I believe it’s important, because people are only getting worse. Can you help me get a grant or something so I can pay my bills while I do the research and write and take flying lessons–?”
“Who said anything about flying lessons?” she had interrupted him.
“The aviation unit’s got instructors, and I think I could be much more useful to you if I had my helicopter pilot’s license,” he’d explained.
Hammer let him have his way, perhaps because she realized he was going to leave her anyway. He could launch a website as a special, classified project while he continued to work for her, she said, but the condition was that he had to remain anonymous, because Governor Bedford Crimm IV, who was an aristocratic, autocratic, impossible old man, did not allow Hammer to disseminate information to the public without his approval. Clearly, whatever Andy wrote could not be directly connected to the Virginia State Police, but at the same time had to reflect favorably on it and encourage the public to support it. She had added that Andy had to be available for emergencies, and if he wanted to learn to fly, he could work that out on his own schedule.