Code 61 - Donald Harstad [14]
“Fine. I'll call you on the radio.” I pressed the “off” button on the phone and turned to put it back in the charger.
“You need any help?” came Sue's voice from the other side of the bed. “It sure looks like it from here.”
“No.”
“I'm going to try to go back to sleep … ”
I stood, pulled a dark gray polo shirt over my head, and slid my clip-on holster into my belt, on my right hip. I walked over to Sue, bent down, and gave her a kiss.
“Good luck.”
“You, too,” she said, nearly asleep again already.
I grabbed my gun, my walkie-talkie, and my ID case; billfold and car keys from their drawer downstairs in the dining room, and was in my unmarked patrol car and reporting in to the dispatch center at 07:49.
“What time did you call me, Comm?” I asked. Curious.
“07:40.”
“Ten-four.” Nine minutes. Getting old, I thought.
I left Maitland, the county seat, where I lived and where the sheriff's office was located, and headed up the state highway to the intersection with X8G. It was a really pretty morning again. It was about fifty degrees, and warming. I love October.
The police radio in my car was ominously quiet. That was standard with the imposition of code sixty-one. Only officers can really know the spooky feeling that comes with that particular brand of silence. You know there's something really bad, you're going to the scene, and it's absolutely quiet because most of the communications traffic is either on the phones, or just not happening at all because you're the designated catalyst for the next phase, and you aren't there yet. Sort of undercurrents, I guess. But you learn to hate silence, sometimes.
I was moving about seventy or so, no lights or siren. They weren't really necessary, because there was absolutely no traffic anywhere. I became aware of intermittent sounds, like the faint patter of raindrops on the car. The sun was still shining brightly. Still no clouds. Then it dawned on me. Ladybugs. There were unusually large flights of ladybugs this year, and I was traveling through mini swarms of the little creatures. Well, that was at least one mystery solved today.
I was bothered again about Borman and the “suicide” statement, as I turned off onto X8G and dipped down into a valley along the Mississippi. He really should have known better, even with just a couple of years under his belt.
I traveled along the Mississippi again, past a stretch of maybe thirty small cabins on the right, or river side, of the road. They were across the railroad tracks that ran the length of the county in the valley of the Mississippi. I drove past a large, abandoned silica sand mine carved into the bluffs on the Iowa side, on my left. Then past a small sign near the railroad tracks that proclaimed “Givens' Switch.” There was nothing there but the sign, which had recently been placed by the county historical society. Commemorating one of those myriad little places that had just disappeared over the years.
I thought some more about Borman. He was taking a class in “Humanizing the Police,” or some such thing, taught by a sociologist via a college extension plan. He was picking up on all these “empathy” techniques, and I strongly suspected that this had somehow influenced him this morning. Or maybe I just was reluctant to acknowledge that he was a younger generation of cop. I chuckled to myself. Maybe, indeed. Fifty-five really isn't that old. Well, not if you're ninety.
About a quarter of a mile later, I turned back west, or inland, onto a gravel road called Willow, slowed to fifty or so, and called in for better directions.
“Comm, Three. Just turned onto the gravel. How 'bout those directions now?”
This sometimes got very interesting, because under code sixty-one rules, it forced a radio transmission that had to be very circumspect. Try that with directions, sometime.
“Ten-four, Three. Take your next right turn to the north. Take the second drive after the curve that sends you back east, toward the river.”
I paused, setting the directions in my mind. It was the great big house on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. It