Police captains, chiefs, and commissioners along with doctors, lawyers, and firemen were getting their work in on this particular Sunday that Commissioner Scott broke his usual pattern and drove into downtown – because, after all, the traffic going downtown was not as heavy.
Still, there was a choke point on Jonathan Lofton Avenue. A block of it had been cordoned off owing to firefighting efforts, and Commissioner Scott had already gotten the report about that from Captain Lee. Former police lieutenant Dobson had burned down his house to keep from losing it to the bank. He hadn't accounted for it being a blustery late fall day. By the time Commissioner Scott had been diverted around, the blaze was up to five alarms because it was impacting all the houses down the block.
Not that Lieutenant Dobson would have cared if he wasn't drunk.
That was the thing Commissioner Scott knew, and it was why he had fired the lieutenant in the first place. He had rarely met an individual with less regard for others' lives, and that kind of man made a dangerous police officer to have.
Now of course, dangers varied. Special Forces veterans made dangerous officers to have on the beat as well, but, Commissioner Scott felt like he just couldn't do without Colonel Henry Fitzhugh Lee, U.S. Army Reserve, holding two captaincy seats in the department – both of them desk jobs.
That had been the plan, anyhow.
He was out of uniform that Sunday, of course, when he had come to police headquarters – you would never know that this man wearing an apron over his shirt and slacks – this mild-mannered looking and sounding gentleman who also was not really a church attendee on the regular – had just gotten up and single-handedly prevented a mass shooting.
That bandage on his left arm, under his shirt? He could have gotten that with a bad transfer of a hot hotel pan – surely not a bullet wound!
“It's just a scratch,” Captain Lee said.
“Men have died from what you call a scratch,” the commissioner said. “I hate that you got that scratch, but thank God you decided to go to the Church in the Midst of Life today!”
“I have been doing so,” Captain Lee said, “over and over again. It nearly did not occur, but the Spirit would not let me sleep in this morning.”
“Thank God!” the commissioner said. “Dobson worked for the department just three months ago, so there is going to be more trouble – tell me what happened, with all the details.”
Captain Lee did so, and the commissioner shook his head.
“Like we need any more problems,” Commissioner Scott said. “We already have the Black and Latino communities all over us … but now we are about to have #metoo problems like you would not believe.
“I started getting tentative reports last month … there appear to be a bunch of Daisy Dobson-type stories among the wives of the force. Her ex now in custody with us tried to kill her, and it was hushed up under the old regime … but the old regime brought a lot of violent men in for other purposes.”
“I remember,” Captain Lee said. “The breaking of the Soames case showed all that … and, all that will now be brought up again. The Lofton County Free Voice will pick this up because of Lieutenant Dobson's past, and, the Big Loft Bulletin will pick this up because of the sensation of it all. Yet you need not be worried about it over much, sir – you fired him. You need only say, no matter what is brought to you, that you fired him because you saw X, and if any other officer manifests X, he may expect the same treatment.”
Commissioner Scott thought about this.
“I keep forgetting you are a colonel,” he said. “Bet you had to manage a bunch of sticky situations.”
“Too many to even mention,” Captain Lee said. “This is why strict discipline standards are absolutely essential not only for officers, but for the entire unit's credibility, however we conceive the unit to be. Some people do not respond positively to discipline, but the point is that the unit is acquitted of that unresponsiveness.”
“Right. All that goes into what my wife said about me keeping this department off the mulch pile of history. People who are used to a lax environment – and this must have been super lax under Orton Thomas – don't take well to discipline, but I'm trying to save the whole department.”
He sighed.
“I don't know if we're going to make it, Captain Lee,” he said. “Conservatorship is a possibility. Bankruptcy is still out there if we don't stop generating reasons to get sued.”
“Well, you may take it from a Lee,” Captain Lee said. “In Virginia especially, if you must lose, a lot depends on how you lose. Since we are not there yet, we will lose best if we keep on fighting now … although, to follow your analogy, I do feel that the department is quite far up the conveyor belt into the teeth of the shredder, and the momentum increased a bit today.”
“Thank God you were there, Captain Lee,” the commissioner said again. “The new breed of Big Loft's police wrestled the old breed into submission – that's good press, and spares us as much as all those people at the scene were spared. Now I've got to get the departmental draft response together – poor Officer Brandt, because he has to come to work now too!”
“No, he doesn't,” Captain Lee said. “I am already here and can assist you.”
“You're a whole colonel in addition to being a police captain, not a secretary.”
“The first law of being a good soldier is to do whatever is necessary for the good of the unit. I can be whatever my commander needs me to be, for the good of the unit.”
“Captain Lee, if I could just clone you 100 times!”
“No, sir, because you would have too many lawsuits if every criminal came in looking like the mulch pile that has just been through the shredder.”
“Good point,” Commissioner Scott said as he started laughing. “Good point – strike that line of thought entirely. Just one of you is a blessing – 100, maybe not so much.”
Image by Daina Krumins from Pixabay