Chapter 1

I never expected to be doing police work again. I was medically retired from a big city police force after being shot for the third time in twelve years. I spent a long time in the hospital after the third time and I required a lot of rehab. As far as I could tell I was totally recovered when my treatment was finally completed. In fact, I was in better shape than I’d ever been before. Those people in rehab worked my butt off! The medical experts who evaluated me for returning to the job had a different opinion though. So at the ripe old age of thirty-six I retired on a full pension.

I’ve been divorced for almost ten years now. Luckily, my ex already had someone else lined up and waiting in the wings when she divorced me. So there had been no demand for alimony and no kids to support.

After the divorce I lived frugally in a small apartment and buried myself in my work. That hadn’t been a problem for me. I love police work. So now I have a lot of money saved up and no job. I don’t know what the hell to do with myself.

I considered becoming a private investigator. I never thought much of them or their profession when I was on the job though, and I really can’t see myself becoming one of them. There wasn’t much reason for me to stick around the city. So I took a trip back to my little home town and ended up buying a real nice little log home on almost five acres sitting on the small lake there. It isn’t anything fancy. But it’s modern and plenty big enough for me. The thing that sold me on the house was the huge back deck overlooking the water.

As it turned out, I didn’t have as hard a time adjusting to a more bucolic lifestyle as I thought I might. I have some relatives and a few old friends from my school days in the area. I don’t hunt or fish. I’ve never been of killing small animals for pleasure. But I enjoy photography and I’m finally starting to get caught up on my reading.

It may be that I’d have gotten bored after a while. Fortunately, before that could happen I got a visit from the Mayor and a couple members of the town council. This took place about a year ago. The town Sheriff had just died of a heart attack and because of my experience they asked me to fill in until his term expired. And then, if everyone was satisfied, run for the office in the next election.

The job is more administrative than anything else. There’s a small force of twelve officers and no real crime to speak of. There has never been a murder or a rape in this town. Not as far as anyone knows. The only bars in town are the VFW and a small, family type of place on the edge of town where entire families go and play pool and shuffleboard and get a not very good pizza and a few drinks.

Around here, if a cop pulls you over for drinking and driving they’re apt to just drive you home and give you a stern lecture.

There’s the occasional case of vandalism. The kids around here are just as aggravating as kids everywhere else. Well, maybe not quite. But sometimes kids do dumb things. You just have to hope they outgrow it.

I didn’t need the money. But I thought it would be fun to give it shot. I agreed to take the job. There was a big write-up in the county’s weekly paper about me. Until I read that article I never realized what a damn hero I was. Since I was a local boy I didn’t have a problem getting accepted by the people and I enjoyed the job right from the start.

I made a few minor changes in the way things are done. The old Sheriff had been pretty lax. I arranged to get a little more training for the young deputies on the force. Other than that my job was more about scheduling than anything else. I often patrolled the town in a police car. In the eight months since I took the job, though, I never made an arrest. Now that I think about it, in that entire time there were only two traffic tickets written by the entire force. Those were for tourists passing through of course.

I’d have been perfectly happy if things had stayed just like that for the foreseeable future. My life was pretty damned pleasant. Sometimes, when I thought about it, I missed being in love. It would have been nice if I had someone to go home to at night. And I get horny, just like any other male my age. There isn’t much of a dating pool in town, though. Any decent women my age are pretty much already married or seeing someone. So a love life would have been nice, but it was pretty unlikely. Other than that, I was pretty happy with the way things were going in my life. I’ve been living alone for a long time now and I guess I’m growing accustomed to it.

One day I started getting curious when my requests for training for my officers kept getting turned down because of a lack of funds. I had a couple of talks with the town council and the town’s treasurer and the more I talked to people the more questions I had. The treasurer even showed me the town’s books and patiently explained why money is so tight right now. It made pretty good sense, I suppose.

I probably would have just let it go. After all, my people didn’t really need that training to work around here. Some of them want to make a real career out of law enforcement though, and they’re being short changed. So it kind of bothered me.

I was sitting out on my back porch one evening, drinking a beer, staring at the water and looking around at the expensive homes people have begun to build on large lots around the lake. And the more I thought about it the more it just didn’t add up.

I called an old friend back in San Francisco and told him what I was thinking. Bud is a retired forensic accountant. He isn’t as boring as you might believe given the professions from which he retired. We met when the department I worked for called him in on some drug cases. I never would have thought I’d be friends with an accountant. But this guy has a strange sense of humor, like me, and the two of us really hit it off.

We stayed in touch after we retired and I kept trying to get him to come out and spend a week and relax. Unfortunately, he’s not from a small town and getting him out of the city is nearly impossible. When I told him what I suspected he said it would be easy enough to prove and a couple days later he drove out for a visit.

One night we made an afterhours visit to the Treasurer’s Office. He spent a little time going over the books for me. He kept chuckling to himself, writing things down in a notebook and shaking his head. Finally he put the books up, shut down the computer and asked me where the Town Clerk’s office is.

I took him down the hall and we went in. He looked at more books, checked some more computer records, and wrote some more things down in his notebook. We spent about three hours there all together. I was bored to death but he seemed to be amused.

We finally finished up and I drove us back to my place. On the way he started telling me what he discovered. He confirmed my suspicions. He said that the Treasurer and the Town Clerk, who coincidentally happen to be married to each other, have been ripping the town off for at least three years. To go any further back he’d have to check out the records in the basement from before the town computerized everything. In his opinion they’re rank amateurs and it’s a miracle no one caught on before now. Still, he enjoyed the opportunity to practice his trade again and for him this had been an enjoyable evening.

We sat out on my back porch and he went over his notes and estimated that in the last three years they managed to steal approximately one hundred and eighty thousand dollars from the town.

That would have been a lot of money from a large city’s budget. It’s a hell of a lot of money from a small town like Lakeview! Bud asked me how long the Treasurer and the Town Clerk have been working there. I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was about two, maybe three years longer than we had gone back in the records this evening.

He explained that the theft had been ongoing, but he couldn’t say for how long without looking at the earlier books. He noted that they started to become a little bolder, or greedier, whichever. In the last year and a half the amounts they’ve been siphoning off have been increasing slowly but steadily.

The next day he wrote out a report for me, the kind of report that he might have prepared back when he was still on the force. I felt kind of guilty about him spending most of the day on my computer working on it. But he insisted he was having a ball. You could see it on his face. He was really having fun. I have some pretty strange friends.

That evening, after I went over the report and attempted to digest it, it occurred to me that it would be best if I arrested them while Bud is around so he can answer any questions that come up and make short work of any more of those obfuscations the Treasurer had been so good at when I went to his office.

The Treasurer isn’t from around here originally. He moved here to take the job some years back. He’s a fairly young guy and only had a couple of years experience after college. He was popular, though. The people around town thought highly of him. He met and married the town clerk not long after he moved here.

The clerk, Jessica, is a townie but I don’t know her. I didn’t meet her until I came back and took the job of Sheriff. You can’t help but notice her, though. She’s a real hottie. In fact, I guess you could say she’s beautiful. The trouble is she knows it. She tends to treat people like shit if she doesn’t feel like they’re worth her time. She’s the kind of girl who gives beautiful people a bad reputation.

The Treasurer, her husband Dylan, is also one of the beautiful people but he’s more personable. At least he always seemed like a pretty nice guy to me. That may have been because he was stealing the town blind and I’m the Sheriff.

I planned on going to their respective offices in the morning with a couple of deputies and arresting them. But Bud suggested it would be better to do it off premises. That way there will be less drama and things usually go smoother that way.

I saw his point and decided I might as well get it over with. I’m not really looking forward to it. I don’t care much for Jessica. But I kind of liked Dylan.

I probably should have gotten a warrant first. I would have if we were back in the city. Things are a little more informal out here, though. I got my badge and my pistol belt. After thinking about it for a moment I decided I didn’t need to call in any of the deputies. I expect this to be pretty cut and dried. This isn’t Bonnie and Clyde I’m going after.

I took Bud with me and we drove out to the expensive new home Dylan and Jessica just had built on the other side of the lake. I rang the bell and Dylan answered the door. He’s surprised to see me but he invited me in. I introduced Bud to them and told them why we’re here. I read them their Miranda rights and told them they’re under arrest.