Chapter 5: Monday, September 25, 2017

“So, is this week starting out any better than last week, Sarge?”

I glanced over at my training partner. Jamie Potter was about halfway through her degree in criminal justice and would soon be promoted to Senior Patrolman. She was still relatively junior and young for the job; she was also ambitious and was planning for her future. One of my jobs was to see if that future was realistic.

I rolled my eyes in response, and she giggled. “Police officers do not giggle”, I told her. “Police officers maintain a calm and sober demeanor at all times, and act as a calming influence on those they work with.”

“Yeah, right. So, how about I just don’t giggle, and simply laugh my ass off at you”, she replied.

“Only if you want to be on the graveyard shift the rest of your very short life.”

“Okay, I’ll behave. By the way, what are we doing for lunch? Want to stop by the Piggly Wiggly and pick something up?”

I turned my head to look at her and fix her with my best and most menacing glare, but Jamie kept her eyes on the road ahead, even though she was clenching her jaws to keep from laughing. I just shook my head and sighed. “Sure, maybe we can get in a gun battle back by the deli. Christ on a crutch!”

To be fair, I couldn’t blame her for laughing. It wasn’t my fault, but I was currently the butt of half the jokes in the department. Last week had been a week from hell. My regular schedule had been working the day shift, Sunday to Wednesday. During the week, I had two drunks puke on me, and a third had peed on me as I had helped Creighton Matthews load him in his cruiser. Some idiot from Florida decided to liven up his day by slamming into my TRV, a Chevy Tahoe painted black and called a Tactical Response Vehicle; he swore his Subaru had a faulty transmission, I figured he was so stupid he couldn’t tell his gas pedal from his brake. I had three heroin overdoses who died on me. I spent all day Wednesday in the Matucket County Courthouse waiting to testify in a domestic abuse case, only to have it be delayed a day, so I had to sit around all day Thursday, my day off; at the end of which, the defendant pleaded out, so I didn’t have to testify anyway. It was just a shitty week to be a police officer.

The stupidest thing to happen, though, was on my day off, Saturday. Kelly decided we needed to go down to the Pig to go shopping, and that I was required to corral the kids. I wasn’t quite sure why she couldn’t go shopping by herself and leave the kids at home with me. When I asked her, she told me I’d just drink beer and take a nap, and Riley and Seamus would burn the house down around my ears. I thought that was a bit much. Riley was six-and-half and loved her Daddy. It was Seamus, in the middle of the Terrible Twos, we had to watch out for!

So, off we went to the Piggly Wiggly in Kelly’s Toyota Sienna. She still had her beloved Miata, still in mint condition, which she used to go to Matucket State or on the rare occasions we got to go out without the kids. I mostly drove a beater Camry with the trunk loaded with my SWAT gear. We left mid-morning, and my major assignment was to keep Riley from loading up the cart with junk food and put stuff back that she and Seamus tried to sneak past Kelly. It was approaching lunchtime when things went sideways.

We were at the checkout counter, with Riley helping Kelly put groceries on the belt when I looked out through the plate glass windows and saw a pair of Matucket Police Department cruisers speed through the parking lot, lights flashing. They slammed on the brakes and parked near the entrance, and then ran inside. Kelly was alerted by the lights and watched with me, nervously saying, “Grim?”

I picked Seamus out of his seat in the cart and handed him to his mother. “You and the kids get down on the floor.”

“Grim...”

“Do as I say.” I reached back to my right hip, where I had my off-duty weapon, a Glock 27 in an inside-the-waistband holster. I pulled my shirttail up so I could access it.

Each cruiser had a single officer assigned, and I recognized Joe Hunnicutt and Terry Smith as they ran inside. Joe was a white Patrolman and Terry was an African-American Senior Patrolman. Terry saw me and ran over, followed by Joe. “Where’s he at, Sarge?”

“Where’s who at?”

“The shooter!”

Joe added, “We have a report of an active shooter!”

My eyes popped open at that, and Kelly dropped to the floor, pulling Riley down with her. I immediately pulled my weapon. An active shooter was one of the supreme nightmares of any police officer. Somebody was in a public area actively firing a weapon at people, and there was no time to plan a response. The first responders had to immediately go in, regardless of their preparedness. An active shooter in a grocery store was a worst-case scenario.

My head was on a swivel, trying to scan where the shooter was. “Active shooter protocol”, I ordered. “Taking command! Get them out of here!” The first step was to get all the potential targets, the other shoppers, out of the store. Joe would handle that. Terry and I would search for the shooter. “I haven’t heard any shots”, I said.

Shoppers were staring in disbelief through all this. Some began running out the doors, but other people were coming in. From the other end of the line of cash registers, a woman began screaming, “SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM!” Terry and I began looking around wildly. We still hadn’t seen anybody with a gun and weren’t hearing any shooting. “SHOOT HIM!”

Joe was closest to her. “WHO? WHERE?”

“THERE! THERE! SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM!” She was pointing down to our end of the registers.

“WHO?”

Terry and I were still trying to find the shooter when she pointed directly at me and told Joe, “YOU’RE STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO HIM! HE’S POINTING A GUN!”

“Him? The bald guy in the striped shirt?” asked Joe, looking at me. I was wearing faded jeans and a striped rugby shirt.

“YES! SHOOT HIM!”

“Oh, sweet suffering Jesus!” exclaimed Terry.

The three of us slowly holstered our weapons, our hands shaking from the adrenaline. “Jesus, lady, that’s Sergeant Reaper. He runs our SWAT team, for Christ’s sake!” Joe told her.

I hadn’t even noticed it, but by that point another cruiser and a TRV had pulled in, lights flashing. We had a complete and total clusterfuck in the making. I looked over at Terry and told him to call it in and cancel the alert. I helped Kelly up off the floor and just shook my head at her in disbelief. I think I’d just been scared out of a year of my life. This was serious shit! Cops have been killed by stupid crap like this!

The two new officers on the scene, both Senior Patrolmen, ran up to us, only to find everything was a false alarm. Meanwhile Joe was quizzing the lady who called it in. She claimed to have seen my holstered weapon as we went through the store, probably when I was bending over to put something back from where the kids picked it up. She had then followed me around while phoning in the alert, claiming I was acting dangerously. She was quite indignant that I was legally allowed to possess a weapon, let alone carry it around in public.

It only got better from there. Terry announced the alert was cancelled, and that Sergeant Castle, the Senior Watch Commander, was coming in. He lived just around the corner and even though it was his day off, he wanted to see the action himself. Joe went outside and began waving people back into the store.

The lady who called it in began to get an earful from some of the people who had run away and were now filtering back in. More than a few told her, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off and die. Riley looked up at me at one point and said, “They’re saying naughty words to her.”

I looked down at my eldest and nodded. “That’s because she’s stupid.”

“Grim!” protested Kelly.

“You want to know the frightening thing?” I asked Kelly. “She’s old enough that she’s probably mated and bred.”

“Grim!”

We were stuck at the store another half hour until Castle let us all go home. The idiot woman was taken down to the station for a formal interview with detectives. It was doubtful any charges would be pressed, but we could surely make her life miserable in the meantime. I had to go in and file a report of my own, which totally blew any chance of watching college football that afternoon. It even made the news that night.

By the time I got to the station Monday morning, every peace officer west of Atlanta had heard the story of the TRT commander who was the subject of an active shooter drill. There were more than a few Wanted posters around the station with my name and picture on them. I was going to be hearing about this forever!

Late afternoon I got a text message telling me to call home. Since it didn’t specify an emergency, I waited until Jamie finished writing up a speeder to call. When I called, I was greeted with a familiar high-pitched voice. “Fortress of Solitude, SuperRiley speaking!”

I glanced over at Jamie and rolled my eyes. “It’s the Fortress of Solitude and I’m on the phone with SuperRiley.”

Jamie knew Kelly and the kids and laughed. “More like Lex Luthor, or Lexi Luthor in her case.”

Turning back to the phone, I said, “Okay, SuperRiley, let me talk to SuperMom.”

Riley giggled, and a minute later Kelly was on the phone. “Grim?”

“SuperRiley? Really?”

“Don’t ask me where that comes from. She’s too smart for her own good.”