Chapter 4

“That was sweet, what you had Sheri do in the hospital, Charlie. She and I are close, very close, but when she kissed me, then told me it was from you, I think she knew. She said what little she could see of my face turned red as an old fire truck. She knew about Rick hitting me, if that’s any indication. Like I mentioned earlier, you and she were the only ones. Anyway, thank you.”

Lori and I became an item. We dated seriously as I watched her heal. There was one trip to the city to visit a renowned reconstructive surgeon to work on her face, mostly to repair her cheek and jaw area. It was tightening, making it painful to talk or eat. I’d think a woman of her beauty might have had the work done to try to save some of her looks, but it didn’t happen until she complained of the discomfort one night during dinner with her parents at our favorite steak place.

“Lori, you need to have that looked at, darling,” her mother said. “It shouldn’t be uncomfortable to eat. That’s just not right. I wouldn’t mind if it hurt for you to talk sometimes...” Marge giggled, causing Robert to break out laughing. Lori blushed. “Seriously, honey, let’s get that taken care of. I’ll call someone.”

It was eight weeks later, after more bandages, more pain, more stitches, more of all of that, before the unveiling. The change was remarkable. The woman who worked on her was an artist, at the very least. A faint line was all that was left and even that came with a promise of fading with the proper care and liberal use of an ointment called Maderma. The doctor chose not to go too far up into the hairline, not really needing to, so it was almost unnoticeable that anything had even happened. She had always been beautiful to me, scar and all. Now she was beautiful to herself as well.

She smiled more. She laughed more. She ate without the grimace. She admitted, she was happy for the first time in over a year. It had been about that long since she was run off the road.

Lori and I had grown closer and closer over the year, and after her reconstructive surgery, but before the bandages came off, we got a bit more intimate with each other. The bandages didn’t bother me, and I think she forgot about them one night at my place on the couch.

Kissing led to a bit of petting, and before I knew it, my kisses ventured south along her chin, neck, upper chest, and cleavage, then I was mouthing her breasts with her shirt open, and her bra cups pulled down holding her breasts up on display for my enjoyment. She was holding my head and moaning with pleasure, asking, “Why did we wait so long for this? God, Charlie, it feels wonderful.”

“To make sure it was us, honey. That’s all.”

“Charlie? Is it us? Is it really us?”

“I want that if you do, Lori. I do. I know the age difference is terrible, but if you think you could put up with me, I want it. I want you.”

She nodded, threw her arms around me and kissed me as fiercely as she could, taking care with the areas still tender from surgery. “Go back to work, Charlie. You have no idea how good that feels.”

“And you have no idea how good you taste.” I continued on for a while before I kissed each nipple and looked up directly in her eyes. “Lori Simpson, will you marry me?”

She nodded, losing a couple of tears, kissed me again, then pushed my head back down so my mouth was back on a breast and giggled. “Yes, Charlie, I’ll marry you. More! I want more!”

I got her home before anything else sexual happened. I wanted to make sure she was ready. She’d let me know. I was sure of that. We were both frustrated, but that’s part of making sure.

A week or so after that heated episode, the one where Lori and I basically decided to become a permanent couple, or at least work toward becoming one, I had a bit of an issue with Rick Anderson. Timmy’s cousin and Michael’s son, he was her newly minted ex-boyfriend at the time of the crash into the tree. It was he who ‘knocked her around’ after the argument about her not being so willing to provide him with her body’s favors. He had seen me about town with my lovely girlfriend and decided to cause a problem. A fairly serious problem at that.

Upon my pulling him over for speeding out at the Sinclair station, the route out of town to his family’s estate, I walked up to the car and was astonished when he threw his face up against the steering wheel then started yelling for me to stop hitting him.

Rick Anderson is not a very smart man. He may seem like it, and he may talk like it, but he’s not. Long ago, Terry, he was my senior deputy, installed very high quality dashcams in all the vehicles. His and mine had four, in a sort of experiment. Each lower corner of the windshield and back windows in our cars had good quality cameras in them, all four attached to a digital video server in the vehicle. In addition, since he saw a nightmare happen to a police force in Minnesota somewhere, he also put a fisheye at the top of the divider behind the front seat. It recorded anytime there was someone in the back seat.

It took six months for me, actually it was my lawyers, to convince a jury that it wasn’t me that bruised his face, but that he did it himself in an attempt to dirty my name and my reputation as the Sheriff of Colby County. I was lucky that a state judge signed an injunction to keep me from being suspended and placed on leave while the case waited for court.

Truth be told, it actually took ten minutes as the videos were shown, with the clock running in the corner, showing it was an unedited video. I hadn’t even turned toward him when he started yelling. The passenger side front camera showed him slamming his own face into the steering wheel while the driver’s side showed me not being anywhere near him. It was a shame, too. He wound up paying for my lawyer, his lawyer, the court, and ten grand in damages due to my mental state. That was the funny part.

The not so funny part was that it was used in the campaign against me for re-election. It was pretty constantly voiced that there was an issue with me and the way I treated people in the county, singling them out for retribution for some disagreement or another. It was a crock of crap, but once those words were spoken, they were heard. It was mentioned that I’d even been to court because of the accusations. No mention was made, of course, that it was bogus and contrived to ruin me ... albeit unsuccessfully, with any luck.

When it looked like I was going to lose the election, a few days before a debate my challenger wanted to have, Lori called a friend of hers at the newspaper in Liberty City. The friend had a friend in the radio business, and she had one in the city at the TV station. What came to happen was the biggest public relations charity giveaway in the history of the world.

Lori released a statement to the press, was soon after asked to be on the radio, then was asked to be interviewed by the television station. It wound up on three radio stations and two of the network affiliates that were carried by the cable and satellite systems feeding Colby County.

It was really nothing special, but it went kind of like this:

“My name is Lori Simpson. I live in Colbyville and have all my life. Sheriff Charles Colby was our babysitter when I was just a little girl. He watched over us, the five Simpson kids, and took care of us in that capacity for several years while he was in college and then sometimes when he came home on leave from the military. He didn’t have to then, heck, he was an officer in the Air Force. He just wanted to do it so he could be around us. We loved him just as much, I’m sure. My parents got a night out once in a while, too. Charles Colby is a hero. He’s been to war, he’s fought, he’s been badly wounded, he’s healed, and he stayed so he could finish out a stellar career as a commander of policemen, just like he’s doing here. He came home just after his parents were killed by a drunk driver in the city and ran for Sheriff because we needed him. We almost begged him to. Do any of you remember that? He doesn’t need this job. His parent’s left him their ranch and enough money to live on for a thousand years. He took the job because we asked him to. My parents, many of your parents, I’m sure, and maybe even you were involved. Reluctantly, he acquiesced, and we were able to catch him and keep him. Now we don’t want to lose him. We really don’t, especially in these times of both local and national turmoil.

“The rumors you hear about him mistreating people are just plain lies. Everyone who knows him personally, knows that. Ask anyone you know that knows him, and they’ll tell you. I certainly will. He saved my life a year and a half ago. I was dying and being first on the scene, just seconds after I was forced off the road and into a tree, he found me and pulled me from the burning wreckage, then he stopped the bleeding and held me. I asked him to. I was dying. I just knew I was, but I had never felt more comfortable than I did then.

“I just want everyone that can see this, or hear this, to know that we couldn’t find a more honest, more brave, more sincere, or more intelligent man for this position, Sheriff of Colby County. A position we need him to fill. Don’t let him get away. Please.

“With full disclosure, since that day when he saved my life, I consider myself to be his girlfriend, and I write this to explain the man that Sheriff Charlie Colby is. This is not embellished, it is not exaggerated, but it is, I’m sorry to say, completely self-serving. I want him to be the Sheriff and watch over me, my family, my friends, my home, my hometown, and all I care about. I love this man and he deserves better than to be treated like a crooked politician. Nothing could be farther than the truth. Please don’t listen to the lies about him. Meet with him and meet the good man that he is.”

It felt good to know that she and evidently many others felt that way. Saving Lori was a no brainer. I would do the same for anyone, save maybe the kisses to comfort her. That was just one of the crappy parts of my job, pulling people out of burning cars. They don’t call us first responders for nothing.

I always try to be honest because my parents taught me it was the only way to live. Also, the easiest. You don’t have to try to remember the truth. It’s a memory. Lies have to be fabricated and you have to keep up with what you said, and when, and to who. Too much trouble if you ask me.