Chapter 52

Spring had come to the mountain, and it was glorious. I have survived the last two months without being involved in any of Mary Ellen's projects. I did pay off the Monk for saving my life, otherwise I had been celibate. How did I do it you asked. Well everybody showed me a lot of love at work and the community seemed to appreciate all that I had done. I guess I didn't need the love of a strange man to justify my existence at that particular time in my life.

I was reporting for the new SOU for the very fist night. We finally got the special operations unit up and running. The SOU had lots of things different about it for instance we carried a shotgun and a AR15 police version of the M-16 assault rifle, in the trunks of our cars. If someone had to die in a shootout, the odds that it would be the other guy were better with them than with the S&W .40mm hand gun.

We had a lot of discussion about how to organize the Unit with so few resources. There were going to be two permanent members. From the start I was going to be one of them. Some people wanted a more senior deputy, so that he would assume a command position. Others wanted someone young and driven, much like me.

They finally settled it with putting the two sergeants, who had platoons in the field in charge of us. We had one sergeant form 8PM till 11PM and a different one from 11PM till 4AM. Our assignments were set by the Chief Deputy. So we never knew what we would be doing on any given night.

"I had never worked with Jake Learner, but I had passed him in the halls. I knew that he had a wife and a couple of young children. Why they had chose someone with a young family was probably to bring some maturity to the Unit. At least thats how I saw it at the time.

Learner was good looking in the gym rat kind of way. He filled out his uniform nicely I admit, If the Sheriff's office ever needed a face for the posters he would do fine. Hell, he should run for Sheriff, I thought. He would damn sure have a fine campaign poster. Besides being married with the two young children, his mother lived with him. Christ he was the perfect partner, or at least he should be, I thought.

Since he had five years on the job, he would be senior office but that wasn't a rank, He was to officer who should have most of the answers. If he couldn't answer, it was up to the duty sergeant.

"Hello Sarge," I said. "I'm reporting in the start my first night."

"On paper it is a hell of a efficient use of manpower, I have to admit that. So where is your partner?" he asked.

"Don't know, I have never worked with him before." I said.

"He was on my platoon. He is a good cop. You won't have to worry, if you need him, he will move heaven and earth to be there for you. Only bad thing its he sort of loves himself."

"Oh really, how do you mean that. Like vain?" I asked.

"Exactly, he will most likely be neater and cleaner than you. I know you aren't going to believe that is possible of a man, but it's true. He will most likely try to convert you to his faith as well. Lots of church invitations and that sort of thing. A bit of a bible thumper, but all in all, he is not much trouble. Since you won't be riding in a car with him, you should be fine."

"So what do we have on to do tonight," I asked.

"Here he comes why not wait a second so I can do it just one time," the sergeant said. Then to Learner he said, "Hello Jake, you know Deputy Porter?"

"Never worked with her, but I hear good things about you Porter," he said.

I nodded. I doubted that he heard anything at all, Let alone good ones. "So now that we are both here, what is our assignment tonight." I asked.

"From now till midnight stake out the Northwest High School. Seems they have a graffiti problem," the sergeant said.

"Yeah I have taken reports there. So why the sudden push the principal didn't want anything done last month." I said.

"Well the last round, the perp wrote Principal Evans is a cocksucker. The problem is that it just might be true." The sergeant said.

"Why do we stop at midnight," Learner asked.

"We want you to swing by and serve a warrant. He gets off work at 11PM so we think he will be home then. It's a failure to appear, so we want you to bring him in. I don't think you will have any trouble, he didn't resist when they arrested him."

"Okay, there are only two entrances to the the parking lot at the school. If it is a kid driving up, he has to go in one of them." I said.

"What make you think he drives," Jake asked.

"The walls he paints have always been near the parking lot. He either drives up, then does a hits and run, or he chose those wall for max exposure or both." I said.

"Well it's not to cold tonight, maybe it wont be too miserable out there," Jake said. I hoped it wasn't his way of telling me not to leave the car running for the heater.

We went into the parking lot for our cars. We were driving two of the confiscated drug bust cars. He had a Buick and I had a Ford.

"501 to 502 ... tack two," Learner said into the radio.

"10-4 going to tack two," I switch my radio to what had been the detective unit's frequency. The were going to have more traffic from this moment onward.