Duty
on Christmas Day
Gregory
B. Talley
Duty on Christmas
Day is generally slow in a small community.
Probably the best things about having to work on that holiday was that
if you had the day shift you could go home at two-thirty in the afternoon and
still have a good part of the day to spend with your family. Those of us who had swing shift could be with
our families in the morning and watch the kids discover the magic of Christmas
in the early hours of the day. I was a
swing-shifter. I was also the watch
commander.
The other good
thing about working Christmas was getting paid double-time and-a-half for the
holiday.
Unlike
Thanksgiving, people don’t watch to see you coming down their street so they
can bring you turkey sandwiches and pecan pie.
Instead, they bring boxes of candy or homemade cookies and brownies to
the police station for a week or two before Christmas. You don’t eat things from people you don’t
know.
Christmas is
pretty quiet. And slow. It is slow enough that we let people go home
for an hour to eat dinner with their families, but not all at the same
time. That Christmas was that way.
I had served a
three-year stint as a patrol officer then another three years as a
detective. Without a doubt detective
work gives a police officer a great deal of freedom; the kind that breaks one
free of strict work hours and district assignments. With the freedom comes a great deal of
responsibility and long hours on the job, many of which do not come with any sort
of compensation. After three years as a
detective I was ready to move back to being on patrol.
I was the newest
sergeant on the department. New
sergeants were often assigned to swing shift.
It was a tough shift on our department.
There were always traffic accidents to work during the evening rush hour. Runaways were generally reported missing when
they didn’t come home from school. There
was always a steady flow of petty crimes and felonies to keep you busy. Weekend parties in the summer typically began
during the hours of swing shift and they were always good for drug and alcohol
violations. And, in the winter you could
count on a couple of house fires to keep you occupied in the evening. I loved swing shift.
Death. Death is a fact of life in law
enforcement. Deaths from natural causes
were generally reported on day shift when one spouse woke up and the other
didn’t. It seems like most deaths from natural causes took place in bed or on
the toilet. The ones on the toilet are
the tough ones to work. You kind of hate
to invade a person’s personal space.
When they remain in the upright and locked position they aren’t too
difficult to deal with, but there are a fair number of folks who just roll off
the pot and onto the floor. They often
end up wedged between the toilet and something else—generally the bathtub. Think rigor mortis.
Accidental deaths
could happen at any time of the day but seemed to occur most frequently during
swing shift. You tend to think of
accidental deaths with traffic accidents, and you would be onto something there
except not all accidents take place on the road. Mary lived alone. A neighbor was concerned because Mary wasn’t
answering her phone but the neighbor could clearly see lights on in the
house. We walked into her house and
there she was—face down in her mashed potatoes.
Everybody except me assumed that she had a heart attack while eating
dinner. I saw the bottle of wine on the
dinner table and predicted the autopsy would show that she choked to
death. I went to the autopsy and watched
as the medical examiner pulled the green bean from her throat. She choked to death. The medical examiner called it an accidental
death.
Suicides happen
just about any time of the day. I’ll
never forget the woman who tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. She didn’t cut deep enough and she didn’t
slice in the right direction. She
obviously didn’t read the instruction manual.
Since she couldn’t bleed out she tried to drown herself. She filled her bathtub with water and forced
her head under water. That didn’t work
either as she would hold her breath as long as she could then come up gasping
for air. So, she stripped down to
nothing, slit her wrists again and ran outside and around her house in the dead
of winter hoping to either freeze to death or bleed to death. The neighbors saw a “streaker” and called the
police.
Then there was the
guy who shot up with insecticide. That
didn’t work either, but it gave him really bad breath. He ended up grabbing a shovel and swinging it
at the police. He was hoping for the
suicide-by-cop routine. I showed up and
told him to put the shovel down and to come with me for a ride. He dropped the shovel and cried like a
baby. A few years later he got his wish. He broke into his ex-girlfriend’s house after
she told him to go away or she would shoot him.
He persisted and broke into her house.
True to her word, she shot him.
Dead. We didn’t charge her. We had every reason to believe he wasn’t
there to pay her a social visit.
There was
something that I found in common with nearly all the suicides I worked. They were lonely. Often they were afraid of something in the
future, like a terminal illness or loss of employment or a spouse or exposure
to something humiliating. But they were
very lonely people; sometimes hurt by a single significant person, and then they
were even lonelier. So many of them had
nobody else to connect to.
***
That Christmas had been like those of the
past. Quiet. No turkey sandwiches or pecan pies from
people coming out to meet you in the street.
Just left over candy and cleared cookies. Everybody got to go home for dinner with
their families. It had turned out to be
just another typical Christmas.
Ten twenty in the
evening slowly made its way around the clock.
I had earlier checked what meager paperwork there was to approve for the
day. Nothing was going to happen for the
remainder of the shift, so I made one last drive through town and was now
backing into my parking place outside the police station. You always back in to your space so if you
need to leave again in a hurry you won’t have to look over your shoulder and
carefully back up and pull out of the department’s parking lot. The risk of collision with another backing
police car is too great.
***
Randy was new on
the department. He and his wife and
children moved in next door. Their
children and our youngest children were about the same ages so it was natural
that the two families almost became one.
Just as our kids all played together, he and his wife and my wife and I
would often get together to visit and play table games. Randy was still young and though he had
military police experience, he had quite a bit to learn about civilian policing. He was pretty impetuous. I had to ride herd on him a little, but he
was good. He would eventually be a very good cop.
***
Just as I was
ready to put my car into park and gather my things to go home the dispatcher
broadcast “Shots Fired!” and gave an address on El Viento Street. It was on a cul-de-sac. Under normal circumstances the drive would
take about 15 minutes. These were not
normal circumstances.
“One man down!”
cried the dispatcher.
I was already a
quarter of the way there when she made that report. It was very dark outside and there was no
traffic. Deer were always a concern, but
they would simply have to get out of the way.
The 35 m.p.h. speed limit meant nothing at 75 m.p.h. with red and blue
lights cutting into the cold night. I
turned off Trinity Drive onto Diamond Drive.
Trinity Drive,
unlike its namesake, was not a dead end drive.
This drive was named after The
Trinity, as in the Trinity Site where atomic weapons were tested during World
War II. Still, a fair number of people
had gone to meet the Trinity on this drive.
How ironic.
The tires squealed
in agony as I rounded the intersection of Diamond and Trinity. I could see red and blue lights in my
rearview mirror closing in on me as I once again sped up to meet the demand of
gunfire.
***
Jared and Elaine*
had lived on El Viento most of their married lives. They had raised their children there and now
there were grandchildren. Jared had a
good job in the company town and Elaine worked at the post office. Elaine spent more time at the post office
than working at the post office and she began to find more comfort with Craig
than she found with Jared. Divorce
papers had already been filed. The
Department of Energy would later want Jared’s blue “Q-Clearance” security
badge.
***
The dispatcher
reported more gunfire at the residence on El Viento. As I sped up even more I looked to my left to
see Randy passing me. I was doing 80; he
had to be doing 90. You don’t do anybody
any good if you don’t get there.
“Another man
down!”
The turn onto
Barranca Mesa from Diamond Drive is tricky under normal conditions and at the
posted safe speed. I’ve seen my fair
share of cars that went through the guard rail or slapped into another car or
lose complete control and end up in the ditch on the opposite side of the road
at that intersection. Randy left a cloud
of dust for me to drive through when I hit the intersection. Please
God, don’t let there anybody be walking across the street. I had practiced that intersection for
occasions just like this. Once again my
tires painfully protested as I rounded the second sharp turn of the evening—two
more and I would be there.
***
Jared was now
living in an apartment on the opposite end of town. He had spent Christmas day with Jack
Daniels. The two of them had become good
friends over the previous months. Jack
Daniels had done most of the talking through the day. Jared sipped.
And listened. There he was in a
little apartment all alone while another man was with his wife in his home
probably sitting in his rocking chair
sharing Christmas with his
family. Jack Daniels was now the only
one talking while Jared pondered. “You
know what to do,” Jack whispered to Jared.
***
People were
standing in the street on the cul-de-sac and in the yard outside the home. Dodging them was only another obstacle as
Randy and I screamed to a stop outside the home. The garage door was open and the light in the
garage was on. We ran with guns drawn
and looking for cover as we made our way to the house. The door leading from the garage into the
kitchen was standing open. Randy went
low and covered me as I went high. No immediate sign of threat.
***
Jared left Jack
Daniels in charge, wrote a note, grabbed a jacket and his Remington 870
12-guage shotgun and drove to his house to take care of business. How could he have made it there without being
detected by any one of the four of us on duty?
At that hour of the night on Christmas there just is no traffic to be
found on the streets of this national laboratory town.
He walked in
through the open garage door then quietly opened the kitchen door. From that vantage point he could easily see
Elaine sitting on Craig’s lap in his
rocking chair. There must have been
quite a bit of noise in the house as Jared was able to walk through the kitchen
and up behind Craig and Elaine without being detected.
***
With weapons still
drawn Randy and I slipped into the kitchen and made our way to the crime
scene. Somewhere in the house a baby was
crying. A woman’s figure was on her
knees and sitting back on her heels. She
was covered with blood and little pieces of something grey all over her; her
bloodied hands covered her face. There
was gut-wrenching, soulful sobbing as her body uncontrollably convulsed. The acrid odor left behind from gunfire remained
in the air.
***
The last thing
Craig had felt was the cold blue steel of the business end of the shotgun. There was nothing left to see where the
shotgun had touched him below his left ear.
His hands remained on the arms of the rocking chair. His torso was soaked in red as a sudden gush
of blood rushed up to where a head had once been. There just wasn’t anything there.
Jared had turned
the shotgun to Elaine and cranked another round into the chamber. She dropped to her knees and pleaded for the
sake of their children and grandchildren that he not kill her.
***
In the next two seconds
we scanned the room to find Jared prone on the floor in a pool of blood with the
shotgun not far from him. Like Craig,
there was no evidence of a head to be found—only blood, pieces of scalp and
hair, skull fragments, and bits and pieces of grey matter. Jared had placed the shotgun far back under
his own chin and spared Elaine and the children and the grandchildren.
Elaine was
unhurt. We left her in the care of a
neighbor. The family dog, a beagle, bit
into a brain lobe laying on the floor and began to drag it over the bloody
carpet. A quick thump on the side of the
head and she dropped it cold and ran for the door. Another partial lobe began to slide down the
wall. Randy excused himself and stepped
outside and made friends with a bush.
The baby and her mother were safe in a room near the front of the
house. I grabbed a blanket and moved
mother and baby out the front door and away from what I relive every Christmas.
The next six hours
involved diagrams and color photographs and the medical examiner and statements
and a visit to Jared’s apartment. Jack
Daniels stood sentry over the note that Jared scrawled out explaining that he
could not stand the thought of another man in his house with his wife. Randy seized the blue Top Secret security badge
that leaned against the sentry.
***
Randy
got an Atari video game for Christmas.
We spent the first half hour silently taking shots at each other as we
mastered the game of Tanks. His wife later told us that she knew we were
O.K. when she heard us laughing. We
played until the beginning of day shift.
*Not their real names.
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