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.
