Courageous (18 page)

“Looking forward to it. It’ll beat the dickens out of bingo!” He laughed. Adam put his arm around Tom’s shoulder, smelling Old Spice and feeling the frail body that surrounded that big heart.

When Adam walked out the door, his steps were lighter than when he’d arrived.

Tom Lyman, eighty-one and confined to a wheelchair, was genuinely happy and content. And he was one of the most intentional people Adam had ever met. Tom did far more of consequence in this rest home than 95 percent of men did outside it. And at least until recently, Adam had been part of that 95 percent.

Adam Mitchell supposed he might be halfway through his life in this world. He wanted the remaining half to look more like Tom Lyman’s.

Chapter Twenty

Adam and Shane drove the forty miles on Route 82 east from Albany to the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Tifton. The larger-than-life persona sat behind them, overfilling the backseat.

The passenger wasn’t a criminal. He was far scarier. And there under duress. A lingering smell of cigar smoke kept Adam looking to see if he’d lit up.

“What a waste of my time.” Sergeant Brad Bronson’s jowls wobbled like folded pie dough.

“When you were in training,” Adam said, “didn’t you want to hear from experienced cops?”

“I got better things to do than be a nursemaid to a pack of wet-diapered wannabes.”

“It’s just Q & A. You’ll be great.” Shane winked at Adam, daring his partner to be playful in the face of Bronson’s rank and imposing presence.

“Don’t tell me what I’ll be, Deputy.” Sharing a car with Bronson was like occupying a small stall with a big bull.

Adam made his sixth try at conversation. “Sarge, I know you like to drive your own car. Alone. But they stuck you with us today. Did they tell you why?”

“Are we being punished?” Shane said under his breath.

“No, you chucklehead,
I’m
being punished. They tell me they don’t want me to be a loner. If I don’t stop bending the rules, they’re gonna force a partner on me. Never mind that I’ve put away more lowlifes than the two of you and any three kiss-up-and-toe-the-line deputies combined.”

“You’re not the only one that would be tough on,” Shane said, grinning.

“Fuller, I have one nerve left, and you’re getting on it.” Bronson waved his meaty hands, soft everywhere except on the palms, where they were nothing but calluses. “You’re exactly why I don’t want some half-wit riding shotgun with me.”

Adam studied Bronson, an alarmingly small percentage of him, in his rearview mirror. He was grateful it didn’t say,
Objects are closer than they appear.

Adam said, “Ever since I’ve been on the force, they’ve let sergeants ride without a partner.”

The bull pawed the dirt, ready to charge. “Yeah, I remind them that’s policy. Then they say, ‘We make the rules and we can change them.’ They’re a bunch of sniveling bureaucrats listening to some anticop civilian feminazi.”

“Sheriff Gentry is a sniveling bureaucrat?”

“I call it like I see it.”

After twenty more minutes of this, they walked through the front door of the academy. They showed their credentials at the front desk, and a young freckle-faced blonde ushered them through inner doors.

Captain Claudio Grandjean, director of academy training, was fit, with a shaved head and rugged features. “Thanks for joining us, gentlemen. We’ve got a class of recruits ready to hear from our experts.”

“Makes us sound important,” Shane said.

“Well, since you actually do what we’re training them to do, you
are
important to these students. If you’ve got a few minutes after the class, you can watch them go through some training exercises.”

“Whoopee,” Bronson muttered.

“Sorry we caught you in a bad mood, Sergeant.”

Adam and Shane looked at the captain, and both shook their heads.

“He’s actually sunnier today than usual,” Shane said.

The deputies-in-training, 80 percent male, were shockingly fresh-faced. Adam reminded himself that some were only four years older than Dylan.

Captain Grandjean stood in front of the class. “Cadets, let me introduce you to three officers working in Albany with the Dougherty County Sheriff’s Department. Deputy Fuller, Corporal Mitchell, and Sergeant Bronson.”

Shane smiled. Adam nodded. Bronson glared.

“The time is yours,” Grandjean said to the class. “Any question’s fair game.”

Adam felt his stomach flip as he came to grips with what he’d tried to push out of his mind. He’d rather be abducted by aliens than stand in front of a group of people.

An athletic-looking cadet in his early twenties said, “I hear the starting wage for a deputy in Dougherty County is $26,000. So if you’re married and have kids, does that mean most cops have to get a job on the side or something?”

Shane nodded. “That’s a great question. One advantage to what you get paid as a Georgia cop is—you definitely can’t afford a drug habit!”

They laughed . . . sort of.

“Nothin’ funny about it,” Bronson said. “Cops should be paid more than doctors. But it’ll never happen, so why whine about it? Being a cop’s the toughest job on the planet. If you’re a weak cop, you’ll fail your partner, maybe kill him. Your job is to keep him alive; I mean, only if that’s important to you. If it isn’t, you may as well just put your gun to his head and take him out—get it over with. If you can’t hack it, just flunk out and sell vacuum cleaners.”

The class stared silently.

Bronson had one more round in the chamber. “It’s not a game out there. You hesitate and they’ll kill you dead. Got that?”

Grandjean coughed uncomfortably. “Okay . . . next question?”

A wiry Hispanic youth asked, “It seems to me that cops need to take down the drug dealers. But you guys know who they are; you know a lot of them by name, right?”

“That’s true,” Adam said.

“Then why can’t you just put them away?”

“It’s complicated,” Shane said. “The courts—”

Bronson waved him off. “The gutter slime you lock up tonight are out tomorrow. The justice system is a merry-go-round, minus the merry.”

Shane attempted to resume. “Drug dealers—”

“They’re a waste of protoplasm,” Bronson said. “Selling drugs to kids should be a capital crime. Take down a murderer and you may save a half-dozen lives. Take down a drug dealer and you may save a hundred. Pushers should be shot, lethally injected, hung, then put on the electric chair for twenty years at a low setting.”

A variety of questions followed about procedures, benefits, the increase in robberies and drugs. Dos and don’ts on foot chases. The Holloman chase provided some recent fodder for tale-telling. Adam was still nervous but was grateful he wasn’t standing up there alone.

“I’ve heard every precinct has its own rules, and police and sheriff’s offices can be very different. Does that get confusing?”

Shane nodded. “I have my own list of rules, and one of them is, ‘Never do a shotgun search of a dark warehouse with a cop whose nickname is Boomer.’”

Everyone relaxed and smiled. Shane was good. Anyone who could put air back in a room after Bronson sucked it out was, in Adam’s mind, a magician.

Shane rolled on. “It’s good to think through your responses in advance to what people say when you pull them over. I like to say, ‘Sure, we have a quota. Two more tickets and my girlfriend gets a toaster oven.’ Or ‘We used to have a quota, but now we can write as many tickets as we want.’ Another one you’ll use often is, ‘Sir, just how big
were
those two beers?’”

“Okay,” Captain Grandjean said, smiling. “Deputy Fuller could obviously go on. Any more questions?”

An early-twenties male said, “I’m getting married this summer.”

“Congratulations,” Adam said, mainly to keep Bronson from talking. “What’s your question?”

“They talk about the high divorce rate among cops. Is that really true?”

Adam nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. Looking back, I’d say that of the guys I knew well in the academy and in my first assignment, three out of four are divorced.”

“You’re looking at one of the statistics. You can survive like Adam and his wife.” Shane pointed to his partner. “But it’s not easy.”

“I’ve got a question,” a big, strong-looking young man said.

Adam recognized him. He’d been a star at Shiloh Christian Academy in Albany, a small private school that won the state football championship. Adam still remembered how legendary coach Bobby Lee Duke nearly swallowed his trademark Tootsie Pop when Shiloh beat his Richland Giants. The kid had entered Albany folklore for doing a hundred-yard death crawl blindfolded, with a 160-pound player on his back.

“You’re Brock Kelley, aren’t you?” Shane asked.

Brock smiled. “Yes, sir. In my college classes, several professors taught that there are no moral absolutes. Most people I went to college with probably won’t deal drugs. But a lot of them don’t believe in ultimate right and wrong. Does that relate to all the junk you guys have to face?”

“I’m no college graduate,” Bronson announced. No one in the room appeared surprised at this revelation. “I’m just a working stiff, trying to keep the next person from being mugged or raped or murdered by people who—guess what—don’t believe in moral absolutes.” He looked around. “Why would I be a cop if there wasn’t right and wrong? On the street, steal somebody’s stereo or girlfriend or gun, and suddenly they all believe in moral absolutes.”

Someone asked, “So how do you balance following precinct policy and staying out of trouble with the media and the courts, with just staying alive?”

Shane said, “On the streets, cops have a saying: ‘There’s no justice. There’s just us.’”

“What does that mean?”

“We can’t control what the courts decide or what makes the media happy. We have a job to do, and nobody else has the guts or the know-how to get out there and actually do it.”

Bronson said, “We’re cops, not bleeding-heart social workers or two-faced politicians. I can’t worry and second-guess myself. I tried to be nice once, as a young officer. I ended up with a broken nose. Didn’t make that mistake again.”

With five minutes left in the class, Brock Kelley said, “I have one other question. I’m a Christian. How hard is it for Christian cops to stay on track with their faith?”

Adam admired the kid’s directness. “You see the worst out there. You get cynical. For a Christian, that negativity could skew how you view others and maybe get in the way of your faith.”

Bronson cleared his throat, the cement mixer scraping everything off the sides. “Christians are soft, and soft cops aren’t good cops. Some guy you’re chasing turns around and reaches inside his jacket. A Christian wants to give him the benefit of the doubt. You hesitate and he shoots you or your partner, and one of you has no face. Give me an atheist partner. If the guy next to me wants to go to heaven, sorry, I’d rather stay here.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a cop,” Brock said. “And I don’t apologize for being a Christian. I care about justice and I care about people, and I think that should make me a better cop, not a worse one.” He glanced at Bronson, then focused on Adam and Shane. “I want to stick up for people who are weak. Police work seems like a good vocation for a Christian. Do you agree?”

“I’ll tell you this, Brock,” Shane said. “It’s a tough job. As a cop, you seldom hear a crowd cheer. Instead you hear people boo. And it’s tough to take. It’s not just that you’re underpaid. You’re also underappreciated. If you can handle that, you’ll be okay.”

As Shane spoke, Adam eyed a slightly built young man in the back of the class. He looked down, avoiding eye contact. Adam sensed something was wrong with him.

Captain Grandjean looked at the wall clock. “Well, this has been all I hoped for. And quite a bit more.”

He glanced at Bronson, not smiling, then addressed the class. “The job you signed up for isn’t easy. It demands long hours, dedication, and sacrifice. You’ll take an oath, and with that oath will come great responsibility. Resolve now never to abuse it.”

After dismissing the cadets, Grandjean came and shook Adam’s and Shane’s hands. He turned to Bronson. “Next time, Sergeant, feel free to say whatever’s on your mind.” He didn’t extend his hand. Neither did Bronson.

As they stepped into the hallway, they heard the click of high heels on linoleum. An immaculately dressed woman strode toward them, accompanied by a young male assistant whose loafers were trying to keep up.

“What’s
she
doing here?” Bronson asked, too loudly.

She walked straight to Captain Grandjean. “What’s
he
doing here?”

“I’ll leave the two of you to work this out.” Grandjean walked away.

Adam realized that left either him or Shane to be their referee, and he knew how Shane felt about her.

Dressed to the nines in an impeccably tailored navy business suit, Public Information Officer Diane Koos grinned at Bronson, but just with her teeth. “I’m here to speak to the recruits about the modern approach to police work, showing moderation, being the kind of cops who serve the community and are respected by the media, and the importance of following the rules.” Her perfect updo gave the impression that her mahogany hair obeyed every one of those rules.

Bronson refrained from spitting on the floor. Barely. “Yeah, if anybody could give a fifty-cent answer to a nickel question, it would be a PIO. And a former media pretty face.”

Shane smiled, earning him the evil eye from Koos. She looked at Adam like he was her one hope for empathy. “I work for the sheriff’s office now. We’re on the same team.”

“That dawg won’t hunt,” Bronson said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That we ustacould actually do our jobs, but now you wanna play Xena the warrior princess. You’ll teach these recruits to be sniveling cowards who treat criminals like royalty while two-bit thugs rule the streets.”

Hands on hips, freshly manicured fifty-caliber fingernails protruding, Koos barked, “You are
impossible
, Bronson.”

“
Sergeant
Bronson. I’m a sworn officer. At the television station did they swear you in to risk your life to protect others? Or did they just slap makeup on your mug and teach you to throw stones at the cops who put their lives on the line?”