Don't Call Me Hero (6 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

The weekly newspaper was on my welcome mat the next morning. I would have found this relatively unremarkable except for one detail—my picture was on the front page. I wasn’t the main headline, but there was a story about me just under the middle fold. “Meet Our New Police Officer,” the black bolded words announced, “Military Hero, Cassidy Miller.”

“What the fuck?” I voiced aloud. I bent and picked up the paper to better assess the situation. I had no idea how a story about me had happened so quickly, or better yet, why
it had happened at all, until I saw the byline. “That little weasel,” I muttered.

Grace’s apartment was steps away. I pounded on the front door. “Grace Kelly!” I yelled through the closed door. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Princess!”

The door down the hallway opened and Mrs. Graves, the owner of the building and the apartment’s third occupant, peeked out into the hallway. I immediately stopped hitting the door.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Uh, sorry.” I tugged on my ponytail. “Do you know where I might find Grace?”

I doubted she’d tell me since she’d just caught me acting like a crazy person. She peered curiously at me, her newest tenant, over thick eyeglasses. “I imagine she’s at work at the newspaper.”

“Right.” People had jobs. And they typically went to those jobs when the sun was up. “And where might I find that exactly?”

My anger had dissipated—mostly—by the time I made myself presentable enough to be seen in public and had driven my Harley to the other side of town in search of the
Embarrass Weekly
headquarters.

The newspaper office was one giant room filled with half a dozen uninhabited cubicles. An assortment of outdated computers and fax machines hummed in the background and telephones rang unanswered. I wondered if it was so busy because other people had also appeared in the newspaper without their permission.

An overweight black cat was sprawled over the top of a computer monitor. It cracked open one yellow eye to regard me, but apparently after deciding I wasn’t a person of interest, it went back to its nap.

Grace walked out of a hidden back room.

“You mind explaining this to me?” I asked, tapping at my picture on the printed page.

“Hot off the press.” She seemed unsurprised by the visit. “I thought the town might want to know a little more about its newest resident,” she shrugged.

“I didn’t realize I was
on the record
last night. And where the hell did you find this other stuff?” I demanded, feeling my anger building again. “I never told you the details of my time in Afghanistan.”

“It’s called the
Internet
. You’re not that hard to find. It turns out they don’t give out too many Navy Crosses—less than twenty for all of Operation Enduring Freedom if my research is correct.” She shook her head and a quirky grin appeared. “I don’t know
why
you’d keep that a secret anyway. If it were me, that’s what I’d lead with. ‘Hi, I’m Grace Kelly Donovan, and I was awarded a medal of honor by the President of the United States. Could I get a coffee?’”

“It was the Secretary of the Navy, not the President,” I corrected under my breath.

“See? It’s a big frickin’ deal,” Grace insisted. “Why would you want to hide that?”

“I’m just …” I rubbed at my arm. “I’m a private person. I didn’t ask to be front page news.”

“Well, you are now.”

She smiled in such a playfully impish way that even though we’d only just met I found it hard to stay angry at her.

“Besides, in case you haven’t noticed, Embarrass is a small town,” she noted. “People would have eventually found out. Secrets don’t stay secrets around here.”

+ + +

After my visit with Grace, I headed back to City Hall and the police department. Chief Hart showed me around the building and introduced me to a handful of people whose names and job titles I promptly forgot. In the afternoon, I met up with David Addams for a ride along to get the layout of town.

It didn’t take long to make the rounds. Main Street was a four-mile long stretch with businesses lining either side of the road. The residential areas branched off from the central drag, and a school that housed preschool through high school was situated near the town’s eastern border.

There were no stoplights in Embarrass. The two four-way stops at either side of the downtown strip were by far the busiest intersections within the city limits, forming a junction point for county highways.

“So what’s your story, Miller?” David Addams asked as we crawled down Main Street.

“Not much to tell,” I said.

“How does a Twin Cities cop end up taking a job up here in the boonies?”

“Just looking for a change.”

I stared out the window of the police car. People stopped for pedestrians at crosswalks and they shared the road with bicycles. If I’d thought I’d stumbled into a time warp at the Embarrass Bed & Breakfast, it had expanded to the rest of the town as well.

“You okay over there?”

I turned my head away from the view beyond the window. “Yeah. Sure. Of course,” I insisted.

“Sorry.” David chuckled as we turned down a street that looked like every other residential street in town. “You just had this look on your face like you’d bitten off more than you could chew. I’ve seen that look before.”

I stared out the side window again. “I’m fine.”

I had to continually remind myself that this was what I wanted. I didn’t want to sit behind a desk in Minneapolis; I wanted to be an active duty officer again. But driving around the largely vacant streets of Embarrass was making me realize that I might actually see more action behind a desk in Minneapolis than what I’d experience in a town so tiny I could probably chuck a rock from one border to the other.

I pulled myself out of discouraging thoughts. “Do you patrol town your entire shift?”

“A good portion of it,” David confirmed. “I try to maintain a visible presence in town. I’m sure Chief told you, but we don’t have a lot of crime around here. We’re basically on call until the shit hits the fan. You can hang out at the station or drive around town; it’s up to you. Just make sure you’re available when your phone rings.”

“How does that work? Who’ll be calling me?”

“During regular business hours, Lori works the desk, so she fields all the non-emergency calls. Since you’ll be working third shift, however, local calls to the station will be redirected to your cell phone. Most people know enough to call 911 if it’s a real emergency, but sometimes, especially among the senior community, they’ll call you directly, regardless.”

“Who answers the emergency calls?” I asked.

“We’ve got a contract with the county dispatch center. When people call 911, the call goes there first. The dispatcher then determines what kind of assistance the caller needs: fire, ambulance, police, or a combination of those. If the police are needed, you’ll hear about it on your police radio.”

A grizzled old man who’d been walking along the side of the street crossed in front of the police car with no warning. I braced myself against the dashboard and slammed my right foot down on an imaginary break while David hit the real breaks just in time.

The man looked unfazed and continued to walk, swinging a green five-gallon bucket in one hand, as if he hadn’t noticed he’d almost been run over.

“He’s harmless,” David said as if reading my thoughts.

I pushed hair out of my face that had fallen from my ponytail. “What’s his deal?” My heart continued to pump with adrenaline.

“His name is Henry James. People in town call him Crazy Hank. “He collects cans and exchanges the scrap metal for beer down at Skip’s place.”

I wrinkled my nose. “That’s awfully nice of them.”

David grunted. “Yeah. He fought over in Vietnam and didn’t come back the same.” He turned the patrol car down another street. “Embarrass seems to be a haven for washed-up vets.”

I bristled at David’s words. I was sure Chief Hart wouldn’t have said anything about my situation. I stared at David’s profile and waited for him to continue or to at least clarify his latter statement.

“I was over in Afghanistan for a one-year tour in my early twenties,” he said. He stroked his square jaw in thought. “I couldn’t stay in that hell hole for longer than that though.”

“Forward Operating Base Farah,” I revealed with some trepidation. “Four years.”

“No shit.”

I nodded. “And Camp Leatherneck for four years after that.”

“Fucking oohraah, Miller.” He lightly slapped the steering wheel and laughed. “I didn’t know you were one of Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, too.” I could hear something new in his voice that had been absent before. Admiration. Respect. Camaraderie.

I laughed at the expression. “Didn’t you read the newspaper today? Grace Donovan did a whole story on me.”

David shook his head. “Glorified gossip rag,” he opined. “I don’t waste my time.”

Something about the exchange helped me to relax as we continued to drive up and down the nearly deserted streets and the sun set in the west. I had suspected that David had been former military, but now that it was out in the open, I felt like I had another ally in this town.

Second shift didn’t end until 10:00 p.m., but it was a quiet night, so David dropped me off in front of City Hall around 8:00 p.m. We agreed that I’d ride with him one more night before I officially took over third shift.

I leaned against the open driver’s side window as he sat in the idling car. “Thanks for showing me the ropes, David.”

“Sure thing,” he waved. “See you tomorrow, Marine.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets and watched the brown Crown Victoria drive away.

+ + +

Embarrass was the type of town that had one of everything—not everything you necessarily needed—but what they had, there was only one of them: one gas station, one fast food restaurant, one school, one auto mechanic, one dentist, one hair salon, and one grocery store. I pushed my cart up and down the aisles in search of food to subsidize the leftover pizza and four beers currently residing in my refrigerator. The grocery store was clean and brightly lit, but it felt a little rundown like it hadn’t been updated in several decades. The food selection was equally minimalist. If I had been the kind of person who only ate organic, non-fat, gluten-free, all natural food, I would have starved. Everything was full fat, layered in pesticides, and pumped full of steroids. And everything went into my cart. I probably could have eaten healthier if I stuck to Stan’s diner for every meal, but at least eating at home provided the illusion of health.

“Cassidy Miller! Hey! Over here!” Grace Kelly Donovan waved at me from across the produce section. She maneuvered her grocery cart around a few other shoppers to make her way towards me near the deli counter.

I grimaced at the flailing woman. The attention gave me the same feeling as picking a cart with a squeaky wheel. I felt the eyes of every shopper on me.

“Hey, you!” she greeted again, parking her cart near mine. “It’s good to see you. How was your day?”

I cast my eyes around the store, thankful that the onlookers had resumed their shopping. “It’s kind of weird going grocery shopping and running into someone you recognize,” I admitted.

“You’ve never lived in a small town before?”

“Not
this
small,” I clarified. “I grew up in St. Cloud and then I was in Minneapolis. I saw my share of small villages in Afghanistan, but it’s not like I went grocery shopping when I was deployed.”

“This must be like living on a different planet compared to the life in the Army,” Grace sympathized.

“Marines,” I corrected.

She made a face. “Sorry. I probably just insulted you.”

It was a reflex thing. I was proud to be a Marine, and I hated getting mistaken as a beetle cruncher or even a green beanie.

“No, it’s okay. It’s just a military thing. We don’t like getting mistaken for the other guy, ya know?”

“Marines. Wow,” she openly admired. “You can, like, kill a person with your bare hands, right?”

I forced a smile to my lips. If I had a dollar for every wild assumption people made when they found out I’d been in the Marine Corps.

“I’d be pretty handy on one of those reality shows where they drop you off on a deserted island,” I confirmed, mindful of my words. I would have to be careful what I said around this woman so I didn’t end up on the front page of the newspaper again. “But I feel like I missed out on a lot of things grown-ups are supposed to know how to do.” My gaze slipped down to my grocery cart filled with easy-to-fix meals: frozen pizzas, macaroni and cheese boxes, and TV dinners.

Grace caught the source of my discomfort. “Oh, don’t worry about that. Lots of people can’t cook, and they don’t have an excuse for it, unlike you.”