One Department

by Thomas A. Young



  One Department

  By

  Thomas A. Young

  Copyright 2011, Day Of Racknin’ Publications. All rights reserved.

  The city of Forest Hill, Washington is entirely fictitious. All the characters who reside in that town are likewise fictitious, and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, is not intentional. The case described herein of Arnold McCaslin is likewise entirely fictitious, though it has elements in common with many real cases.

  With few exceptions however, the persons and events in this book from outside of Forest Hill are real. Numerous cases in which people were killed or otherwise harmed by police are detailed. Those descriptions are based upon news accounts, witness interviews, or both.

  “At first, it felt like any other emergency. I mean, we all have emergencies, and when they happen, we deal with them and then life goes on. But then it started sinking in that this emergency was different. This was the end of everything.”

  --Elena Morales Gustin

  Table of Contents

  Prologue – 1977

  Chapter 1 – The Project Man

  Chapter 2 – Initiative Is A Wonderful Thing

  Chapter 3 – Crackdowns

  Chapter 4 – Elena

  Chapter 5 – Backlash

  Chapter 6 – Takin’ Care Of Business

  Chapter 7 – Complications

  Chapter 8 – Special Attention

  Chapter 9 – A Very Bad Time For The Law

  Chapter 10 – Shots Fired

  Chapter 11 – Choices Are Made

  Chapter 12 – Viral Video

  Chapter 13 – The Doctor’s House

  Chapter 14 – Back To Business

  Chapter 15 – Escalation

  Chapter 16 – Just When You Thought It Was Safe

  Chapter 17 – The Settling Of Dust

  Chapter 18 – Trial Of The Millennium

  Chapter 19 – Of Endings And New Beginnings

  Chapter 20 – Last Words

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Prologue

  1977

  A young mind is fond of being able to trust, and 11-year-old Randoph Gustin was no different than any other youngster in that regard. Trust was something he felt coursing through him as he sat in the passenger seat of his father’s old white International, both of them cruising toward home after a day spent running errands in town.

  Spring is a nice time of year in most places, but typically not so much in western Washington State. Every now and then the bright, hot sun would peek out from behind the clouds, but behind the clouds was mostly where it stayed. It wasn’t raining per se, but every now and then the windshield would gather some sprinkles that his dad would clear with one stroke of the wiper. Off to the right of the road was a river that seemed to beckon swimmers, if only they could get a little of the toasty weather that the rest of the country seemed to be sweltering through. They had the occasional hot summer, but that was the exception rather than the rule around there. Randy sometimes wondered if there was a way to file an official complaint with God over that.

  Randy had short dark hair and a face that made people think of Beaver Cleaver, which was a hard distinction to miss since the show was still running on daytime television. This was the subject of quite a bit of ribbing at school. Mostly it was of a harmless nature, but school is a tough place at times, and there had been one time that one of the junior high bullies took it to a level that required intervention from his teacher Mr. Davis.

  Teachers were sometimes excruciating to deal with, like many people were, and Randy had been surprised at how happy he was to see Mr. Davis show up when he did. Davis had never exactly been Randy’s favorite teacher, but in that instance the man had done his job and resolved things like a pro. Randy’s esteem for him had gone way up after that. One of his mottos for a long time afterward was, say what you will about the grownups, they’re there for you when it counts.

  In fact when you got down to it, (though he would never admit it out loud), they were pretty great. They got you through school and the tribulations that go along with it. They got you safely home afterward, and generally kept you out of trouble. They burdened you with rules, but more often than not those rules turned out to have a real purpose. They came loaded with advice, especially the older grandparent-category folks. Some of that advice was great, and some of it was well-meaning if not actually all that helpful, but they were always willing to try. When Randy had problems he needed help with, he always started with someone at least ten years older than him, and it usually worked out all right.

  But his biggest hero was the man in the driver seat next to him. George Gustin was the role model most kids dream of. He was a classically tough-as-nails Marine, but he also had a gentle side and a true sense of justice. In Vietnam, he had once engaged and then spared the life of a North Vietnamese soldier who had ferociously attacked his unit. After his return from the war, a very young Randy had at first been stunned to hear that story, but George explained to him that a lot of the time they were fighting some real decent human beings. This had been a man who volunteered to lay down his own life to protect his comrades from George’s pursuing unit. After the man had been wounded, George had passed up the chance to finish him off. He had instead talked him into surrendering and becoming a POW. As George’s prisoner for several days, they had spoken a great deal. And after the war they had stayed in touch. His name was Dat Trang.

  Thinking about that reminded Randy that he needed to ask again. “Dad, is Dan still coming to visit soon?”

  George smiled. “For the millionth time kid, it’s Dat, with a ‘t’. And yes he is, he just doesn’t know exactly when.” The answer did little to appease Randy’s curiosity about meeting this man. The idea that an enemy could also be your friend was beyond fascinating to him. It had always seemed to him that such issues should be a little more black-and-white. One side good, one side evil. How in the world could somebody try to kill you and then call themselves your friend later? It made no sense.

  “He’s just as anxious to make it here as you are for him to, but he’s got his own family to look after too,” George went on. “Including a daughter who thinks you’re pretty cute.”

  Randy put his hand to his head and laughed with embarrassment. “Dad, please swear to me you’ll never say that in front of people.”

  “You’ve seen her picture. She’s cute, ain’t she?” George replied.

  “You know what I’d have to put up with at school if they knew I had a girl for a pen pal?”

  George turned to give his son a smile, as Randy looked ahead. “Girls don’t come with cooties in his country. Get used to it.”

  “Lookout, Dad.”

  George raised an eyebrow. “Kid, don’t tell me to –“

  “LOOKOUT!”

  George looked ahead and saw a deer right in front of them. He swerved hard into the other lane and just missed it, but before he could breathe a sigh of relief, a Sheriff’s patrol car rounded the next corner coming straight at them. He swerved back into his own lane with plenty of room to spare, but as he watched in his rear-view mirror the cruiser drove past the deer in the road, then stopped to pull a U-turn. He shook his head. “Some days nothing goes right.”

  Randy looked back toward the cruiser with curiosity as his dad found a spot to pull over. “He’ll understand, right?” he asked.

  His dad gritted his teeth and sighed. “Maybe he will and maybe he won’t,” he replied, and moments later the car with the flashing red and blue lights was parked behind them.

  The cop got out with a pleasant enough smile on his face, walked to the driver’s window. He was about six foot two, moderately built, with black rim glasses, and his nametag read B. Grandstone. Randy fe
lt reassured that everything was fine. Everyone knew that the man in blue was who you called for help when you needed it. How could someone who was trusted with that kind of responsibility not understand a thing like collision avoidance?

  “Good day, sir,” he said. “License and registration please.” Randy’s old man produced the papers for him. “You know why I stopped you, right?”

  “That I do,” George replied. “I’m sure you saw the deer in the road.”

  One corner of the deputy’s mouth curled up just a little. “I’m afraid I didn’t. What I did see was you almost completely in the wrong lane and coming straight at me.”

  Randy spent a moment trying to figure out how the cop could really have missed something as obvious as that deer. “It was standing right in the road, how could you miss it?” he said, and his father gave him a stern glance.

  “Now, I’m not calling anyone a liar,” Deputy Grandstone went on. “It could easily have run away before I saw it.” Just as Randy was getting his first sense that something wasn’t right, the cop addressed him for the first time. “On the other hand, it almost sounds as if your dad is telling you what to say. What’s your name, young fella?”

  “It’s Randy. And nobody –“

  “Randy, is everything all right at home?”

  As Randy looked to his dad for help, George turned and stared the man in the eye. “Mister, you’ll want to leave my boy out of this.”

  “That’s a fair enough request,” he replied, seemingly acquiescent. “But because of the way you’re acting, I’ll need to ask if there are any weapons in your vehicle.”

  “What’s in this truck does not concern you.”

  “Anything that threatens the safety of an officer of the law concerns me. Please step out of the vehicle, both of you.” With little choice, Randy and his dad got out. “Stand at the front of the vehicle.” They stepped to the front and watched while the cop began to lean inside the driver’s door.

  “Nobody gave you any permission to search,” George said.

  “The way you’re reacting to the subject of weapons gives me cause for concern about safety. That gives me the right to check to see if any weapons are in your immediate reach.” The cop leaned inside, rummaged for a moment, then spotted what he was looking for. It was the barrel of a Ruger 10/22 poking out from beneath the bags of camping and hunting gear in the rear. He pulled it out, removed the 10 round rotary magazine, and checked the chamber. The chamber was empty, but the magazine had two rounds of .22 long rifle in it. He held it up. “This is a loaded long arm in a vehicle. You know that’s illegal under state law, right?”

  George stared with incredulity. “Even you can’t be serious about that.”

  The deputy set the rifle down on the driver seat and closed the driver’s door. “Come to the back please.” George and Randy walked around to the rear, the cop pointed at the back door. “Is there anything else I should know about?”

  George replied, “Since you don’t have permission to search it doesn’t much matter, does it?”

  The cop pointed at the piles of bags and hunting gear in the back. “You’ve just been found in possession of one illegally carried weapon. And there’s a lot of room in there for concealing more weapons or other contraband, which you’ve already demonstrated a willingness to do.”

  George looked down, shook his head and laughed. “You know, the sheriff you work for used to be a straight shooter. In times past he’d have never stood for one of his guys making up shit like this.”

  “I do as I’ve been trained to do. If you have an issue with our training, you need to take that up with our department at the appropriate time.”

  “You figure that being trained to do wrong makes doing wrong okay?”

  Deputy Grandstone started showing his first signs of anger. “Mister, my job is protecting the public. People like your boy, for example.”

  “You mean the same boy you just tried to use as an excuse to intrude in our lives?” George shot back. “I can remember a time when a lawman wouldn’t do something like that without a real reason. But my boy here never will, because more and more, what we have is government by excuse. You might think that badge you’re wearing makes you right all the time, but it doesn’t, and that back door to my vehicle is staying shut.”

  It wouldn’t be for several years that the term “contempt of cop” would be coined, but every cop knew what it was already, and Randy saw for the first time the kind of response it can elicit. “Mister Gustin, you can spout your conspiracy theories on your own time,” the cop began. “The I-know-my-rights speech doesn’t work for the pot-smoking hippies and it won’t work for you either, because we are the ones who are entrusted with this authority, and the power to use it if need be. For your sake and your boy’s, you need to wise up to that fact right now.” The cop patted his Smith and Wesson revolver to illustrate his point. “You have driven recklessly and carried a weapon in an illegal manner, and I could arrest you for either or both of those offenses right now. You have further caused me to have concern for my safety and the safety of others, and now I intend to insure that safety.”

  “Do you seriously believe that simply saying you don’t feel safe gives you a right to violate people?”

  “I think that you have a right to bring it up later with a judge and jury if you disagree,” the cop replied as he waved a finger at the back of the International. “But as for right now, open that door.”

  There are certain moments that stay with us all our lives, and Randy would remember this one every time he saw it repeated. His father George was his greatest hero, the man who never backed down, the man who stood tall in the face of anything. But this was the moment when young Randy learned what a man will do when confronted by someone in authority who is doing something that everyone knows to be wrong, with scarcely even an excuse to hide behind. It was the moment that eventually led him to conclude that there is no one you can call whom you can count on to do the right thing. The moment that made, for young Randolph Gustin, his unwavering trust of grownups and people in authority a thing of the past.

  George took out his key, put it in the back door to his old white International and unlocked it.

  Chapter 1

  The Project Man

  September, 2005

  Sitting in the driver seat of a Grove 80 foot tall crane, Randy tuned out the noise of the engine as he bumped the lever. His eyes were fixed firmly on Scott, his lead rigger who stood in front of the crane, watching the load while directing Randy with hand signals. It was the rigger’s job to keep his eye on the load, and Randy’s job to keep his eye on the rigger, but Randy managed to steal quick glances at the load high above, because this was one of his favorite parts of the job.

  He was setting the last piece of the frame of a new building. To him, this was the point where the project stopped looking like a mess created by some kid with an erector set and began to look like a newly created building.

  This came with no small amount of satisfaction, because the outer frame had to be perfect. The corner beams had to be perfectly plum, the girders all level, the corners square, the top pieces all on the same plane. Every component was tied into the next, which meant that if just one of those items was out of whack, you could easily spend several days getting everything right again. Luckily, Randy was certain that wouldn’t be an issue this time.

  He bumped the hoist lever and gradually lowered the piece until Scott signaled him to stop. The piece was a 36 foot long I-beam that sat horizontally across the top and completed the southwest corner. Randy climbed out onto the crane deck to watch while the two welders who were positioned on top of the adjacent beams hammered the ends of the beam perfectly into position, then lowered their welding hoods to tack weld the beam into place.

  There was still several months of work remaining on this project, but with the most critical part done, the rest of the pieces would go in smoothly. Randy smiled with the kind of satisfaction that only a real project man get
s to feel.

  * * *

  Summer was on its way out, but not yet gone. The sky was almost universally clear, and it made for long gorgeous sunsets. While the weather was slowly cooling, all of the concrete and asphalt that surrounded their job site in downtown Seattle had a way of collecting heat from the sun and radiating it back onto them. The work here was hard and the commute to and from downtown was brutal, but there were perks to this job too. The girl watching from here was incredible. The female Seattleite population was clinging to summer too, in the form of the outfits they picked to wear.

  After the last girder had been welded in place, and the measurements and positioning had been double-checked, Randy called lunch. Everyone who was up on the structure climbed down, and the ten-man crew headed into the job shack.

  The shack was a mobile trailer with a pair of long tables inside, surrounded by metal folding chairs. At one end of the trailer was a small office, at the other end a slanted table was attached to the wall, where the blueprints for the project were kept for review when needed.

  They all took their customary seats, with Randy sitting toward the right-hand end of the tables. Scott sat across from him, and Eric sat next to Scott. Eric was a sandy-haired kid who was barely twenty, but was a hell of a good welder. They all broke open their lunch boxes. Randy favored old-fashioned sandwiches, while Scott preferred something he could microwave. Eric went for sweet stuff. He was too young to have learned yet about the horrors that kind of food can wreak upon a body with slowing metabolism.

  “What sort of time are we making?” Scott asked, as his Ravioli turned in the microwave.

  “Almost two days ahead of schedule,” Randy responded.

  “I bet Henry comes to give you that lecture again,” Scott said, as the microwave dinged and he took his food out.

  “Henry knows where to kiss me,” Randy replied. The man they were talking about was the project superintendent for the company. He liked things to be right on schedule, and he wasn’t any happier when a project ran ahead of schedule than he was when it ran behind. But, you couldn’t make everyone happy all the time, could you?