At the Scene of the Crime

by Dana Stabenow

  I said something like Thanks, I’m fine. His manner, the kindness behind it, touched me. And I resolved to put what I saw at the motel out of my mind.

  What’s bitter is that Erin Flannery didn’t die from a car accident or a long-hidden disease. She died from brain trauma in her own home.

  Detectives interviewed the civilians in her life: family, friends, neighbors. They interviewed us at Troop M too, in due time. I wondered what Paul Ooten had told them. I wondered if the strained expression I saw each day was worry about his secret being outed, or if the tightness in his face was the shame he knew he brought to the badge. I’ll say this: for some guys, if they learned the commander was boning Erin he’d only be more of a hero in their eyes.

  No boyfriend turned up in the investigation. Bill Buttons said that’s sure hard to believe, a piece like that.

  A crime of opportunity, we concluded. It happens. Even to cops.

  Kleinsfeldt said he overheard there was something odd about the evidence in her case, he didn’t know what. We asked who he heard it from. He wouldn’t say.

  I reminded the guys that Flannery had been an LEO, a Liquor Enforcement Officer up in Harrisburg. It sounds like soft duty, but not necessarily. You go undercover to nab idiots who sell to minors. You look for cheats who avoid taxes by importing liquor from other states. You bust speakeasies. Yes, they still call them that, those enterprises too un-enterprising to get a liquor license. The Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement also goes after illegal video gambling machines, looking for operations suspected as hooked to corrupt organizations. Maybe she found one and was afraid she’d get cashed out because of it. Patrol sees our fair share of action, I don’t mean we don’t. It’s more than spotting violations of the vehicle code. When your number’s up you can get killed responding to a disturbance call as well as by some desperate speakeasy owner.

  One time Erin found a note on the seat of her desk chair. It said he wished he were her seat cushion. She told me about it only because I was walking through the lobby and saw the look of disgust on her face as she studied the paper still in her hands. “Some jerk,” she said. Said it quietly, almost with sadness. I don’t know why that particular note would bother someone so much, but then I’ve never been a woman. I told her maybe it could be the computer guy, Steve Gress. He was in every week, supposedly upgrading our systems, which only created more problems. I’d noticed the way he looked at her.

  Carl Carolla had a thing for Erin too. I could tell because of his talk around her. He’d roll out some cockamamie story about which creep he had to deal with that day, what some wise-ass said. He said, “Joker like that, what you do, you rack up more offenses. Keep the dumb-ass violator from his appointed rounds, and hit him hard in the pocket.” Carolla could be a suspect, maybe like if Erin told him to get lost after a clumsy pass.

  Another cop, Rich Kleinsfeldt, resented her. Claimed women cops are a danger to everybody. Some dingbat can grab hold of their hair and then lift their sidearm, he said. Women’s hair, according to dress code, has to be above the uniform collar points. Even so, it could be used for a handle, especially if it was in a braid. Another species, they are, says R.K. I’ll agree that women offenders are the worst, you go to arrest them. They’ll bite, yank, spit, what have you. “She’s skeeter skinny anyway,” Rich said. “You want that for your back?”

  Something funny about the crime scene. Is that what Kleinsfeldt said? I knew one technician at the crime lab in Lancaster I could check with, but it would look odd, my poking around when the case wasn’t mine. I let that idea drop.

  Before what happened to Erin, I’d be on my runs, doing my job, and find myself thinking about Erin and Ooten. Ooten and Erin. The ring to it. Her power to lure him. I could understand it, yet not. I was just so disappointed in him. Hurt, you might say, though I cannot exactly say why. Ooten has awards of valor himself, the fact known by reputation and not by paper plastered on his office walls. From his example I did not display mine.

  While Erin was at the front desk one morning and no public was in, I was getting pencils—pencils, by the way, not pencil. My seventeenth summer I worked at a dollar store. The boss was training me for assistant manager, said I could take college classes at night, couldn’t I, so I’d be free to do a full eight hours? In his instructions, he told me to keep an eye out for what the other employees might be up to. “If they aren’t stealing a little, they’re stealing a lot,” he said. Those words came to mind as I grabbed my second and third pencil for home. I did it right in front of Buttons, whose arm was in the cabinet too, taking a stapler. He already had one on his desk. What did he need two for? I almost think I did it to show him I wasn’t such an uptight asshole after all. But I did razz him about it. He razzed me back about my three pencils.

  On my way back to my desk I heard Erin say on the phone she was letting her hair grow out. Who was she talking to? Her lover? I couldn’t help but glance out the window to see if Ooten’s car was in the lot. It wasn’t. Every action or nonaction of Ooten’s I couldn’t help but attach to her.

  My review was scheduled for the last day of the month. You always get a little anxious at that time. No one zips through with zero criticism. The review was the same week Erin was to complete her probationary period at the same time, a thing she had to go through even though she was a transfer-in and not a cadet. We’re a paramilitary organization, the state police, why we’re called Troopers. “Soldiers of the law,” we are, and we suck it up when we get assignments we don’t want or when we get treated like newbies. Erin said she was content here for the time being, mentioned how good everyone was to her, how terrific Commander Ooten was.

  Did she linger on his name? How would the others feel if they got wind of her seeing him on the side? There are more minorities on the force than women. Women, in other words, still stand out. Her misbehavior would come to tarnish all other females entering the force and could severely damage Commander Ooten.

  And so it was that I asked if she’d like to have coffee sometime, after shift. In my own way, maybe I was trying to be a decoy. Protect her and the commander both. I was a little surprised that she took me up on the invitation. Not that I look like something a dog won’t eat. It’s just that if she had Paul Ooten, why me? Maybe she saw me as an opportunity for a decoy too.

  I suggested a seat near the window at a diner down the street, where we could watch the lazy snowflakes fall, the size of quarters that day. Erin’s eyes showed her delight in it. She informed me that snowflakes fall at about the rate of a mile an hour, unless icy droplets form on them to increase their weight. How’d she know that, I asked. “Before I joined the Bureau of Liquor Enforcement, I thought of teaching biology. I’m a science junkie. Then I got out of BLE because the captain, a micromanager anyway, insisted on messing with a restaurant owner who allowed a singer to come in two nights a week.”

  “Say again?”

  “The owner was licensed to sell liquor, could even allow people to dance in the aisles to jukebox or to live music if he wanted. His mistake? He paid a band that had a vocalist. That heinous deed made him in violation of Liquor Law Section Four-Nine-Three-Point-Ten, ‘Entertainment on a licensed premise without an Amusement Permit’.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said. “Still, if it’s on the books . . .”

  “It’s a stupid law.”

  “We’re not paid to write the laws.”

  “Ah, but there was something else. The restaurant owner was an old high-school enemy of the captain. So it was personal. It’s not the only reason I left, just the last one. And, unfortunately, my judgment may have faltered when I wrote a letter to the editor about police harassment of small businesses. I disguised my identity, of course. But they were suspicious because of the way I’d been fuming about it. I got congratulations from the guys and glares from the brass.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Well, you learn to pick your battles. A lesson.”

  “I thought you were happy about the change.”
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  “I am. But now I have to start over again.”

  She didn’t get much of a chance to do that. Some evil character hit the delete key on her life.

  Forget about the old days when people said tough guys don’t eat quiche. Tough guys don’t ever say the word depressed. I’ll say it here so that maybe my actions could be understood, if ever they can.

  After Erin died, on duty I’d sit off Interstate 80 and watch violators speed by. And one day, while off the rolls, I spotted a shoplifter out back of Sears in Stroudsburg look three ways and then languidly wheel a barbecue away and load it in the back of his SUV. Yesterday I saw that Gress guy, the computer jock, fudge his time card, look at me, drop it in the bin and walk away like saying, Challenge me, Muskrat, what you got in your den? And how did I know he stole time? The look. If he hadn’t been smug, I wouldn’t have gone to the bin and picked up the card. But he was right: I didn’t challenge him. Something else was on my mind.

  A few days after the coffee with Erin, I asked her out again, for a Saturday afternoon movie. We went to see Jarhead. Arrived in different cars. Paid our own tickets in. “You understand this is not a real date,” she said. “You understand this is not real popcorn,” I said. “It’s packing foam.” Afterward, we stood on the sidewalk outside the mall, discussing the movie. She saw stuff in it I didn’t. In the chilly sunlight, talking about things outside of cop-dom, she was flat-out beautiful.

  In the walk to our cars I finally couldn’t keep the question away. “Want to make it official sometime? A genuine date?”

  “Probably not a good idea.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Peace.”

  “Peace.”

  We went our separate ways.

  I consider myself a balanced man, don’t go off half-cocked. What my nature allows, my training reinforces. So I do not tell the rest of this lightly. It’s not that hard to understand the primitives who believe in demons entering a person’s skin. I say this because I don’t know what came over me in the case of Trooper Erin Flannery and Paul Ooten: I became a spy. I felt righteous, principled, and therefore gave myself permissions I would never give someone else. It was the mystery of her drawing power I couldn’t get out of my head, that force that makes a man like Commander Ooten forsake his marriage vows and teeter on the verge of disgracing his profession.

  I took to rolling through Nazareth some weekends to see if I could spot her. I knew that’s where she lived, but not precisely. Nazareth isn’t that big a town: six thousand people. It’s about ten miles from troop headquarters and under nine from where I live in Bethlehem—Steel City, a name that fit before the Bethlehem Steel mill and its support businesses fell victim to the Japanese business onslaught.

  Driving down Center Street one day, I saw Trooper Flannery coming out of a drycleaners with her bagged uniforms. I am ashamed to say I followed her to see the apartment complex in which she lived.

  And later, on occasion I would go off my route to drift down her street and see if I could catch sight of the commander’s car, see it in the apartment parking lot. Sneering at my own bad behavior, I called it “volunteer surveillance.” I hated what I was doing yet could not keep from the patrol. We were on extra alert because of a terroristic threat. Watch for violations on small refrigerator vehicles, the bulletin said. Stop and search if indicated. Drive by Erin Flannery’s residence to see if Paul Ooten’s car was there. Other guys were out at bars, cracking wise and watching games. I was stuck on one note and it was sour. Tomorrow I would shed this thing.

  Don’t ask me how a reporter for the Allentown Morning Call got it, but it happens sometimes. His piece told the basics of Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Erin Anne Flannery’s demise. The state police spokesman was reserving comment on manner of death. I should think the public reader would conclude, as would any cop, that homicide was on the minds of investigators. I spent a restless night. The next day State Commissioner Corporal Robert Metcalfe announced before TV cameramen that Trooper Flannery’s case was under investigation as murder, and he was sorry but he could not release any details.

  “Honor, service, integrity, respect, trust, courage, and duty.” Our motto. I am familiar with courage as it pertains to rescue, or in the midst of violent disputes, even in the frequent chaos of felony arrests. I’ve not only witnessed it but, if you’ll excuse me for saying so, performed within its lighted shaft. But could it be that those were times not of action but reaction, mindless as a ball springing off the floor of a gym? Moral courage, there’s the mark, and a harder one to hit.

  It’s clear that lying violates integrity. But does silence? We’re not talking the silence of the citizens of Germany in World War II. Not that kind. In Erin’s case, nothing will pull her up from the endless recycle machine, not even if I told I was there at the time of her death.

  It broke. Mrs. Paul Ooten, given name Mallory, was a person of interest in Homicide Incident Number M1-645-whatever. Mrs. Paul Ooten! Our troop was on fire with speculation, with rethinking impressions of her. And then, of course, there were the terrible distance, disappointment, and suspicion toward the commander himself. I must admit I was halfway pleased there was no gloating, as I might have expected.

  The commander was put on administrative leave. It wasn’t the first scandal or the first capital case to stain the state police. But it was here, now, among us at Troop M, a mortal wound, it seemed to me. My fellow troopers talked themselves raw. Then, steel bands slowly tightened on our hearts. We grew silent, more involved in what we were trained to do: to be soldiers of the law. We got back to business.

  There was a message slip on my desk when I came in one morning two weeks later. It called me to a meeting at Bethlehem headquarters. I brought along my personal write-up detailing my performance accomplishments this year, as we are told to do at review time. I wondered who would be giving my review now that Ooten was out.

  Whatever I can say about him, I’ll say I have no doubt the commander would have given me a good one. The only thing he ever admonished me about was failure to properly orient a diagram sketch of an accident scene. For all my driving about, I’d put down north for a street that actually ran northeast, and he caught it.

  As I approached the conference room, I saw an officer’s winter coat draped on a chair. Two rank rings decorated the coat sleeve, signifying the coat belonged to a major. When I entered the room, there sat the major at the end of the table, Commander Ooten to his right. I looked from one to the other until Ooten spoke. “Good morning, Justin.” Motioning, he introduced Major Bryan Manning.

  “Have a seat, Trooper Eberhardt,” the major said.

  My heart was pounding. What kind of promotion could I be in for?

  The major began by apologizing for not making it out to Troop M barracks before. “Been busy as a bartender on payday,” he said. Intended to put me at ease. I’m afraid I didn’t laugh. After more chat about nothing, he said, “Tell me, Trooper, what do you recall about your CPR training?”

  Confused, I stumbled through a reply, first repeating “Two hands, two inches, three compressions in two seconds. Fifteen pushes, then two ventilation breaths.”

  “And what is the distance of travel for compressions, Trooper?”

  “Two inches, as I said, sir.”

  “A third the depth of the chest,” the major said.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Makes a body tired, right, Trooper?” the major asked with a smile.

  Ooten pitched in: “It can be brutal.”

  “Sure enough I busted a sweat first time I did it,” Major Manning said. “Was a big guy, close to three hundred pounds. I was drippin’ sweat on him.”

  You do the polite thing in a situation like this. Nod, chuckle. But what the hell was this, a grilling on rescue efforts you’d give a cadet? My wooly-pully was on under my uniform shirt. It felt like ninety degrees in there.

  Commander Ooten sprung the next question. “You were pretty tight with Trooper Flannery, weren’t you, Justin?”

/>   “Friends. I didn’t know her well. I mean, we didn’t have that much time to get to know each other.” I met his eyes, guessing if the probe was meant to inquire if I had slept with her. Slept with the woman Commander Ooten was cheating with. Her lunch hour went long, people said. Dentist, doctor appointments, flat tire, things like that, she would claim.

  “She wasn’t here but three months, sir.” All along I’d considered how quickly she and Ooten hooked up.

  How can I describe the look in his eyes? Seeing me, not seeing me. Assessing, reflecting. The oil of the present saturating the rust of the past.

  He said, “Carl Carolla observed you tagging after Trooper Flannery, Justin, and not once but twice. Carl thought that was odd. What can you tell us about that?”

  “I ... I wouldn’t know. He’s mistaken.” I said nothing more. Silence is a tool in interviews. And even in sales. My uncle told me that. When he’d go to close a deal, he put a pencil to his lips to signal he was through talking. “He who speaks first loses,” is what he said. I recognized the tool’s use now with the commander and the major, the three of us soundless while the room temp climbed even as I saw through the slats of the blinds behind the commander snow riding slanted chutes of wind.

  At last Major Manning said, “Are you up to date on your CPR certification, Trooper?”

  “I’d have to check the date, sir. I think I might be due.”

  “You’ve rendered CPR before, right, Justin?” Manning asked.

  “No sir.”

  Why did I lie? I did start CPR on a victim once. It was part of an action that won me a Commendation Medal, but in the write-up it was not mentioned nor should it have been. Emergency techs had arrived at the scene seconds after I’d started, so I didn’t consider it as actually “performed.”

  The major sat back, arms outstretched on the table, and looked at Paul, who asked me, “You usually wear a ring, don’t you, guy?” Friendly, casual.