Enemies

By Francis Adam Kenmore

Dr. Catalona, esteemed professor of biochemistry, is running on empty. He has failed to do anything productive at work for so long that his university is about to fire him – tenured or not. His home-life is no better. His wife has finally had enough and walked out the door. He can’t deal with either. The last thing Dr. Catalona needs (or, perhaps, the one thing) is a good confrontation. He gets one when he flees a minor traffic violation and sets a homicidal cop in pursuit of him. Dr. Catalona has made an enemy of someone he should never have antagonized. What he doesn’t realize is that he and his enemy grew up at the same time in the same rural community many years ago. They were enemies then – and have been ever since. He does not realize how intertwined his life and that of his pursuer have been. Nor does he realize how interwoven are the threads of his own life. With everything going on, the next year of Dr. Catalona’s life will be interesting. It will change him – if he survives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781503590359

Francis Adam Kenmore

The author, writing under a pen name, is a professor at a large Midwestern university. He is not the protagonist.

Book preview

ENEMIES

FRANCIS ADAM KENMORE

Copyright © 2018 by Francis Adam Kenmore.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015912073

ISBN:              Hardcover              978-1-5035-8963-6

                        Softcover                978-1-5035-8964-3

                        eBook                     978-1-5035-9035-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/29/2018

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CONTENTS

A Bad Start to the Semester

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Nasty Cop

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

The Summer of ’65

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

The War Was Okay, but I Didn’t Like the Ending

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

The War Was Okay, but I Didn’t Like the Ending Either

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

The War Was Okay, but I Still Didn’t Like the Ending

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Black Friday

Chapter 24

First Road Trip

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Resolve

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Everything I Needed To Learn Was Taught in Seventh Grade

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

A Busy Semester

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

A Bad Start to the Semester

Chapter 1

I turned the key and heard the clink of the deadbolt lock turning in the door to my office. I was through for the day. The ancient lock on the ancient door of my ancient office in the century-old chemistry building would have been an appropriate metaphor (had I chosen to think about it) for my career at the university. The building was old and had not changed much in the thirty years that I was an occupant. Neither had I. The major difference was the building would be here for a while longer. I might soon be gone.

Earlier in the day, I had met with the Chemistry Department chairman, Professor Bucky Woessner. Bucky, whose real name was Duckworth, was known to his family and friends as Bucky ever since (as he relayed the story a few years ago in one of his few lighter moods) a young nephew who couldn’t distinguish his B sound from his D sound called him Bucky instead of Ducky. I am not sure which of the two would be worse—or Duckworth for that matter. In any event, it did not matter much to me since I rarely spoke to Woessner anyway. My conversation with Bucky today had been one of the few times we had met since the start of the school year last month. Bucky’s secretary had called me in my office early this morning to say that Dr. Woessner wanted to speak with me after lunch.

Dr. Catalona, he would like to see you in his office.

Immediately, I knew something was up. As with all chairmen, when Bucky—excuse me, Dr. Woessner—called someone into his office, he wanted something. He might ask me to take on the responsibility for the advanced inorganic chemistry course that the department offered. I was already involved with the freshman chemistry course—the largest and most effort-consuming course in any college chemistry curriculum. He couldn’t expect me to do the other big course and still take part in the freshman chemistry course. Still, I knew that Professor Hanish, who currently taught the advanced course, had recently received a major research grant from the Defense Department. Of course he had indicated that he would likely relinquish some of his teaching duties when the new grant started up. An old fart like me could replace him. That made the most sense as I tried to anticipate what Bucky wanted.

Other possibilities included taking some of my lab space away (since I no longer had any active grants, this would not be out of the question), assigning me to some onerous committee that he had promised to find a body for, or just, for that matter, to tell me that I appeared to be floundering a bit and that I didn’t seem to have much focus. That was true enough. At this point in my career, after thirty years in the same department doing the same thing for all those years, I was floundering—or burned out, if you will.

Though I wasn’t sure what he wanted, I assumed it would not be good. Even with that as the expectation, I was surprised when he informed me—without any prior small talk (the man doesn’t know the meaning of pleasant)—that he wanted me out.

Dr. Catalona, he said without looking up from his desk, I think it is time you retired.

Before I could open my mouth to reply that I wasn’t yet eligible for retirement, he continued, There comes a time in each man’s career when it’s time to go. That time appears to be now for you. At this point, he looked at me for the first time.

I opened my mouth, but before any words came out, he began listing my deficiencies. Clearly he had prepared this in advance.

Vince—using my first name in a fatherly sort of way even though he was fifteen years younger than me—I think your interest in our program is just no longer there. My deficiencies, as he saw them, were substantial and largely irreversible. As Bucky saw it, I had lost my enthusiasm for teaching. That was true enough. I had received the lowest rating of any faculty member in the department from the students last year, and some were already complaining this semester. As Bucky saw it, I was also out of steam in terms of scholarly activity. Also true enough. I had lost all of my grant support and did not appear to be competitive for new funding. I currently had only one student still in my laboratory. He was finishing his PhD so he could get the hell out of here. I had tried to get refunded a year ago but had been turned down by the National Science Foundation. Since then I had not even resubmitted an application—mortal sin for an unfunded full professor in a research department. And finally, Bucky went on, I had inexplicably, and without consultation with anyone or even informing any of my colleagues, resigned from the two major committees that I sat on. I had been on both committees for years, and there was, in fact, nothing stopping me from quitting. Still, it left Bucky in the lurch because both committees strongly impacted our department and it was inconceivable that no member of the chemistry faculty would serve on them.

As he listed these professional failings of mine, he wasn’t reading from a prepared text but he might have been (not the smoothest of people himself). It was obvious to me that his decision to oust me wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing. What he said was all true enough. Still, I was a tenured professor, and getting me to leave the university wouldn’t be easy if I chose to stay. Of course, confrontation is not the university way. A buyout of some type would have to be forthcoming.

I tried to speak, to acknowledge the element of truth in what he was saying. However, he still was not done. Fearing that his ploy would immediately come unraveled if I were allowed to respond in any fashion, he continued, Vince (using my name in a fatherly way again), you are eligible for early retirement in less than two years. Finish the current year. You can take a sabbatical next year and resign after that. Prepare for your sabbatical now. Larry or Frank can take over for you in the classroom.

There it was—the carrot. Quit in two years, and I would be free to do whatever I wanted until then. Not an entirely bad deal, except that if there were anything I wanted to do for the next two years, I would already be doing it. The predicament I was in was due entirely to the fact that there was nothing I wanted to do for the next two years. The irony of the situation was that whether or not I accepted Bucky’s offer to resign, I would end up doing pretty much the same thing in the interim—nothing. This thought crossed my mind as his droning continued.

Yes, I will think about it, was all I could reply.

Good, he said. Think about it. Talk it over with Eddi. Life is too short to be doing something you are no longer interested in.

I got up to leave. Without even looking up, his parting words were, Vince, let me know by Friday. I’ll get Larry in here to take over the teaching.

The walk back from the chairman’s office to my own building took me through some of the prettiest parts of campus. It was early autumn, and the trees were in their autumn beauty. Fall flowers were blooming everywhere. Today the sky was blue, the sun was bright, and a warm breeze was blowing off the water of Lake Michigan. Soon enough, the blast off the lake would be icy cold. Without quite articulating it, I fully recognized that walking through campus on a warm fall afternoon was one of the attractions of college life.

Back in my office, I went over the meeting with Bucky in my mind. Everything he had said was, I had to admit, true. Right now, I really was at a low point professionally. I did not care about either teaching or research. The positive thing would have been to take Bucky’s offer immediately. A little nudge at exactly that point and I might have jumped. Although like any chairman, Bucky was capable of speaking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, I had no doubt that in this case, he meant what he said. If I agreed to resign in two years’ time, I wouldn’t have to do much of anything in the interim. The way I felt, the offer was tempting. On the other hand, I didn’t have a lot to do during the next two years even if I didn’t agree to resign. And picking up the phone to accept his offer required more mental energy that I could muster at the moment.

As I sat there thinking about Bucky Woessner and his offer, I worked myself into a state of self-righteous anger. No, I wouldn’t resign. If he wanted me out, he’d have to go through the tenure board. I knew he would never do that. Tenure protects people like me. Perhaps it wasn’t designed for that purpose, but effectively, that’s a purpose it now serves. If Captain Bucky wanted me off his ship, he’d have to throw me off. And he was unlikely to attempt that; the odds of success were clearly against him. This I knew.

Thinking like this made me feel better. However, as I began to feel better, I also became aware (again) that the underlying problem wasn’t Woessner. No matter that he was a whining little rat of a chairman, the fact was that I really didn’t care about my job. Even worse, I didn’t feel much different about my personal life. My relationship with my wife was about at the same level as that of my work life.

As I headed out across campus, the warm fall day rejuvenated my spirits. I pedaled my bicycle through the main student hangouts and past the fraternity and sorority houses, leisurely taking in the sights. It’s one of the pleasures of working at a college. Some years ago, when I was still jogging regularly, I came to the realization that men my age were invisible to college-age women. If that weren’t bothersome enough, what really hurt was knowing that I would have had a difficult time attracting their moms. Still, there was no penalty for looking and no crime in fantasizing. Today, more than most, I realized that I did like it here. I wasn’t going to leave just because Bucky wanted me out. Fuck him!

There are many reasons why being a college professor is basically a good job. I have already alluded to the campus and the coeds. In addition, the job itself is not difficult. Teaching general chemistry to freshmen doesn’t change from year to year. The basic stuff is the same as it was forty or fifty years ago. Once you get down a satisfactory set of notes, a plan, and a polished delivery, it’s the same every year. Students are the same from year to year as well. They are as predictable as the weather. Over the years I have identified several prototypes and have developed methods for dealing with each.

Beyond teaching is research—scholarly activity. A member of a college faculty, particularly in the sciences, is defined primarily by his research. To the outsider looking in, and even more to someone who has started in academia and failed to make the grade, the system appears as a never-ending struggle. As for myself, I had long since learned to play the academic game. For years I did all the right things and moved up the academic ladder commensurately. I, quite frankly, never felt the stress that so many of my colleagues complained about. I did my teaching, did my research, did all the stuff I was expected to do, and my peers thought I was wonderful. And I enjoyed it. I still do, in an abstract sort of way. If I step back from my current situation and look at it from outside, it is a good life. It is still fun and challenging; I should enjoy being me. It’s just that when I step back into the present, I just don’t care.

Chapter 2

If the run-in with Bucky wasn’t enough to make this day stand out, my close encounter with one of Milwaukee’s finest later that afternoon surely finished the job. My encounter started innocently enough as I was making my way home from work. My crime, riding a bicycle through a red light, was hardly a crime at all. At this particular corner (Trevor and King), I have done this a thousand times in the past—literally a thousand times. Today, however, when I pulled out to cut a diagonal across the traffic, I had no more begun when the horn of the car immediately behind me blared. Anyone who routinely commutes by bicycle has heard dozens of horns directed his way. A few convey an actual warning. More often, they are simply a driver’s apprehension at some potential danger. Still more often is a driver’s angry response to some bicyclist having the audacity to be there in the first place. To all but the intended recipient (and often enough to him as well), a honked horn is simply part of the urban environment.

This particular blast was clearly intended for me, from some asshole, no doubt, as eager as I to get home, and peeved because his chosen mode of transport does not allow him the same options as a bicycle to flaunt the traffic laws. Instantly, anger rises up. I glance backward, my hand already clenched into a raised fist, ready to extend the one-finger salute. The hand comes down, but too late. Even without actually following through, the gesture is unmistakable. The look on the driver’s face is pure rage. I’ll teach you a lesson, you wise son of a bitch. You think that just because you’re riding a bicycle, you don’t need to follow the laws. More important than the driver’s anger, however, is the car itself—the bold MPD on the car’s hood and the rack of red and blue roof lights.

By the time my mind registers the particulars of the situation, I have crossed four lanes of traffic and am now separated from one of Milwaukee’s police officers by heavy traffic that has suddenly materialized in both directions. I clearly hear him order me to stop. With no willful decision to flee, my legs instantly take up the slack, and I am racing down Trevor as fast as I can. My legs are moving entirely independent of conscious control.

With my mind racing as fast as my legs (and with as little conscious control), I clearly remember thinking that Trevor crosses Seventeenth about one hundred yards ahead. Seventeenth is one-way heading north (away from downtown Milwaukee) with a newly laid-out bicycle path. I hit Seventeenth about the same time as the light on King turned green. I head south. If the squad car isn’t able to get across King before the light changes, I’ll be a half mile south on Seventeenth by the time he hits the intersection. Assuming he is still in pursuit, the officer will have no choice but to cross Seventeenth and keep going until Sixteenth, where he can turn south. Alternatively, he can go right at King and then cut down on one of the cross streets to the left. This wouldn’t make sense though, because he has no way of knowing what I was planning to do. How can he know what I am planning? I certainly don’t. Alternatively, he might just mutter a curse and get on with his job. Patrolling the streets of residential Milwaukee in the afternoon doesn’t demand chasing down a brat on a bicycle.

Luckily, the traffic is light on Seventeenth Street, and the bike lane is empty. I race south as fast as I can without looking back—on the left-hand side of the road, riding the wrong direction in the bicycle lane. I want to be out of sight by the time Officer Whoever-He-Is reaches Seventeenth. Unfortunately, the siren of the squad car is clearly audible within seconds of my reaching the intersection. The squad car reaches Seventeenth Street while I am still in full view. The patrol car stutters for just a second and then—siren and lights blazing—turns into traffic in full pursuit. Within seconds, the rising pitch of the siren tells me how rapidly the distance between the squad car and myself is closing.

The Trevor Park area of Milwaukee is an older area of modest but well-kept homes. Most of the people who live in the Trevor Park area have lived here for years. The area is heavily Polish, second and third generation. Most of the people who live here could not have afforded a home in Poland. Here they could; their homes are sacred. You can see people out sweeping the driveways on weekends. With my pursuer rapidly gaining, I make a split decision. Yanking back on the handlebars of my bike, I turn the wheel, jump the curb, and ride directly onto a well-manicured front yard. As I pedal feverishly between two houses, I am glad to see an alley in back. Turning left at the alley, I speed back toward the intersection with Trevor. Here I hesitate for just a moment, trying to figure out the best course. Suddenly, I hear the siren of the patrol car entering the alley one block away. Instinctively, I turn back toward Seventeenth Street and, reaching it, again turn into traffic. Traffic is heavier now, and with luck, I might give him the slip. My legs are churning the pedals as fast as I can in high gear, and my ear is cocked for the sound of the siren behind. With the traffic volume heavier now, I don’t see how the cop can follow me down the street the wrong way again.

All of a sudden, the angry patrolman comes running out from between two houses ahead. His course is leading him to the street at an angle. As I head down Seventeenth Street, it becomes clear that he will reach the street just as I arrive at the intersect-point. I cannot cross the road as there is a steady stream of traffic in all lanes. I can’t turn around and head in the other direction because I will lose too much momentum and he will overtake me on foot. My only chance is to sprint for all I’m worth and pass the intersect-point ahead of him. I stand on the pedals, cranking as fast as I ever had. For an instant I think I just might make it. It will be close. The officer, running from my left, is no more than ten feet from me. I turn my head and can see his glazed eyes, his face a mask of rage.

Without an instant to think things through, I crank the handlebars hard to the right—directly into the path of a Guggelmann’s Bagel Truck—and immediately back into the bicycle lane. The poor bagel hauler has no time to even raise his foot from the gas pedal before I am back in the bike lane and out of his way. The maneuver is just enough. With my maneuver into the traffic lane, I make it past. With one last desperate attempt, the cop leaps from the curb at me. I feel his left arm brush against my shoulder as he goes flying past. Glancing back over my right shoulder, I see him hit face-first on the asphalt. He literally bounces on the asphalt and rolls over. He tries to stand, but unfortunately (for him), his momentum and balance conspire to send him sprawling onto the pavement yet again. By this time, I am hightailing it south as fast as I can go.

That might have been the end of the hot pursuit except that the driver of a car heading north on Seventeenth witnessed the whole thing. Swerving his car into the bike lane and hitting the brakes as I approach him from the opposite direction, he is out of the car as quick as a cat. I immediately sense his intention, and to avoid contact, I again jump the curb and head into a driveway separating two homes. Again, I am fortunate to see no fence between the two properties, just a small vegetable garden, which I crash through. Beyond the garden is the back of the properties and the same alley I had been on moments earlier. This time, when I reach the alley, I head in the opposite direction. Glancing back, I can see the angry cop and Citizen Do-Good running up the driveway. As I enter the alley, I pass a wizened old lady who is in the garden picking tomatoes as I fly by. Had she been five feet to the left, I would have nailed her.

I speed down the alley through two intersections before slowing enough to look back. Nothing in sight. Finally, I slow down before the next cross street and consider what I should do next. If I turn to the left, I will be heading (generally) in the direction of home. However, since that was the direction I was heading when this whole outlandish affair began, and if Officer Angry is still in pursuit, he might anticipate as much and head in the same direction. If I turn right, I could head back toward campus. This might give him the slip.

In reality, I had no way of knowing what was going through the man’s head. He might be thinking that’s what I would do and respond in kind. On the other hand, the residential area I was riding through had enough streets running in every direction that the chance of a random meeting was small no matter what direction I rode. With that in mind, I headed home. My only concession to watchfulness was to keep alert for all squad cars and stay off the main road. Although I did not see another patrol car that day, I heard the siren of a squad car a few blocks later and, based on its Doppler effect, could tell it was heading toward the scene of the crime. When I pulled into the driveway shortly after six, I was no later than most other days, and no sweatier.

I couldn’t concentrate on anything that evening. Eddi commented a couple of times that I seemed to have ants in my pants. This was unusual for me, of course, as I am a slug. Typicaly, once I got home at the end of the day, I’d have a glass of wine (or two … or three) and put my feet up. Not this night. A couple times I went to the front window to look out as cars drove past. And both times the telephone rang, I picked it up before Eddi. That, in itself, must have tipped her off since rarely do I get a call at home (telemarketers aside), and even more rarely do I pick up the phone when it rings. Over and over that evening, my mind continued to replay the chase. What had made me ignore the officer’s command to stop in the first place; what it felt like racing from the law; but mostly, the shock at seeing the police officer lunge from the curb directly into my path. I’m still not certain what the look on his face expressed. The expression made me think of someone crazed (temporarily, at least). The exact details were gone. All that remained was the expression of rage. I’m not certain that he wouldn’t have beaten me to death right there in the middle of Seventeenth Street. At the very least, I would have been wrestled to the ground, handcuffed, and hauled off to jail.

Eventually I settled down enough to think about other things—normal things like dinner, newspaper, bed, etc. That night in bed, I laid awake well into the morning hours. I glanced at my wife, sound asleep next to me, and thought (not for the first time: Is she beautiful? Maybe, maybe not—I could no longer tell; it might just be charm and sex appeal). Realizing that I was not going to sleep, I went into my study to work on my lecture (a rarity in itself) for the next day’s class. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to concentrate on that either. Finally, I curled up on the couch with a book and promptly fell asleep.

Chapter 3

The next few days were nothing if not routine. Got up, went to work, prepared lecture (sort of), gave lecture, worked on article for publication (sort of), went home, had dinner, went to bed. Occasionally, the thought of an angry police officer looking for me, unlikely as that really was, bubbled into my conscious mind. As a concession to that possibility, I didn’t ride my bicycle to work. Instead, I took the city bus, explaining to my wife that my muscles were sore from overwork. By the fourth day, even that seemed unnecessary, and I went back to my traditional form of commuting. By the following week, the whole episode might as well have been a dream.

Over the next couple of weeks, the incident, as I was beginning to call it, replayed itself over and over in my mind. Why it should was not clear to me. It was not fear. I was not afraid that the angry cop would still keep looking for me; I assumed he had more important matters to attend to. Besides, what would happen even if he did identify me in some way? Apprehend me? Charge me with something? Surely it was too late for that.

It was also not smug satisfaction for having bested one of Milwaukee’s finest or some sense of pleasure in knowing how pissed he must have been. On the contrary, I had been ingrained since childhood with the understanding that the police have a difficult job to do, and I respect them for it. While I may have done some things in my younger days to be disrespectful of the law, those days were long in the past.

This whole event occurred without conscious decision. I was running away from an officer of the law without having made any conscious decision to do so. In some respect, this incident was a metaphor for what my life had become—a completely mindless existence, my body functioning normally but cut off from any mental input.

Six weeks or so after the incident, the cop followed me into a coffee shop. I was sitting in a booth, having a cup of coffee, and suddenly he was there. It was him, no doubt of that. He and another officer, a woman, were sitting across from me. They appeared to be engaged in a conversation. The reality was, however, that no mere coincidence brought them to this establishment and to the booth across from me. They had followed me in. The question was how long had they been following me? Perhaps I had been under surveillance for some time. I wondered if he already knew my name, where I lived, or where I worked. I wondered what he was planning to do now that he knew who I was.

Following me would not have been difficult. I am, if nothing else, a person of habit. I had ridden a bicycle to and from work for the past thirty years—summer, winter, good weather and bad. Slight variations aside, I had taken virtually the same route every day. Undoubtedly, it was no random event that brought him and his partner to the booth across from mine.

As I sat there, too stunned to move, I glanced over at them a couple of times. Once, I made eye contact with the female officer, though never with the man … but it was him all right. The mouth and the eyes were exactly as I remembered—seared into my consciousness as it were. His badge number was 514. The plastic name tag said Standin or Standon—something like that; I could not read it clearly and definitely did not want to appear to be staring.

Should I jump up and loudly demand he stop following me. I’d sound like some paranoid schizophrenic. Should I go over to their table and simply announce that I knew why he was following me. I could apologize for causing the trouble that led to this. Fall down on my knees and beg for mercy? Alternatively, I might do nothing. Let him make the first move. If he accused me of something, I could play ignorant or, better yet, offended. Finally, I could just get up and go out the door. Ultimately, that’s what I did. Half expecting to be challenged as I left, I had one ear cocked to hear his call. It never came.

Once out the door, the cold, heavy mist hit me in the face. It had been raining for about a week now, and everything was soaked. Wherever there were low spots, these had become shallow ponds. You could not walk a block on the sidewalk without soaking through to your feet. Today was going to be another day of wet socks. Although the rain had let up some during the night, the temperature had fallen about twenty degrees since yesterday. A wind had come up to make sure the cold mist penetrated to the core. As I unlocked my bicycle from the fire hydrant and headed off toward the university, it dawned on me that the worst thing about weather like this was that it was only too typical for the shore of Lake Michigan. Why anyone would put up with it was, at that particular moment, beyond my comprehension.

As I glanced back into the shop window, the two cops were engaged in discussion. The fact was they had been engaged in conversation the entire time I sat across from them. Could it be that this was not the cop at all? Could it be, after all, a mere coincidence that had brought them into the same coffee shop and had sat them across from me? Now I wasn’t even sure that they followed me into the shop. Perhaps I had followed them in. Quite frankly, I was not certain that the cop in the coffee shop was the same individual who had tried to chase me down a few weeks back. In any event, they had seemed to pay no attention to me as I pedaled off.

I bitched about the weather all the way to work. There is no question that the weather in the Rust Belt is lousy. In the summer, it’s hot and humid. There is an occasional day of blue sky and sun, but more often it’s a gray pall of hot, humid rich-in-hydrocarbon stew. In the winter, it’s a gray pall of cold, damp rich-in-hydrocarbon stew. The two transition periods between summer and winter are like today—cold, gray, damp, and drizzly. If for no other reason than to get the hell away from this place, I ought to take Bucky’s offer.

It crossed my mind as I hit campus that I had lived here for the past thirty years or so, and I had always told people I loved the weather. What had changed? Nothing! Not the weather, that’s for sure. The weather was just one more of the many things in my current state of dissatisfaction.

If my day had started off with a bump, the remainder was no smoother. When I arrived at work, there was an e-mail message waiting for me from one of the other faculty members in the department. He was irritated with me for completely forgetting the discussion group I was to have with students in his course. Last week he had asked me to fill in for him with one of the groups, and I had agreed. Of course, as soon as I did, I forgot about it. The students who showed up were angry. No doubt, they took their frustration out on their professor, and he, of course, transferred it to me. I couldn’t really blame him.

That wasn’t the only thing. Students from my own section complained to the chief about my performance. I wasn’t available during office hours; I didn’t respond to their e-mails; if they had a problem, they could never find me—that sort of stuff. Also, I had recently missed a couple of lectures, and (according to one troublemaker) even when I was there, my lectures were disjointed and not focused. The reality is I have been at this too long. I should take up Bucky’s offer to resign.

Speaking of Woessner, I might not have any choice in that matter. His secretary (excuse me, administrative assistant) called to say that Dr. Woessner was still waiting for my response. I told her that I was actively working out the details with a retirement planner. I told her that I should be ready within a week or so and would get back to Dr. Woessner as soon as the details had been worked out. The way I talked made it sound as if I were being positive about transitioning from the active workforce to retirement. That would keep ole Bucky off my back for a few days. But what bullshit. To be entirely truthful, I hadn’t given much thought to retiring since my initial conversation with Bucky a few weeks ago. The whole subject was something I just didn’t want to deal with.

Anyway, that was how the day went. Outside, the rain started coming down harder again. The temperature remained cold, and the wind continued to blow. I spent most of the afternoon with my feet up on the desk, watching the weather outside and occasionally thinking about a tropical island. Finally, I left work. It was only about 3:00 p.m., but I’d had about as much of the day as I could take.

Fully dressed against the elements, I unlocked my bike and swung my leg over the saddle. The sound of the metal rim hitting pavement as soon as I put weight on the frame signaled a flat tire. Not so unusual, although always a pain in the ass, especially on a day like today. Unusual today, both tires were flat. What happened? I tried to think of what I must have run over on my way in this morning. Nothing came to mind. The other possibility was mischief. While not common, it did happen. Most likely just a harmless (though not very funny) prank by a student; the other possibility being true vandalism by some passive-aggressive type. I would normally have dismissed the latter except for the fact that I was becoming more and more paranoid each day. My boss didn’t like me, the students didn’t like me, not to mention Professor Haroldson, whose discussion group I had blown off. Perhaps the old fart did this in retribution for making him look bad with his students. My wife was also tired of me. I could imagine people waiting in line to do something like this.

Well, if the tires weren’t cut or physically damaged in some way, it would just be a matter of wheeling the bike to the nearest gas station for some air. As I bent down to examine the back wheel more closely, I saw several broken spokes. The wheel (naturally it was the back wheel) had been given a hard kick. Several spokes were broken and hanging there, in addition to a number of bent ones. The ass, whoever he was, wasn’t out to play a prank. This was true vandalism. Well, it would be the city bus for me.

When the weather was this miserable, I’d often take the bus instead of a bike. Still, sitting on the bus and thinking about having to come back for the bicycle aroused my anger. If I caught the shit who did this, he would pay. If it were a student, I’d fuck him. The reality was, however, that even if the vandal were apprehended, nothing would happen. The university has its own court for handling student misconduct. Unlike the criminal justice system, whose mission is to catch and punish those who commit misdeeds, the goal of the university’s court is to educate the miscreants. The philosophy is akin to the mental health way of thinking. If you are in the mental health business, then every sort of nefarious behavior (rape and murder included) is indicative of disease. Naturally, disease needs to be treated rather than punished. In the same way, if your mission is education, then any misdeed is seen as a failure to understand what it was that made you act wrongly and why. The goal of the university court, it follows, is to make students see better choices they might make in the future. What a crock of shit. A student gets caught for kicking in the wheel of a professor’s bicycle, and the university wants to help him make better choices in the future. First, he should do his misdeed in such a manner so as not to get caught. That is one obviously better choice. Well, the reality is this prick, whoever he was, didn’t get caught, so he doesn’t need help making better choices.

At home I was greeted with a message from Eddi. It said she has discussed our situation with an attorney and we needed to talk. That was it. Not a clue as to what her intention was. Now, in light of this, I assumed that she was really planning to file for divorce. Up until now, I hadn’t considered this. Ever since she walked out a couple of weeks ago, I assumed it was only a matter of time until we got together and worked over our problems. That she would actually end our marriage never entered my consciousness.

Our marriage had been heading south for some time—or more accurately, meandering down a southerly course. Eddi and I had drifted apart. That much was for sure. How this had come about I didn’t know. Nothing specific had happened to cause Eddi and me to separate—at least nothing that I could lay a finger on. There was no extramarital affair or anything like that. The closest thing we’d ever had to a family crisis had occurred some years ago when our oldest son, Michael, was busted at the University of Wisconsin for using drugs. At the time, drug use was common enough among college kids, and nothing actually ever came of it. Still, it made us both, especially Eddi, take note. Again, that was years ago. I was not sure how that incident might have impacted the current situation. In any event, at the mention of the word attorney, I began to consider for the first time that she might be serious. Fuck, I thought. I don’t need this now.

Sitting in my easy chair with my feet up and a bourbon in my hand, I didn’t move for two hours—except to refill my tumbler a couple of times. I didn’t have the energy to reach out to my wife. The problem with Eddi was the same as with Woessner. My home life and my professional life were heading down the same path together, and I didn’t have the energy to stop either. Screw ’em both, I thought.

With great effort, I roused myself from the chair and made it to the liquor cabinet. Two more ice cubes and a splash of bourbon, and both Eddi and Bucky faded into the haze. My last conscious thought was of neither. It was of the shit who had vandalized my bike. If I caught the son of a bitch, I’d screw him good.

Nasty Cop

Chapter 4

Peter Cook, deputy director of Internal Affairs for the city of Milwaukee, sat at his desk, looking at the file in front of him. The file belonged to a fifteen-year veteran of the police force. Cook’s counterpart within the Milwaukee Police Department had called Cook and asked if he would (informally) evaluate an officer in the department. It was a complicated situation, Cook was informed. On the one hand, MPD was trying to determine if there was enough evidence to have the officer kicked off the force. At the same time, the officer in question was threatening to sue the city for failing to promote him. It was not the job of the City Internal Affairs Department to pass judgment on who should be hired or fired within the police department. That was normally handled within the police department itself. The function of the City Internal Affairs Office was to act as a watchdog over the city’s government as a whole. Internal Affairs saw to it that federal and state laws as well as city statutes and the directives of the elected city officials were being followed properly. Another function of Internal Affairs was to see that individuals employed by smaller departments (which unlike the police department did not have their own Internal Affairs Office) followed not only the law but also the performance clauses of their employment contracts. Occasionally, Cook’s office investigated individuals in city government when there was reason to suspect some sort of malfeasance. These investigations were infrequent and rarely involved the police department.

The case before Cook now involved a veteran of the police force. The individual in question, Kelly Standin, was a uniformed officer with a solid, if not completely unblemished, record. Twice during the last five years, Standin had been denied promotion. After the first rejection, he had done nothing, but when he was rejected a second time in June, he went to the union for help. Through the union, he had gained access to his personnel file and, finding nothing in the file that would be cause for rejection, threatened the city with a lawsuit if the city did not reverse its position. Cook’s counterpart in the police department, Francis Bodine, had come to Cook for help. The issue, according to Bodine, was not only whether Standin should be promoted but also what might happen if the city tried to terminate him from the force. Exactly what the police department wanted and why wasn’t clear from the request, and Cook, after carefully evaluating everything in Standin’s official file, concluded that trying to force Standin out would be ugly if it came to that.

Cook was well aware that the official employment file of any individual often did not contain all of the relevant information. While everyone knew that an unofficial file as well as the official one was kept on most police officers, information in the unofficial file could not be used for legal purposes. Much of the information in the unofficial file was innuendo or rumor accumulated over the years. The file also contained unofficial or unsolicited evaluations by fellow officers, information from past employers, and written but unsubstantiated complaints by anyone who chose, for whatever reason, to make one. Usually, these were from citizens who felt they had been mistreated by an officer in some way. What Cook saw in the unofficial Standin file was no concrete evidence of wrongdoing but enough innuendo to cause unease among his superiors.

Among the unverifiable information in the informal file was a letter from a former officer claiming to have evidence (none of which was presented) that Standin had been involved with a prostitute in the old Southby neighborhood. The woman had eventually come to a bad end, her badly beaten body found floating in Lake Michigan. What role Standin had in the woman’s death was never established. The officer who had made the charge had failed to provide substantiating evidence, and nothing that turned up in the case report had implicated Standin, or anyone else, for that matter. The officer who had made the charge was no longer with the Milwaukee police force—himself having left under clouded circumstances and his current whereabouts uncertain. The neighborhood where the prostitute had resided and its inhabitants were also gone, urban renewal being the cause.

More disconcerting was a signed statement from a recent recruit to the police force, a young woman still in training. Unlike the innuendo related to the prostitute, the young officer had laid out in a five-page statement two incidents that had occurred while she was teamed with Officer Standin as part of her training. The woman had described the two incidents in great detail. Cook had no doubt that what the woman claimed in the statement was true, but he doubted that it would be enough to have a veteran of the force removed. On the other hand, if MPD went forward with efforts to remove Standin and the statement became part of the public record, her career would be over, regardless of what happened to Standin. Cook had no doubt of that. That’s how things worked.

There were other things in the unofficial file as well. Taken together, Cook concluded that Standin was probably one of those individuals who exemplified characteristics needed in a good street cop but who also had a dark side.

Lying in bed that night, Cook’s mind returned to the Standin file and how he would conduct an investigation. Tomorrow he would meet with Jamie and Phillipe, two of his assistant investigators. Both of them would be involved. He would make this their major priority for a week or so. They would do what they could and be done with it. Their routine duties would be shared by Mike, his third assistant investigator and the department’s support staff.

Cook’s staff included the three investigators and an equal number of administrative assistants. The most junior of the three investigators was Jamie Cook (no relation to Peter), a thirty-one-year-old lawyer who, like Peter, had started out in a district prosecutor’s office. Next was Phillipe Aracibo, a forty-something-year-old veteran of the Madison Wisconsin police force. He had come to the Internal Affairs Office directly from Madison. Most senior was Michael Rennard, who had worked for years in the personnel office and acted as Peter’s top aide.

In the morning with Jamie, Phillipe, and Michael seated in his small cramped office, Peter outlined the assignment and how he planned to conduct the investigation, emphasizing that MDP wanted help only with a background search. MPD itself would do the rest if there was something to do. Both Jamie and Phillipe were intrigued, if only mildly, about the task. The opportunity to discard, if only temporarily, some of their more mundane activities during the Standin investigation was definitely a plus. Michael, realizing that he would inherit some of the discarded work from Jamie and Phillipe, was less intrigued. All in the room were of the consensus that there would be no smoking gun or MPD would have handled this on their own. Michael put it best when he said that without a smoking gun, it was unlikely that their investigation of Standin’s past would turn up anything damaging enough to allow police officials to withhold promotion, much less boot him. Jamie and Phillipe agreed.

As Phillipe and Michael both reached for the last donut, the wall clock chimed its ten o’clock arrival. With that, all four got up together. The meeting had lasted a full ninety minutes, and a box of donuts had been consumed. Anything that hadn’t come up during that time was unlikely to with additional time. Michael was the first out the door—tacit acknowledgement to his having a lesser role in the investigation.

Jamie and Phillipe followed. Both had their assignments—review Standin’s file in detail. Then Jamie was to take a drive up to Red River Falls, where Standin grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Not much was expected from this foray, but it wouldn’t hurt, they agreed, to see if anyone remembered Standin—and if so, for what reason. At the same time, Phillipe was to spend a day in Madison to see if they could learn anything from his old colleagues on the police force there. Peter would speak to Bodine about getting MPD to smooth things out with the folks in Madison.

As the principals separated to their assigned tasks, Peter cautioned them on the need for discretion, at least until something relevant turned up. All were well aware of how difficult it was to surreptitiously carry out the kind of investigation they were asked to do. Standin, fifteen years on the force, undoubtedly, had friends. Any suspicious inquiry would be noted. This reality, more than anything, drove the practice of carrying out Internal Affairs investigations in the open. This did not apply, however, to the type of investigation they were about to conduct—an investigation to see if there might be something worth investigating.

What do you make of this? Jamie asked Phillipe as the two made their way back to the closet that served as their own office.

Beats me, was all Phillipe could offer, half a donut still in his mouth.

I think Peter’s right though, about doing what we can quickly. Then if we’ve turned up nothing, we send it back to MPD and wash our hands.

When Jamie got to his desk, a fifteen-page computer printout listing all vacation time, sick time, and excused or unexcused absences from the Sanitation Department was waiting for him. For the last week, he had been reviewing these records to see if there was anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps not surprising, Sanitation was always among the city’s leaders in off time among its union employees. The auditing of such records accounted for much of what an Internal Affairs investigator in city government spent his time on. The chance to unload such work, even for a short time, was one of the major reasons Jamie was looking forward to the Standin probe.

Poor bastard. He chuckled as he thought of dumping the Sanitation records in Michael’s lap.

Just as he was getting the Sanitation printouts together, Peter entered with Standin’s personnel file. Having spent so many years in the business, Peter understood the meaning of the smirk on Jamie’s face.

Don’t get too giddy, Peter said. Going through Standin’s history isn’t going to be much more interesting. Dorothy will have the complete file to you both in just a bit. Go through it all, but start with this.

With that, he handed each of them a copy of the signed affidavit that had touched off MPD’s call to Cook. For the next half hour, the two investigators sat at their desks in the cramped office, each reading copies of the same document. The top of each page was marked MPD CONFIDENTIAL. Cook had said to keep this document out of sight as it was, as he put it, particularly sensitive. The document, as both Jamie and Phillipe quickly gathered, was a statement by a woman named Jeraldine Chicarro—Jerry, as she put it in the first sentence—and it was related to Standin.

My name is Jeraldine Chicarro. I have always gone by Jerry and I have since joining the police force nine months ago. I’m still in training and have so far been paired with three veterans of the force. The first was Patrick McGiver. After that was Phil Rollins and last was Kelly Standin. After each stint, I have been evaluated and whatever was written by each officer is in my file. I have