Frank Zafiro - And Every Man Has to Die

Then the brake lights flashed twice, then came on steady. The car pulled to the right and stopped.

Carson grabbed the microphone. “Adam-128, a traffic stop.”

“Go ahead, Adam-128.”

“Post and Knox with William Young Zebra Seven Seven Nine,” she recited, reading the license plate in front of her.

“Copy.Adam-122?”

Anthony Battaglia’s deep voice responded. “Adam-122, copy.Division and Buckeye.”

Carson hung the microphone on its holder. Battaglia was close. Good. Looking at the three heads in the car silhouetted by her headlights, she was grateful for the backup.

She scrambled to set her spotlight on the vehicle and grab her flashlight. Cautiously, but trying to project confidence, she approached the car. The driver appeared to be in his early twenties with closely cropped hair. His two passengers also wore their hair short. All of them watched her with flat, appraising eyes. The backseat passenger spoke into a cell phone.

She motioned for the driver to roll down the window by twirling her finger. He complied, but stopped the window halfway down.

“Sir, I’m Officer Carson, River City Police,” she began. “I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance.”

The driver looked at her coldly for a moment, then asked, “What for you stop me?”

Carson recognized his thick accent. She’d only encountered Russians once before, on a traffic stop in her second training car. The elderly woman had been exceptionally nice, smiling the entire time, but she hadn’t understood a word of English. Carson received high marks from her training officer for managing to communicate via show and tell and body language, eventually letting her go with a warning.

“I stopped you for speeding,” Carson told this driver. “Now, I need your driver’s license-”

“I not speeding,” the driver interrupted.

Carson paused. She’d been trained not to get into arguments with violators. Simply write them the ticket and let the merits be argued in court. “I need to see your driver’s license, registration, and proof of insurance,” she repeated firmly.

The driver shook his head. “No. I not speeding, so you have no right.”

“Whether you think you were speeding or not,” Carson told him, reciting the traffic code that she had memorized from flash cards in the academy, “you are required to provide these documents upon request from a law enforcement officer.”

“This bullshit,” the driver said.

“You’re welcome to think so. But I need to see your documents.”

“Or vaht?” the driver sneered.

“Or you’ll be arrested,” Carson answered.

The driver laughed. “You? Little girl like you take me to jail?” He shook his head and said something in Russian. The three of them laughed.

Carson considered her options. She wanted to rip the driver out his window, slap handcuffs on him, and take him to jail. See if that wiped the sneer off his face. But she wasn’t sure she could manage that one on one, much less if his two friends decided to jump in.

She could demand the documents again, but it was pretty plain he wasn’t going to give them up to her.

What she didn’t want to do was continue standing at the driver’s door like an idiot, so she mustered the firmest tone she could and said, “Wait here.”

He snorted, but made no move to pull away.

Carson walked back to her patrol car to get the driver’s name off the vehicle registration. As she reached her door, another patrol car cruised up next to her. The driver engaged his overhead take-down lights and aimed his spotlight on the gold Honda. The passenger window descended. Carson leaned in and was surprised to see that Battaglia was alone.

He must have read the question in her eyes, because he immediately said, “Sully got sick and went home.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s Irish,” Battaglia said with a shrug, as if that should explain everything. “Whattaya got?”

Carson motioned toward the Russian driver. “He’s being difficult.”

Battaglia’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”

She nodded. “He won’t give me his name, reg, or insurance. Says he wasn’t speeding, so I don’t have the right to ask.”

Battaglia pursed his lips and said nothing.

Carson swallowed and spoke quickly. “Of course, I know he has to, but instead of getting into a fight right away, I figured I’d check the registration and see if that turns up his name. Maybe once he knows I already know, he’ll be more cooperative.”

“Maybe,” Battaglia said doubtfully.

“If not, he’s going to jail,” Carson said.

“Yeah, huh?” Battaglia gave her an approving nod. “Not taking any shit? Good for you.”

Carson felt a twinge of gratitude for the support.

“You want another car here?” he asked.

Good officer safety tactics clearly dictated that Carson should have a third officer present, just in case the passengers got squirrely. But she also knew that there was the academy way and there was the way it rolled on the street. She’d never lose respect doing things the academy way, but she’d never make her bones, either.

“I think we’ll be fine,” she told Battaglia. She tried to appear casual, but she was glad that he’d let her make the call.

Battaglia shrugged. He turned his attention to the threesome in the car. Carson left his window and slid into her driver’s seat. A message was waiting on the mobile data terminal on the console. She pushed the “read” button and a message from the dispatcher appeared, consisting solely of the vehicle registration.

Carson smiled. One thing she’d learned early on about the dispatchers was that they definitely took care of their officers, in large ways and small. She scrolled down the registration information; the legal and registered owner was William J. Bryan, with an address in nearby Cheney. She scowled. Bryan didn’t sound much like a Russian name, but maybe-

She scrolled down a little further and saw the words “report of sale,” followed by the date of June 10.

She sighed. That meant Mr. Bryan sold the car back in June and notified the Department of Licensing of that sale. Unfortunately, the new owner hadn’t transferred the registration into his own name yet. Carson scoured her memory. How long did he have to do that? It was one of those two-tiered statutes that had some sort of grace period, after which there was a fine. Was that fifteen days? And when did the second time limit expire, making it a criminal offense for failure to transfer ownership?

She shot a quick glance over at Battaglia, but the veteran officer remained intent on the car in front of them. That was his job as the cover officer and she knew that they took their roles seriously on this shift.

She reached for her ticket book and removed her cheat sheet. She ran her finger over the codes, searching for the particular charge regarding ownership transfer. When she reached the bottom of the page she flipped it over and scanned the back as well.

Nothing.

Carson scowled. It had to be there. She must have missed it. She turned the paper to the front and checked once again, this time more slowly. Two thirds of the way down, she found the listing. It was an infraction after fifteen days, a misdemeanor crime after forty-five. She sighed. That meant it was only a ticket, not an arrest.

Carson stepped out of the car and leaned in Battaglia’s window. “The car has a report of sale,” she told him.

“Over forty-five days?”

She shook her head.

Battaglia shrugged. “So we pull him out and you write him some tickets, then.”

“Yeah,” Carson said. Somehow, she didn’t think it was going to be that easy.