Frank Zafiro - Under a Raging Moon

He took a hard swig of the beer, his eyes fixed on the fading light on the screen. “Other FTO’s teach them other things,” he conceded, jabbing his index finger at the TV to stress each word. “But I concentrate on showing them how to stay alive. How to be a warrior in peace-time.”

Just like in ‘Nam, he realized. Try to jam in enough knowledge into in the short training time so that they learn how to stay alive. That way, their deaths aren’t on your conscience.

But Thomas Chisolm housed a vast cemetery in his conscience and all the beer in the fridge wasn’t going to wash it away.

Wednesday, August 16th

Graveyard Shift

0126 hours

The River City Police Department had a successful Reserve Officer program. Reserve Officers were subjected to the same hiring process as commissioned officers and then attended a condensed version of the Police Academy. They always rode with a commissioned officer, except for a handful that graduated to a higher rank and rode in two-man reserve cars. All of them were volunteers.

Some officers resented the reserves, claiming their presence took the place of hiring another commissioned officer. Stefan Kopriva disagreed. He saw the reserves as a supplement, not a replacement.

Besides, Kopriva knew that the same people who complained about the reserves taking away jobs would grouse even louder if they had to field some of the calls reserves often took. Reserves fielded a steady diet of cold burglary reports, bicycle thefts, and found property calls, all things most cops considered boring.

The reserve officer in Kopriva’s car was a green one, just three rides out of the Academy. Kopriva didn’t mind. The kid seemed bright and eager to learn. Kopriva had discovered in his sensei’s karate dojo that it gave him satisfaction to show someone a skill and then see that person ‘get it.’ Police work, sometimes a very play-it-by-ear profession with a lot of gray area, was tricky to actually teach someone and thus, even more gratifying when someone caught on.

Kopriva let the reserve, Ken Travis, drive for the first half of the shift until oh-one-hundred. Then they switched. Not surprisingly, none of the officers in his previous three rides had allowed him to drive.

“Were they from the sit down and shut up school of thought?” he asked.

Travis nodded. “Pretty much. But you learn a lot from watching.”

“Not as much as from doing,” Kopriva said.

Ten minutes later, Kopriva spotted a car sneaking down Regal, a side street with a lot of offsetting intersections. This allowed drivers to treat it like an arterial. The street was frequented by drivers without a valid license, a practice so common that Kopriva and his sector-mates had dubbed any car on Regal after midnight in violation of the “felony Regal law” and therefore fair game.

Kopriva whipped the cruiser around with a u-turn and swooped in behind the car, a ‘71 or ’72 Monte Carlo. “Find the stop,” he instructed Travis. He’d already noticed the driver’s side headlight was burned out, an Easter Egg of a stop. The vehicle sped along thirty miles per hour, five over the limit. And to make things even easier, the passenger-side taillight was broken and showing white light to the rear.

Travis peered closely at the car for a block. In that time, the vehicle slowed to twenty-three miles per hour.

“How fast is he going?” Travis asked him.

“Twenty-three, twenty-four now.”

He stared at the car for another long moment, then saw it. “Broken tail-light?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Kopriva asked good-naturedly.

“Telling.”

“Do we stop them?”

Travis didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

Kopriva picked up the microphone. Before notifying radio, he told Travis, “There’s two of them. If one runs, stay with the car. If both run, you take the passenger. Okay?”

Travis nodded, his eyes dancing with excitement.

Kopriva recited the license plate and their location to radio and activated his overhead lights. The car immediately pulled to the side while Kopriva put his spotlight and takedown lights on the vehicle. He slammed the car into park and still managed to beat Travis out of the car.

Both occupants remained seated, neither one seat-belted. Kopriva approached cautiously, lighting up the back seat with his heavy maglight and then searching for the driver’s hands. They were on the wheel. The passenger’s hands rested on his lap.

The driver was a white male in his mid-twenties with long, greasy hair and a scraggly growth of beard. “Is there a problem, officer?” asked with careful politeness.

This is going to be a good stop.

“You have several equipment defects, sir,” Kopriva told him. “Your headlight is out and one tail-light is broken.”

“They are?” The driver acted surprised.

Kopriva nodded. “You were also traveling at thirty miles per hour. The speed limit here is twenty-five.”

“I thought it was thirty.”

“It’s twenty-five. May I see your driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance?”

“Yes, sir.” The driver began to dig through a pile of papers above the visor.

Kopriva motioned over the top of the car to Travis, who stood beside the passenger window. “Get his I.D.”

Travis nodded and spoke to the passenger.

The driver nervously handed Kopriva an insurance card that had expired four months ago, along with the registration. The registered owner was Pete Maxwell.

“Are you Pete?”

The driver shook his head. “No. Pete’s my friend. He loaned me the car.” He handed Kopriva his license.

Kopriva looked at it. Right away, he noticed it was a state identification card, not a driver’s license. While a perfectly legal form of identification, even issued by Department of Licensing, it was not a license. And it usually meant that the driver’s status was suspended.

“Well, Mr…” Kopriva glanced down at the card. “Mr. Rousse. This isn’t a license. Do you have a license?”

Rousse shook his head. “It’s suspended,” he said ruefully.

“And Mr. Maxwell’s insurance has lapsed.”

Rousse nodded glumly.

“Okay, wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.” Kopriva glanced at Travis. “Got his I.D.?”

Travis shook his head. “He won’t give it to me.”

Oh really ? Kopriva peered at the passenger through the driver’s window. “What’s your name?”

The thin passenger had jet-black hair, shaved on the sides and long in the back. His beard stubble was thick. He stared straight ahead and didn’t respond to Kopriva’s question.

“I said, what’s your name, passenger!” Kopriva put an edge in his voice.

The man turned. “Why do I have to tell you?”

He has a warrant .

“Are you wearing a seat-belt?” Kopriva asked.

“No. Well, I was. I took it off when we stopped.”

Kopriva shook his head. “No, you didn’t. You weren’t wearing one. That’s a traffic infraction. You are now required to identify yourself. If you don’t, I’ll arrest you for Refusal To Cooperate. Now what’s your name?”

The passenger considered briefly, then said, “I’m Dennis Maxwell.”

Travis wrote it in his pocket notebook.

“Middle initial?” Kopriva asked.

“G.”

“Date of birth?”

“Uh, ten…seventeen, sixty-three. I mean, sixty-two.” He gave a nervous grin. “Listen, I’m not trying to be a jerk. I’ve just been hassled by cops in the past.”

“I’m not hassling you,” Kopriva stated coldly. “I’m doing my job.”

Dennis nodded. “Yeah, all right. Sorry.”

“No problem,” Kopriva said. As he walked back to the car, he muttered, “You lying, lying, lying bag of crap.”