Sample chapters from Losses,
Book Three in the Ro Delahanty Series
Chapter One
I killed Daisy!
Wednesday, March 9, 2005, early morning
Armstrong One-Nine.” Ro Delahanty grinned to herself. The deputies were still adjusting to their new male dispatcher. His name was Rex Haskell, a retired city cop who’d become bored with having nothing to do. Over her own two years at the dispatch desk, and now nearly two years as a patrol deputy, all the sheriff’s department’s dispatchers had been female.
“One-Nine,” Ro acknowledged.
“One-Nine, I think this is a 10-78” − citizen needs assistance − “but it’s confusing,” Haskell said.
Maybe as a reaction to having heard literally thousands of dispassionate dispatchers’ calls himself through the years, Haskell’s over-the-air personality was more conversational than usual.
“I received a 911 call from what I think might be an elderly lady; sounded pretty desperate,” he continued. “Keeps saying, ‘I killed Daisy!’ When I ask who Daisy is, she repeats ‘I think I killed her’ and starts sobbing.”
“What’s her 10-20?” − location.
“Two Mile Road where it crosses Shadowbrook Creek’s south branch.”
Shadowbrook was a long east-west creek in the southern part of the county. Ro was on Hickory Lane, at the north end; the 10-78 was close to fifteen miles away.
“10-04 Fort Armstrong. I am 10-76,” − en route − “10-77 fifteen” − estimated time of arrival fifteen minutes. “What’s your take, Dispatch, is caller potentially homicidal, suicidal?”
“I don’t get that feeling, One-Nine. It’s more like highly distressed over something that’s already happened.”
“Copy that. Is she still on the line? Inform her I’m on the way.”
“10-04 One-Nine. I’ll instruct her to remain at her location until you arrive.”
“Copy that.” Taking her finger off the transmit button, Ro blew out a quick breath and muttered to herself, “Okay, Mr. Pete,” addressing the patrol car, “let’s go see what this is all about.”
Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of police work is routine, but…
Deputy Sheriff Ro Delahanty had already been involved in two shootouts − just lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you looked at it. The first a gunfight with four assault rifle-carrying thugs, the other a year ago on a domestic disturbance incident in which a supposedly average young woman who had caught her boyfriend cheating on her morphed into a stone-cold killer.
But “Daisy” and “I think I killed…” Ro’s instincts were saying this wasn’t another crazed shooter.
Fortunately, most of her route to the scene was over County Line Road, a major four-lane highway straddling Fort Armstrong County’s western border with adjacent Makuakeeta County. On regular patrols Ro stayed ten miles under the posted speed limit, but this time used her red and blue light bar. She skipped the siren, though, as there was only light traffic, and she was not in a hot pursuit requiring high speeds.
Twelve minutes later, turning south onto Two Mile Road, she saw the headlights of a sedan over on the east shoulder a half-mile ahead, except one light was pointing off into a nearby field at an odd angle. Two Mile Road ran through flat cropland awaiting spring plowing, with an occasional tree line to break-up the view.
Bringing the squad car to a stop on the west shoulder across from an early 2000s Buick, Ro saw two things. A small elderly woman in the car’s driver’s seat staring at her with a dazed expression. Twenty yards behind the Buick, a brown hump crumpled on the edge of the pavement: a deer. Ro couldn’t help closing her eyes as a surge of pity swept over her. The deer’s head was jerking; it wasn’t dead.
But the elderly lady took precedence.
Striding across the road to the disabled Buick, she leaned over and looked in.
The woman seemed bewildered. “You’re a lady.”
By now, Ro was used to the look.
“Yes ma’am, I am Deputy Sheriff Delahanty. I’m here to help. Are you alright? Are you injured in any way?”
The woman blinked and glanced back behind her, sobbing. “I think I killed Daisy. I killed her!”
“Ma’am, you need to focus on me,” Ro said gently but with some authority. “Are you hurt in any way? Did you hit your head?”
The wrinkled, perhaps eightyish woman stared at Ro for a few seconds, processing the question. “No, I’m not hurt.”
She was tiny in the front seat of the big Buick, barely making five feet, and was wrapped in a cloth coat, huddled against the cold.
“Is Daisy a person or is it the deer you hit back there?”
The woman again glanced back, the guilt in her eyes palpable. “I killed her, didn’t I?”
“No. It looks like the deer is injured but not dead.”
“Oh God, can you call a vet? Maybe you can save her.”
Ro had her doubts but tried to comfort the woman. “Ma’am, you’re cold. I’m going to move you to my car, where it’s warm. Then I’ll check on the deer. Come with me.”
After helping the woman into the passenger seat of her patrol car, Ro started down the shallow slope leading to a bridge over the creek. Unfortunately, her doubts were correct. Within a few feet she could hear the deer’s piteous mewling, like an injured child’s whimper. It was throwing its head around and frantically trying to use its front legs to get up, except the back legs wouldn’t move. It had two short antlers.
Ro closed her eyes and sighed, knowing what needed to be done.
Returning to her patrol car, Ro slid into the driver’s side and put her hand on the woman’s arm, hoping to reassure her, “I don’t think that’s your Daisy. It’s a yearling buck; I saw its antlers. But it looks like its back is broken. We can’t save him, ma’am.”
Ro had so far either responded to or come across at least a half-a-dozen 10-45 calls − animal carcass − but this was the first time one was still alive.
The woman dropped her head, ashamed. “I’m so sorry; he came out of nowhere.”
“I understand. I need to go put him out of his misery. Do you understand?”
The woman bobbed her head twice. “Yes.”
Ro retrieved her Glock 34 nine-millimeter back-up weapon from the duty bag in the car’s trunk, as the big departmental issue Sig Sauer .357 on her left hip was too much weapon for this job.
Striding down the road, Ro tried to slip into warrior mode; a place you seek as a cop where the folks with guns cease to be ordinary people with everyday problems and simply become Shooters − and yes, she did always think of it as capitalized. Except it wasn’t working this time. Bad guys shooting at you are easy to face; this was hard. This was a blameless forest critter with the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and was now hurting.
Ro dropped to one knee behind the deer and nearly lost it. Its bleating was so utterly pitiful, its pawing at the ground so desperate and futile.
“Dear God,” she muttered, closing her eyes to fight back a tear.
Glancing around to make sure her bullet wouldn’t potentially hit a house − there was a thick screen of trees on the opposite side of a shallow ditch beside the road – and not pausing for fear she would lose her nerve, Ro cocked the Glock, put the muzzle against the base of the deer’s skull and pulled the trigger.
CRACK!
A small flock of birds noisily erupted from the tree line, frightened by the gunshot.
The deer jerked once and then lay still, the one large brown eye Ro could see open but lifeless.
Her patrol car’s headlights cast enough glow she could see the new spray of shiny dark liquid spread across the grass beyond the dead deer’s forehead where her bullet had exited; there was the sharp odor of burnt hair. Ro put her hand on the deer’s now still shoulder, blew out a regretful sigh and whispered, “Be at peace.”
Holding the Glock down at her side, she returned to the squad, put the weapon back in the duty bag, and climbed into the front seat.
“Ma’am, I need to call this in. Then you can tell me what happened.”
“He’s not suffering anymore, is he?”
“No, he’s not.” And you didn’t lose your Daisy, Ro thought.
“I’m glad.”
Chapter Two
Get Rid of the Frown
Wednesday, March 9, 2005, early morning
Ro called in, updating dispatch as on scene and the situation being under control, but needing a tow for a disabled vehicle, and that she’d had to put down the injured deer. Turning to her passenger, who now seemed to have calmed down, as well as warmed up, Ro took a pen and small spiral notebook from an inside pocket of her jacket, explaining, “Whenever I discharge a weapon − fire my gun − I have to submit a written report, so I need to ask you some questions. What’s your name, ma’am?”
The woman’s eyes crinkled into a small smile. “Narcissus… Narcissus Pinchon. It’s a flower.”
“Like a daffodil, right?”
“Yes. Very good, not many people know that.”
“My father planted some near our front porch,” Ro said. “Do you live near here, Mrs. Pinchon?”
“Sissy,” the woman said, flashing Ro a friendly grin taking ten years off her age. “Everyone calls me Sissy.”
“Okay. Sissy it is.”
Staring at the now still deer, Sissy asked, “What’ll happen to him?”
Ro considered a vague non-answer like, “We’ll dispose of it,” but was never comfortable with that sort of white lie.
“Anytime we have a dead deer − you’d be surprised at how many there are, by the way − our dispatcher calls the zoo folks over in Illinois and they send someone to pick up the carcass to feed the big cats.”
Expecting a response of disgust, like, “Yew, you feed him to the lions,” it surprised Ro when Sissy stared at the dead animal for a second and instead said, “Makes sense; completes the circle. And it’s sure better than leaving it for the crows and coyotes.”
“Yes, it is,” Ro agreed.
Then throwing Ro a real curve ball, Sissy turned and asked, “Do you believe the deer had a soul and went to heaven? You know, some people only think human beings can have souls.”
Ro had to smile as they had reversed roles in this interview process. I’m the cop, I’m the one who’s supposed to ask the questions here.
This time, though, she opted for a simple if somewhat ambiguous answer, “Yes, I do.” Except Ro suspected the meaning she assigned to those words may not necessarily be the same as Sissy’s.
Neither Ro nor her family were religious in the sense they attended a church. But she was spiritual, believing all living things − like the deer − shared in a common life essence and when the body died the life essence continued, to then become part of some other living thing; that was her understanding of “soul” and “heaven.”
While Ro had begun forming this idea in her teens, it had really come into focus when she’d touched Neesh-Na-Ha-A-La for the first time. That was the name local Native Americans had for a giant white oak tree believed to be several hundred years old standing in Five Falls State Park in the southwest corner of the county.
Ro loved to run on the park’s hiking and equestrian trails, usually two or three times a week. Her trips to the park always included a visit to Neesh-Na-Ha-A-La, which lazy Whites over the years had shrunk into an easier to pronounce “Neshnala.” As a protection from insensitive idiots who thought it was cool to carve their initials in the tree’s side, it was surrounded by a six-foot high chain-link fence, which meant of her many visits to pay her respects, she’d never been able to touch it.
Until eighteen months ago, when Frank Reyner, her boyfriend and lover, who also was the park’s ranger, took her inside the fence for the first time. There were two more visits since. Each time she’d put her fingertips on Neshnala’s broad flank, nothing much happened outwardly; no sudden blinding revelations or trance-like swoons. Instead, there’d been this profound sense of connection with the tree, not only with its rough outer bark, but with its life essence – its “soul” if that’s what one preferred to call it. Touching the now dead deer’s shoulder a few moments ago and quietly saying, “Be at peace,” Ro hoped to in some way be helping send the animal’s essence back to its source, the place where all of us derive our life energy.
“Sissy, I’m sure this would make for an interesting conversation, but can we get back on topic.”
“Sorry, Deputy,” the woman said with a puckish grin. “When you’re older, you think about stuff like that.” Pointing to a farmhouse on the east side of the road three-quarters of a mile ahead, now visible in the emerging dawn, Sissy said, “I live there. Our son… My son farms the land, but I live in the house. He has his own adjoining farm over on E.” She meant County Road E, another north, south road a mile to the east. “My husband died several years ago, so I live alone.”
“What’s the address there?”
“S-7825 Two Mile Road.”
Ro scribbled the address in her notebook.
“And Daisy is a deer?” Ro asked.
“Yes, one of several I feed.”
“Feed?”
“In my backyard… Every week my son puts out fifty pounds of deer food; we also have a salt lick for them. I like to sit on my back porch in the morning with my coffee and watch them through binoculars.”
“And they all have names?”
“Oh, yes. Daisy is a big doe with a pair of fawns. She’s the one I thought I’d lost.” This with a catch in her throat.
“How do you tell them apart?”
“Daisy has a funny notch in her left ear. Prissy is shy, takes her time coming out of the woods to eat. And Blaze… Well, she has a small white blaze above her nose. You don’t think I’m a crazy old lady for giving them names, do you?”
“Hardly,” Ro said, thinking, Huh, I gave my squad car a nickname; at least your critters are alive.
“Where were you going so early in the morning, Sissy?” Ro asked.
“My granddaughter is at Austin-Mercy in Lee’s Landing about to have a baby. I was on my way to see her.”
“Is this your first great-grandchild?”
“Heavens no, this one’ll be number three. Do you have any children, Deputy?”
“No, I don’t,” Ro said, trying to make the answer sound casual.
Then, changing the subject, Ro said, “The tow truck will be around for your car later this morning. If I drive you to the hospital, will there by anyone there who can bring you home later?”
“Oh, yes. I have eight kids, at least four or five will be at the hospital, as well as half-a-dozen grandchildren old enough to drive… I’ll be fine.”
“Eight! Wow!” Ro said, trying to make it sound respectful, which a part of her did feel − anyone who’d raised eight kids deserved respect − but at the same time secretly shuddering at the thought.
She called dispatch to explain her errand. Then they headed for Lee’s Landing.
As they pulled to a stop under the covered portico of the hospital’s main entrance, Sissy turned in her seat and put her hand on Ro’s arm, giving it a squeeze, “Thank you so much.”
“It’s okay, I was only doing my job.”
“I wasn’t thanking you only for that… I was thanking you for treating me with dignity. It might surprise you how condescending people can be when you’ve got wrinkles and white hair. Oh, and Deputy,” Sissy paused briefly to glance down at the plastic name badge above Ro’s right breast pocket, “Deputy Delahanty, get rid of the frown. I’d bet you’d be quite pretty without it.”
Ro had to laugh at the woman’s insight, calling her out for wearing her “cop face,” a look she’d cultivated involving frowning and pressing her lips together. Being a female cop was a given, but had wanted to project the image of a no-nonsense female cop.
“See,” Sissy said triumphantly then stuck out her hand.
Ro took it, “It was nice meeting you, Sissy. Go enjoy your visit with your family.”
Chapter Three
BSLE
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
As Ro wished Sissy a good day, the digital clock on the squad car’s mobile data terminal (MDT) said it was 6:57. She was a few minutes from the end of her shift and only a little over a mile from her apartment.
One of the first things Mark Ballard had done after being elected sheriff in 1992 − he’d been re-elected to his fourth term last fall − was install the MDTs and drop the traditional all-deputies beginning-of-shift briefings and end-of-shift clocking out at department headquarters. He believed it added at least half an hour to a deputy’s actual time in their patrol sector if they took their squad cars home and started their shifts from there.
At 7:01, after backing the car into its usual spot in a corner of her apartment’s parking lot away from other cars, Ro logged out on the MDT as officially off duty, but still picked up the mic to make the traditional but now superfluous call-in.
“Fort Armstrong One-Nine.”
“One-Nine go.”
“One-Nine 10-42” – ending tour of duty.
“10-04 One-Nine.”
Ro’s two-bedroom, single bath apartment was part of the Westwynd complex, two-hundred units in more than three-dozen buildings around a long, triangular shaped drive on the west side of Lee’s Landing. One of the reasons she’d chosen it four years ago was the Shadowbrook Bike Path running along its south boundary. The path was her second favorite place to run after the state park. It was also more convenient.
The apartment was her home. Well, if truth be known, perhaps a close second to the patrol car.
As a third shift deputy − 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., Tuesday through Saturday nights – it meant most people’s mornings were her evenings and the converse.
Sliding out of the front seat, Ro used the key fob to lock the doors, then reached up and laid her hand on the car’s roof behind the light bar. “Thanks, Mr. Pete, see you later.”
A black-and-white Ford Crown Vic Police Interceptor – for more than a decade the iconic law enforcement vehicle – “Mr. Pete” was named in honor of Peter Panda, her childhood teddy bear that sat on a dresser in her bedroom – yes, both her childhood bedroom and current bedroom.
Again, using the fob to pop the trunk and retrieve the black ballistic nylon duty bag, or what cops liked to call their “war bag,” she carried it to the apartment needing to later clean the Glock she’d fired.
Ro’s apartment was on the third floor, left side. The living room and adjacent dining room looked out over the parking lot, while the view from the two bedrooms at the back was of a woodsy area known locally as the Bottoms. Shadowbrook and its accompanying bike path ran through the Bottoms.
As was her well-established routine…
The first thing Ro did was head down the short hall, stick her head in the small bedroom used for sleeping and greet the three-foot teddy bear, “Hi, Peter.”
Then would turn into the larger bedroom used as her study and lock her duty belt, with its service weapon, as well as the Glock 34 in her gun safe, today extracting her compact Glock 19 off-duty weapon, because…
Back in the smaller bedroom, she would undress, carefully hang her uniform in the closet, and today change into her chilly weather running gear, long insulated pants, a fleece jacket, gloves and her official running hat, a tattered Chicago Cubs baseball cap. Although not a Cubs fan – Ro didn’t follow sports teams – it was because the hat had been a gag gift from her brother, a big St. Louis Cardinals supporter.
The smaller Glock, along with her ID would then go into her fanny pack.
After the run – today a short three-miler on the bike path, not as long as usual, but long enough − she would change into comfortable cut-off sweats and a T-shirt, go to the kitchen, and make a protein and fruit smoothie for breakfast, then take it down the hall to her desk and what was waiting there, the nearly two-inch thick study guide for the corporal’s exam.
Department policy required a minimum of two years’ experience to make corporal, and, of course, passing an exam. Her second anniversary on the force would be in early July. The exam − a hundred multiple-choice questions covering topics like patrol and general police practices, traffic and accident investigation, firearms, arrest procedures, general criminal law, court testimony and rules of evidence; there was a chapter on each topic in the manual − was coming up next Monday.
Four corporal slots were open, so the top four scorers on the exam would earn their stripes. Ro had every intention of being one of those four by spending yet another hour – having already devoted forty-plus hours − to reviewing the many passages she had highlighted in the manual.
At her desk, Ro flipped open the study manual and slipped a CD into her computer; a collection of Telemann’s Essercizii Musici including several trio sonatas for various instruments. A classical music buff, a preference inherited from her father, she favored chamber music to help her concentrate.
***
Although she’d set the alarm next to her bed for 7:15 p.m., Ro rarely needed it, waking up on her own at seven or soon after. This time of year, the sun had already set, and it was dark when she was ready to start her “morning” activities before going to work.
Preferring to sleep naked, Ro untangled herself from the queen-size bed’s flannel sheets and greeted the teddy bear perched on the dresser, “Hi, Peter.” She then retrieved the T-shirt and cutoffs which always ended up on the floor next to the bed and slipped them on.
After a stop in the bathroom, she headed down two flights of stairs to the building’s foyer to retrieve the mail, her usual first “morning” task. Most of the time it was ads for unwanted stuff, occasionally a bill, and rarely a personal message.
Today there was a thick, business-size envelope of heavier paper stock, the return address from the Parker Institute in Los Angeles. Ro was pretty sure as to what it was, but instead of tearing it open on the spot, smiled to herself, and savored the moment by going back upstairs, making herself a cup of tea, and sitting down at the dining room table to read the letter:
Dear Ms. Delahanty:
By the authority vested in me as President of Parker National Institute of Criminal Justice and upon the recommendation of the faculty, the purpose of this letter is to officially acknowledge you have successfully completed all the requirements for and are hereby awarded a Bachelor of Science in Law Enforcement, magna cum laude, as of March 1, 2005. Congratulations.
She stared at the paper, smiling. I’m a college graduate!
Although her last required class and her last term paper were both completed before Christmas, and her grade – an A, like most – had arrived late in January… And even though a letter like this was expected… Now, seeing it officially in print was amazing.
Ro supposed there had to be at least a couple million undergraduate degrees awarded every year, but still they were not that common. And, yes, several of her sheriff’s department colleagues had bachelor’s, a couple of officers even had master’s degrees. But an everyday street cop like her − which is how she always proudly thought of herself − with a college degree was still a rarity.
Bachelor of Science in Law Enforcement.
It had been a long time coming. After graduating from high school in 2001, she started a Criminal Justice Associates at Mississippi Valley Community College over in Illinois, but later switched to Parker’s online program. Over the last four years it had meant literally hundreds of hours reading textbooks, doing research, writing papers, and taking part in the interminable online discussion groups.
Magna cum laude− with distinction.
It had been worth it.
The rest of the letter explained her transcript was available upon request, in case needed by her employer or for pursuing further education; Parker Institute held graduation ceremonies twice a year, the next one being in June at the college’s campus in Los Angeles; or, if preferred, they would mail her degree. There was even a brochure offering framing motifs in varying levels of elegance.
With a smile, although also with a little tearing around the edge of her eyes, Ro stood up from the dining room table and walked down the hall to first show Peter Panda the letter. Then spent a big chunk of the rest of her “morning” on the phone with her mother and father, her brother Tuck, her boyfriend Frank, and her best friend Atti, sharing the news.
© 2024 by David F. Ramacitti, writing as Dave Lager