California Blue by FutureCanadaCop - Chapter 2

[FutureCanadaCop]

Here's Chapter 2 of my story. For easy reference, I've again posted the list of the codes the San Carlos County Sheriff's Office utilizes.

Enjoy! :D

10-0 Use Caution
10-1 Unable to Copy - Change Location
10-2 Signal Good
10-3 Stop Transmitting
10-4 Acknowledgment (OK)
10-5 Relay
10-6 Busy - Standby Unless Urgent
10-7 Out of Service
10-8 In Service
10-9 Repeat
10-10 Fight in Progress
10-11 Dog Case
10-12 Standby
10-13 Weather Information - Road Report
10-14 Prowler Report
10-15 Civil Disturbance
10-16 Domestic Disturbance
10-17 Meet Complainant
10-18 Quickly
10-19 Return To…
10-20 Location
10-21 Telephone
10-22 Disregard
10-23 Arrived at Scene
10-24 Assignment Completed
10-25 Meet In Person With...
10-26 Detaining Suspect, Expedite
10-27 Drivers License Information
10-28 Vehicle Registration Information
10-29 Check for Wanted
10-30 Unnecessary Use of Force
10-31 Crime in Progress
10-32 Man with Gun
10-33 Emergency
10-34 Riot
10-35 Major Crime Alert
10-36 Correct Time
10-37 (Investigate) Suspicious Vehicle
10-38 Stopping Suspicious Vehicle
10-39 Urgent - Use Light, Siren
10-40 Silent Run - No Light, Siren
10-40A Lighted Run – Use Lights, No Siren
10-41 Beginning Tour of Duty
10-42 Ending Tour of Duty
10-43 Information
10-44 Permission to leave…For…
10-45 Animal Carcass At…
10-46 Assist Motorist
10-47 Emergency Road Repair At…
10-48 Traffic Standard Repair At…
10-49 Traffic Light Out At...
10-50 Accident (Fatal, Personal Injury, Property Damage)
10-51 Wrecker Needed
10-52 Ambulance Needed
10-53 Road Blocked At...
10-54 Livestock on Highway
10-55 Suspected DUI
10-56 Intoxicated Pedestrian
10-57 Hit and Run (Fatal, Personal Injury, Property Damage)
10-58 Direct Traffic
10-59 Convoy or Escort
10-60 Squad in Vicinity
10-61 Isolate Self for Message
10-62 Reply to Message
10-63 Prepare to Make Written Copy
10-64 Message for Local Delivery
10-65 Net Message Assignment
10-66 Message Cancellation
10-67 Clear for Net Message
10-68 Dispatch Information
10-69 Message Received
10-70 Fire
10-71 Advise Nature of Fire
10-72 Report Progress on Fire
10-73 Smoke Report
10-74 Negative
10-75 In Contact With...
10-76 En Route...
10-77 ETA (Estimated Time Arrival)
10-78 Need Assistance
10-79 Notify Coroner
10-80 Chase in Progress
10-81 Breathalyzer
10-82 Reserve Lodging
10-83 Work School Crossing At...
10-84 If Meeting...Advise ETA
10-85 Delayed Due To...
10-86 Officer/Operator on Duty
10-87 Pickup/Distribute Checks
10-88 Present Telephone Number of...
10-89 Bomb Threat
10-90 Bank Alarm At...
10-91 Pick Up Prisoner / Subject
10-92 Improperly Parked Vehicle
10-93 Blockade
10-94 Drag Racing
10-95 Prisoner / Subject in Custody
10-96 Mental Subject
10-97 Check (Test) Signal
10-98 Prison / Jail Break
10-99 Wanted / Stolen Indication

Disposition Codes
11-30 Unnecessary use of radio
11-33 Emergency at Office
11-34 Riot at jail complex
11-39 Warning Issued
11-40 Ticket/Citation Issued
11-61 Maintain Radio Silence, possible unauthorized listeners
11-95 Traffic Stop
11-98 Returning to Patrol

+++++++++

Chapter 2

Damn. 10-80, a high-speed pursuit; one of the most dangerous aspects of the job. After O’Neill and Coleman called their pursuit in, I heard calls from cars all over the county as they began to make their way from their patrol areas towards 433 to aid the two officers. I myself turned on my red and blue top lights and siren, turned the truck around and headed back west on the highway. Although our county is a fairly large one, the long open stretches of road allowed officers in more remote areas to make good time towards scenes of major incidents.

“Comm, Baker-303 is 10-76 to back up on the 10-80.”

“10-4, Baker-303.”

As I drove, I thought over possible places the suspect might be heading. State Route 433 was one of the two main thoroughfares in the county, and thusly had dozens of county roads branching off of it that led off to the remotest of remote locations. A number of these also led to Interstate 10, the other main route. We had to try to keep him off the interstate for sure, because if he hit that, he could be out of our jurisdiction in a lot shorter time. Arizona was less than an hour away at freeway speeds, and we could not pursue him across the state line without permission.

“Comm, get ahold of the CHP. See if they have anybody in the area that can watch the freeway for us.”

“10-4.”

Only a few seconds after hanging up the radio mike, the voice of another officer came on the channel. I recognized her as Sergeant Monica Parsons, an officer assigned to the Sierra Canyon post. “CHP 971 to San Carlos Sheriff Baker-303, I’m at milepost 265 on I-10. I’ll put some speed on and keep an eye on your exits.” Her car’s siren and increasing roar of the engine echoed from the background.

“10-4, 971. Thanks for the assist.”

+++++++++

“Baker-305 is 10-93 at the intersection of SR 433 and County X-22,” The voice of Staff Sergeant Ryan Heiss broke over the radio, announcing he had formed a road blockade at the intersection of the two roads. Heiss had been a jail officer for over ten years until he had injured his back when the large drunk he had been in the middle of processing lost a battle with consciousness and collapsed on top of him. Although his injury had not been very severe, it was enough to keep him from exerting all the force that was sometimes needed to control the most rebellious drunks. He had been serving as a patrol deputy for the last two and a half years.

Although the roadblock sounded like a good thing, state and county law both prohibited us from completely blocking a road unless the suspect was wanted for a major felony crime. So far all we had on the guy was leaving the scene of a crime and both evading police and arrest. One serious misdemeanor and a pair of low-grade felonies, unless he was stupid enough to try and ram one us during the chase. Which would up the evading charge to felony assault on a police officer, and kick both the other charges up to mid-level felony range.

Looking ahead down the road, I caught side of the flashing lights on the roof of Ryan’s car. As we got closer, I saw that the Ford Police Interceptor was parked sideways on the road, blocking the left lane completely and covering half the right lane with the front of the car. As the law demanded, he’d left room for the suspect to get by him, or turn him on to a side road, County Road X-22, which branched off to the right at the intersection just short of where Ryan was parked.

+++++++++

A single bead of perspiration ran down the side of Sergeant Heiss’s face and onto the stock of his 12-gauge Winchester shotgun. Shaking it off, the sergeant continued to squint down the sights of the long gun at the pursuit, coming towards him over a small hill. One or more 00 buck shells, each of which was equivalent to nine .32-caliber bullets wrapped into one cartridge, would be the response to any threatening move by the driver of the pickup.

The driver of the pickup slammed on his brakes about fifty feet from the intersection and began sliding sideways towards Baker-305.

Don’t you date hit my car, you son of a *****, Ryan thought as he moved from his position behind the squad. About five feet short of the cruiser, however, the truck stopped and the driver could be seen trying to restart the vehicle. As Ryan got there, the truck turned over and the driver peeled off up X-22. The staff sergeant raced back to his own vehicle and climbed in.

“Baker-305, Comm; suspect is now northbound on County X-22, I’m joining in the pursuit.”

“10-4.”

+++++++++

County Road X-22 would take the suspect into the shallow, but fair-sized Haven Canyon. It contained the town of West Fair Haven, their two-man police department and a number of farms. West Fair Haven had been settled over 150 years ago as a rest stop and commune by a group of German settlers on a tributary of the Sierra River, and grown into a small fairly successful farming hamlet. The township had originally been named Westphalhafen, and the name had been corrupted over the years to its present form.

As the cavalcade of cop cars and trucks entered the canyon, the paved road ended and we hit gravel. Very dry, throw-a-lot-of-dust-back-at-you kind of gravel. Beams from our emergency lights played oddly through the clouds of dust. Everybody had to slow down to avoid causing a chain reaction accident, but there was little room for other maneuvers. The road was only about twenty feet wide, with thick scrub brush separating the road from the farmland and the river on one side and a sheer valley wall on the other.

After a few minutes of groping our way slowly through the dust storm, we hit paved road again as we reached the town limits of West Fair Haven, leaving the cloud of grit behind.

“Baker-305, I can’t see him ahead of us, it looks like we’ve lost him.”

“Baker-304 to 302, should I contact West Fair Haven PD and have them see if he’s in town?”

Lieutenant O’Neill’s replying “10-4” sounded a little testy. He was probably pissed he hadn’t thought of that first.

While Brad switched channels on his radio to contact the West Fair Haven officer, I reached out on our radio channel to the patrol deputy assigned to this area, Corporal Harry Miller. “Baker-303 to Baker-309; you with us?” Harry was a younger officer, but was extremely sharp and always seemed to be the voice of reason when things got tough.

“10-4.”

“You know of any places along X-22 in the valley here where the suspect might have been able to turn off and lose us?”

“10-4, there’s a few access roads and hidden drives along there between town and the and the road back out of the valley, but they’re all dead ends except the one to the old Bates farm.”

Ah, the Bates place, why didn’t I think of that? The old homestead was a remote farm where the Bates family had built a large farm and house around the turn of the century. The farm had failed in the early fifties and the family had sold the house by 1960. The old abandoned house had been given the obvious nickname of the ‘Bates Motel’ because of its builders, size and foreboding exterior. About the only excitement there nowadays was the local teenagers gathering there for parties. Losing one’s virginity there was considered a right of passage in San Carlos County’s high schools.

But the thing was, it seemed kind of foolish to hide there, even after having a few beers. There was only one way in and out, and we’d cover that when we went in after him, and besides the bush, the house and a few degrading outbuildings, there was no place to hide. Nevertheless…

“10-4, Harry. Baker-303 to 302; if the West Fair Haven car reports 10-74 on our guy, I’d like to swing back and check out the Bates Motel.”

“10-4.”

After a few more moments, 304 came back on the sheriff’s frequency. “Baker-302, 10-74 from the West Fair Haven car, he hasn’t seen our guy in town.”

“Okay. Baker-303, you, 305 and 309 go back towards the Bates place, the rest of us will go through town to double check the guy’s not there. I’ll get some 10-78 going to assist you.”

“10-4.” I pulled off on to the shoulder, killed my siren and allowed the rest of the caravan to pass before turning around and following Sergeant Heiss and the Chevrolet Caprice that was Baker-309 back up the canyon road. About a mile back up the road, Harry suddenly braked and turned into a dried out dirt trail flanked by trees and thick brush. Ryan, not expecting the maneuver, had almost put his car’s engine into Harry’s car’s trunk.

“Ever heard of a turn signal, 309?” Ryan commented over the radio. There was no answer from Harry.

We three played follow the leader over the uneven track, try to pick out a reasonably good route on the terrible lane. Although even my truck had some difficulty navigating, I had to smile watching the two low-slung patrol cars struggle even more over the roughhewn terrain. About a half-mile went by before we emerged to an open plain, surrounded by more overgrown brush. Off to the right was a large old barn that looked to be on the verge of collapse and an only slightly smaller degrading metal and wood frame shed, with two much smaller sheds a short distance away. Between them and the old house off to the left were a couple of fenced dried-out fields that hadn’t held crops in a long time, along with a third small shed. And as the crowning touch, the crapped-out blue truck belonging to our suspect was parked near the house.

The three of us moved our cars along the wide lane that led around the fields to the open area near the farmhouse, making room for our backup to follow us.

“Comm, Baker-303, -305 and -309 are 10-23 and out of the car at the Bates property.” I called in as the three of us got out of our vehicles.

“10-4.” The reply from the dispatcher was partially washed out by static. Radio communications with dispatch in this canyon was never the greatest and having us in an overgrown part of it only caused more interference.

Harry retrieved the AR-15 rifle from the trunk of his car, loading a magazine into the rifle while I removed the shotgun from the rack in the cab of my truck. Ryan, his long gun already at hand, covered us while we two prepared our weapons. I jacked a round into the chamber of the shotgun by working the pump action and put on a blue baseball cap that had an NYPD Emergency Squad patch on it. It was one of the many hats I had collected, as I served as the official patch and memorabilia trader in our department.

The three of us waited, looking around apprehensively, scanning the bushes for any suspicious movement. The property was simply too large for only three of us to search, we’d have to wait until there was enough of us on scene to cover the house, the outbuildings, the open areas and the bush all at once. That would leave our suspect with no place to hide.

“Any theories why the guy would come here?” I offered.

“Ah, who the hell knows with those people from the roadhouse,” Ryan replied. He had served on the department long enough to develop a strong sense of apathy towards anybody from that particular establishment.

“Well, if someone was looking a place to sober up in peace, this would be it,” Harry smirked.

Harry’s smirk faded when there was a sudden rustling in the bushes about twenty feet from where we stood. All three of us whirled with our weapons at the ready. “Sheriff’s Office!” Harry commanded. “Come out with your hands up!”

The only response came in the form of more frantic rustling. “Sheriff’s Office!” Ryan repeated. “Come out with your hands up!” More rustling, something was coming out of those bushes.

“Sheriff’s Office! This is your last warning!” I bellowed. “Come on out with your hands in the air!” There was only more rustling. “Don’t shoot unless we got a target!” I hissed at the others.

After a few seconds, a small blur raced out of the brush and took to the air with a loud cry. Our ‘suspect’ was nothing more than a startled common brown quail. With another chuckle, Harry lowered his AR-15 and flicked on the safety. “Well, at least you two had the right weapons to hunt it,” he deadpanned. Ryan shot the younger officer a look.

The only other sounds besides our own conversations came about four or five minutes after we arrived, when two other police vehicles; a red and white Ford Explorer from the Navajo Tribal Police and a Crown Victoria from the sheriff’s office, rolled in to join us. The driver of the truck, Tribal Police Corporal Leo Three Ravens; call sign Navajo Nation Twelve; was a patrol officer assigned to the Garden Creek Reservation. The Crown Vic, sheriff’s unit Baker-308, contained two officers, patrol deputy Corporal Jerry Bachmann, and one of our reserve officers, Reserve First Sergeant Ray Browne.

The reserve officers were people who worked only part-time with the sheriff’s office and had other jobs elsewhere in the community. They were trained in most of our procedures and served to bolster our numbers in times of emergency. They usually got stuck with some of the most boring work we had to offer, such as guarding crime scenes, but they never complained. Many of the reservists had served for upwards of fifteen years; Ray was the senior of them, having worked for the department for nearly twenty-six years. He was a senior clerk in a grocery store in real life.

Jerry had transferred into the sheriff’s office about four years ago from serving in the police department in the town of Los Campos. His dad, Roger Bachmann, was the chief of the six-man department. Transferring to the sheriff’s office provided the younger Bachmann with better money and better hours. He had a reputation as a bit of a party animal off-duty, but since he never let his personal life interfere with his professional activities, the department brass ignored this trait. The young officer was also a valuable source of information about the activities of our local youths.

Soon after, Bryan and Brad, along with the on-duty officer from West Fair Haven PD, Sergeant Dominic Crosati, arrived on scene and the lieutenant took charge. “Okay, Jerry, Ray and I will check the house. Ryan, Dominic and Leo, check the barn and the sheds. Scott, Brad and Harry, you got the perimeter.” We split up to our assigned areas. I was glad I didn’t have to go through the house; I hate spiders, and that house was sure to have plenty of them.

The three of us assigned to the perimeter split up, having agreed to make our way around in three separate directions and meet up again on the other side. Ryan was going around to the far left, Harry was going to make a circle around the two dried-up fenced fields and then move up from there and I was moving around to the right.

Normally, we would have called in at least one of our department’s five canine officers to help us search an area this big. As luck would have it, however, three of the dogs and handlers were a hundred miles away in Palm Springs on a mandated state training course, and the other two dogs were laid up at home, sick as…well, dogs. One had been stung by an insect about a week ago and was out on antibiotics, and the other had gotten sick eating something he’d begged from one of the dispatchers. So we were on our own.

I moved slowly around the right edge of the property, occasionally looking round the surrounding area, but for the most part keeping my eyes on the thick scrub brush. There were few solid objects to hide behind and moving through it was out of the question. It was so dried out that even the slightest movement would have set off a racket of crunching leaves and snapping twigs. Any splash of color from the suspect’s clothes would also be instantly visible amongst the mass of brown and tan.

Looking over, I saw Dominic disappear into one of the small sheds with his service revolver and flashlight foremost with Leo standing by outside with his shotgun. The burly sergeant reappeared outside a few moments later and the two officers moved on towards the other small shed. This time, Leo moved into the shed with Dominic covering. Losing interest, I returned to scouting the perimeter.

After a few moments, there was a burst of static from my radio, followed by Leo’s voice and a strange creaking mechanical sound. “Hey guys, somebody’s repaired the machinery and the batteries for the old irrigation pump in here. The batteries are charged and the pump is drawing water from the river and sending it somewhere.”

Lieutenant O’Neill’s voice came on the channel. “Can you tell where, Leo?”

“There’s only two pipes leading out of the shed; one drawing the water out of the river and one out to the irrigation system in the fields.”

“Okay. Harry, check out the irrigation system in the field.”

“10-4.”

Harry moved over to where the underground pipe from the shed ran to the shed near the fields. The pump was still there, but the line off to the fields had been cut and a second line spliced off, this line vanishing back into the ground. The old high capacity lead-acid battery cells here too had been repaired and were being used to power the pump. Someone had gone to an awful lot of trouble to rebuild the aging machinery, but for what purpose?

The corporal pressed the transmit button on his shoulder mike. “Okay, the pump out here at the fields is running, somebody has split a pipe off the line to the irrigation system and it leads back underground in another direction.”

++++++++

Ever since the initial chase, I had been piecing together the bits of evidence we had in one corner of my mind. Our suspect gets into a fight at a bar…runs like a scared rabbit when we show up…leads us to this remote place…where somebody’s spent a lot of time repairing a bunch of old hardware…

A conclusion suddenly formed; definitely something clandestine, definitely something illegal. Drugs. A marijuana grow-op maybe, or even a meth lab.

I squeezed the talk button on my own radio mike. “Does anybody else here get the feeling we got a pot farm or a meth lab on the property some place?”

“Definitely possible,” Ryan replied.

“But where?” Dominic remarked. “There aren’t any buildings here we haven’t searched.”

“Underground, maybe?” Ray offered.

“I doubt it. Below ten feet around here there’s nothing but sandstone,” Harry continued.

“Why don’t we get Leo to try and track the water pipe?” Bryan queried.

While some of the members of the tribal police department were only part Indian or non-native, Leo Three Ravens was a full-blooded Navajo tribesman and possessed a legendary tracking ability. He had tracked everything from stray dogs to armed suspects on the run, but I was sure that tracing the patch of the water pipe would be an impossible challenge.

“No problem, lieutenant. I’ll give it a try.” Leo replied.

+++++++++

Leo and some of the others made their way towards the pump shed. The tribal cop walked around the pump shed once in absolute silence. Pausing once he’d completed the loop, he crouched down, closed his eyes and stood stock still for about thirty seconds. To anybody who had never seen the tracker in action before probably would think that he wasn’t even breathing. Suddenly his eyes reopened and he silently began moving towards where Sergeant Larsen was patrolling the perimeter. He was walking in a sort of crouching/squatting position that looked uncomfortable as hell with his head tilted slightly toward the ground.

“How does he do that?” Jerry whispered.

“What? Walk like a Russian Cossack dancer or track water running in an underground pipe?” Ray Browne responded in an equal hush.

+++++++++

By now I was about two-thirds away through my sweep of my part of the perimeter when I looked over and saw the some of the others moving as a loose-knit group along the northern edge of the fenced fields. I was distracted just long enough to stumble over a rock that was jutting out of the ground.

Steadying myself, I muttered a couple of choice curses as I picked up the jutted-out rock that I had inadvertently stumbled over and threw it forcefully into the bushes. But instead of the rustling expected when it landed in the scrub, a loud metallic clang echoed from the shrubbery.

“What the hell…” I was on the radio in seconds. “Guys, I got something over here.”

No sooner was the transmit button released than footsteps echoed behind me. “Jeez, that was quick.”

“I tracked the sound of the water pipe in this direction,” Leo explained, now walking fully upright.

“What do you have, sergeant?” O’Neill cut in.

I explained what had happened, trying to minimize the sound of my own carelessness for tripping over the rock in the first place. Finally, I picked up another rock and flung it into the bushes. The same clang echoed back to the group.

Slowly, we began moving our way slowly into the brush. It was thick, and the nine of us probably sounded like a herd of stampeding elephants, even at our snails pace. When we broke through, we found another clearing with what looked to be another wood and metal shed thickly adorned with camouflage paint and assorted limbs and branches. A rutted dirt track led back out into the brush from the right rear corner of the building.

Bryan immediately motioned for Leo, Ryan, Ray and Jerry to flank out for perimeter security. He gathered the rest of us in a group.

“Scott, take the left side, move around to the back. Harry, you got the right side; Brad, check out that track over there. Dominic, you and I will hold here.”

“From the looks of this shed, it’s been here a long time,” Dominic mused, “it was probably part of the original farm that just got overgrown and forgotten.”

“Until now,” Bryan commented.

I moved slowly down the side of the shed. There were a few small windows along the length of the building, but all were either covered with black plastic on the inside or painted over on the outside. The black plastic was a classic sign of a pot farm.

With my shotgun in front of me, I rounded the corner to the back of the shed. Studying that side of the building, I noticed what appeared to be a small door for letting people in and out and a larger wooden door for admitting vehicles. The person door was slightly open into the pitch darkness of the building. On seeing this, I keyed my shoulder mike. “Okay, I’ve got two doors on the back side of the shed, and one of them is open. We might have someone inside.”

“Wait for a minute,” Lieutenant O’Neill replied, “I’ll get Brad and Harry to check it out with you.”

“10-4.” I heard the lieutenant on the radio directing the other two officers to assist me and then their acknowledgements. I had turned away from the door slightly to use my radio and had just turned back when I heard someone moving.

“Coleman, Miller, that you?” I whispered, but in my gut I knew there was no way they’d be that close that quickly. There was no answer. I raised my shotgun and took a couple of steps closer to the door. It was then that the door flew open and a blur of motion was on top of me before I could react.