Falling in Love (5 page)

The driver pulled over immediately,
doing a nice, calm, professional job of it with no games and no
hesitation.

***

After reading off the license plate
for dispatch and listening for a moment, Laine hung up the
dashboard microphone, and stepped out of the car. They had nothing
on the registered owner. The owner was a local resident. A ten
year-old car, it was really not a desirable item for
thieves.

It was best to keep an open mind,
though

She kept her hand on her holster and
approached the driver’s door. There appeared to be only one
occupant.

“
May I see your driver’s
license, ownership and insurance, please?”

“
Ah, yes
Ma’am.”

His hands were a bit shaky, but then
she could smell it and he’d have to be some kind of a fool not to
know it.

She took the documents back to her car
for study.

They appeared to be in order, all
matching up nicely. The driver’s license photo more or less
resembled the driver. Proper identification was a must. She
notified the dispatcher.

“
He’s been burning a blunt
or something. I’m going to ask him to step out.”

“
Roger that, Unit Nine.
Fourteen’s not far.”

“
Thank you.”

She approached the driver’s door
again.

“
Sir, I’ll have to ask you
to please step out of the vehicle.”

The door opened and the man got out.
He was half a head taller than her. Caucasian, brown hair, brown
eyes. Good chin. He looked her in the eye, and raised his eyebrows.
He gave a funny little sigh when he looked at her. She kind of
liked that for some reason.

“
Would you mind stepping
around to the back of the vehicle.”

“
Yes, Ma’am.”

She had him wait there, with the
lights of the cruiser full on him. He seemed pretty cooperative.
She took out her flashlight, and tried to keep her hand on her
holster, which was arguably impossible when you were bending over
and off balance. Nuts. Laine was a pretty good judge of characters
and situations after a few years on the job.

She bent in and opened up the
glove-box.

She checked the little compartment in
the console and shone her light in the floor-wells of the back
seat. She could clearly see him out through the rear window,
standing patiently at ease, with his hands out of his pockets and
making no sudden moves.

Nice.

She crouched way down and took a look
under the seats. She dropped the sun visors in case he had stuffed
anything up there. Nothing in the door pockets. There were no signs
or smell of alcohol. No pills, no mysterious containers…just that
smell. A lot of stale tobacco and a little bit of stale cold coffee
smell was there too, just to make it interesting. Her nose was
trained and experienced.

She withdrew and went around to the
cruiser again as he stood in the cold. Her door thudded. Her
footsteps crunched over to him, her shadow large and looming. It
was all very dramatic. Their breathing sounded loud in the sudden
silence. The only sound other than their two idling engines was the
trucks six or eight kilometres over to the west.

She handed him back his
papers.

“
Sir, have you been
smoking marijuana?”

“
Ah, yes, Constable.”
White vapor hung in front of his face.

She was facing away from the wind and
it just whipped away.

With the wind chill, they said it was
supposed to go down to minus twenty-five.

“
Do you have any on
you?”

“
No, Constable. I chucked
it.”

“
You chucked it?
Where?”

“
On the road.”

She considered it.

“
I can smell it in your
car.”

“
Ah, yes, I know,
Constable.”

“
I don’t like it when
people lie to me.”

“
I wouldn’t lie to you,
Officer.”

“
And you don’t have any on
you?”

“
No, Ma’am.”

“
All right, sir. Your
license plate bulb is burned out. That’s why I stopped
you.”

The guy took a quick look, and found
it was true.

“
I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
I probably have a spare in my toolbox.”

“
Not too many people go
down that road. Especially at night.”

He just nodded.

“
How much marijuana have
you smoked?”

“
I only had one joint,
Constable. I just lit up. Then I saw you go by. Your taillights
disappeared, and then I saw headlights, coming up where they had no
right to be. There was just no way. I knew it was you.”

He kept looking at her,
blinking at more or less the expected rate…
hmn.

Nothing personal, it’s
just that I saw you coming.

“
Okay. I’m going to ask
you to put your hands on the back of your vehicle. Lean forward.
Feet back. Feet farther apart. Back a bit more.” He was still
cooperating. “Hold still, please. I’m just going to check your
pockets. Do you have anything sharp in your pockets?’

“
Um. No, Ma’am. Nothing
sharp in my pockets.”

The man huddled there as she rummaged
around with her left hand, her tight hand on the butt of her Colt
and moving to one side or the other as necessary. Keeping an eye on
his face and posture, necessarily much of her search was by
feel.

The keys were in the car, and the
wallet was on the seat. He didn’t have much on him, although he did
seem to have a lot of pockets.

“
Nothing in your shoes,
sir?”

“
Ah, no, Ma’am.” He seemed
resigned, not particularly resentful.

His head turned and he gave her a
grin.

That one came out of
nowhere.

Spontaneity.

Huh. I like it.

“
All right, I’ll take your
word for it.” That grin said something about him,
anyway.

She gave him back his cigarettes and
lighter. There were a few small coins. Nothing much.

“
All right, sir. Get back
in your car and wait for me there, okay?” It was a standard ploy,
almost.

The really dumb ones, the ones with
paper, or warrants, or restrictions on their bail, sometimes took
off. They knew they were going back to jail. There were the wild
spirits, and every town had a few of those, mostly young and
stupid, drunk or whatever, but this one wasn’t one of
them.

She was pretty sure of
that.

First impressions were often pretty
accurate.

It wasn’t deliberate provocation as
long as they treated everyone the same way. It was their choice,
nothing more.

She watched him get in and then she
sat in her car for a moment talking it over with
dispatch.

Details, details. Other units didn’t
seem very busy as she listened to a few calls.

She was just making the gentleman
sweat a little.

Even if she caught him with a joint or
a couple of grams, he had no criminal record and it wouldn’t bring
much joy anyway. What was the point?

Twenty-eight years old by the birth
date. He was old enough to know better.

Only a couple of years older than she
was.

Proving impairment was dicey. Taking
his story at face value, and with her own impression of him. He had
been recorded on her dashboard cam and the fellow was behaving well
enough.

Among other things, he
didn’t try to lie to her. That took
something,
what exactly that was she
couldn’t quite say.

Self-respect, maybe, or was it just
bowing to the inevitable? He seemed calm and in control of
himself.

She got out again and went up to his
door.

“
Okay, sir. We’re going to
let you go. Incidentally, it’s a bad idea to smoke pot and drive.
There are laws against impaired driving too. But that’s it for this
time. Get that light fixed and drive safely, please.”

“
Thank you, Constable. And
please don’t take this the wrong way—”

She looked him in the eye. It wasn’t
unfriendly. She wasn’t judging him, or making any other
comment.

“
And what’s that,
sir?”

“
What’s your
name?”

She approved in spite of herself, and
didn’t over-react. People had the right to know who they were
dealing with. They were all accountable, otherwise it was just
tyranny. There was some semblance of guts in it.

“
My name is Constable
Barrett. Good night, sir.”

She watched fumble to put his papers
back in his wallet. Hands still shaking.

Hmn,

He reached down, rolled up his window
and seemed to take a deep breath as they exchanged one last
look.

Laine watched him start up, signal,
and pull carefully out into the road. His taillights receded into
the night, and as she approached her own vehicle, her radio was
again buzzing with calls from dispatch.

She was prepared to quickly forget the
incident.

***

Not so fast, maybe.

Shit.

Such a nice guy, too, but things were
not always what they seemed.

“
Dispatch. Unit Nine
here.”

“
Come in
please?”

“
Looks like we got us a
live one here. A real winner, even. Will advise.”

“
What’s up, Unit
Nine?”

The air hung heavy as Laine watched
the mirror.

The guy went on down the road, and
then he must have found a laneway in the darkness and the driving
snow. Seeing Laine pull a careful U-turn and head off in the
opposite direction must have been too much for him.

Maybe taking him at face value was a
mistake.

That whole nice-guy act.

He might be dumber than he looked.
Maybe he was coming back for the dope—and maybe it was more than
just a joint or two. Otherwise why take the risk? Maybe a lot more,
although she hadn’t seen much of anything on the road surface in
her two brief swipes at it. There was at least a quarter or a half
an inch of snow adhering to the surface. Swirling white vortices
swept across the tarmac from the southwest. He could have chucked
it in the ditch or maybe the wind blew some small package off the
road…

She was westbound on MacTavish.
Situational awareness.

“
Who’s in the area,
Dispatch?”

“
Unit Fourteen is holding
at two concessions east, MacTavish and Enniskillen Concession Six,
copy?”

“
Copy.” Standard procedure
when they had the units available.

Someone was always nearby, even if you
couldn’t see them.

The snow-devils danced in the
headlights of oncoming cars as Laine tried to see if the guy was
going real slow or if he stopped or anything. He seemed to be
coming along at a pretty good rate of speed, although that could be
deceptive at night. It’s just that she had slowed down.

Her speed was dropping, having lifted
off the throttle as soon as she became aware of what was happening.
Touching the brakes would have warned him. She wanted to see what
he did next.

What if the driver..
no,
suspect
—she
mentally revised his tag on pure instinct, was following her?
Keeping her vehicle off the gravel and out of the other lane was
plenty of distraction. The roads were slippery.

She could only devote so much
attention to the mirror.

The headlights blinked out. He went
north, or to her right in the mirror.

“
Unit Nine. Okay, he’s
turned north, back onto Pontiac Road.”

Ah, maybe the dope was along there
somewhere. He must have had a minute and a half or so to do
something with it while she was turning around. The fellow wasn’t
completely stupid, that was for sure. Never underestimate a
perp.

“
Roger that.”

“
Unit Fourteen. Check that
out please. I’m turning around ASAP, ETA about three
minutes.”

Coming up from the same direction,
behind the perp, the guy would never guess the headlights in his
mirror were a second unit.

“
Fourteen is inbound.
Repeat, inbound.”

With a little luck, the guy would be
careless and think he was all free and clear.

***

Somewhat to her relief, the little car
kept going. It was still dawdling along at seventy kilometres an
hour or so, north on Pontiac Road, and it soon re-entered the city
at the stop-light intersection on the outskirts of Pomfret,
population 74,000.

That was much ado about nothing. She
still hadn’t seen any baggies or packages, not even a smoke pack or
a beer can, no fast-food packaging, nothing on the road or along
the verge where the snow was piled high. They had now lost the
chain of evidence, or custody, and it was over.