Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

“Well,” the detective said, “with all of your people, sir, and with the officers loaned to this jurisdiction from the surrounding townships, we were able to put more than twenty cars on the road, each with two officers apiece. I split the teams up so that most of the cars that are actually patrolling within the town boundaries have at least one Philly officer. I felt that it would be unduly risky to require the local officers to try and apprehend Ruger and his buddies without experienced help. ”

Terry nodded. He could tell from Ferro’s expression that he was trying hard not to give offense, but at the same time make clear the point that the local cops were rubes and this was work for real professional law enforcement. Had Terry lived in any other town in Bucks County he might have been offended, but in Pine Deep Ferro’s estimation was right on target. Gus Bernhardt was a rube, and because of him the police department was little better than the Keystone Cops. Terry loved his town, but he really had no opinion of the department Gus had built. Look at who Gus had hired. Shirley O’Keefe, who looked like a skinny twenty-?two-?year-?old Meryl Streep, got sick to her stomach every time she had to help with a bad traffic accident. Officer Golub was smart but had no balls. Jim Polk was an alcoholic and was as likely to arrest pink elephants as criminals, and his crony, Dixie MacVey, was on the force just so he could pull traffic duty outside the high school, giving him a legal reason for watching all the teenage girls bounce along. The rest were just as useless.

Until now there hadn’t really been any desperate need to change that, which gave Gus his comfortable stranglehold on the job, but this whole thing had Terry thinking about initiating some changes around here. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought about putting up some money to try and attract one of these Philly officers to try their hand at rural law enforcement.

“So I think we’re as well deployed as we can be,” Ferro said. “Unfortunately for those of us here in the office it’s kind of a hurry up and wait situation. Until we have more to go on, there’s not a whole lot more we can do. ”

“Fine, fine. That’s excellent, Sergeant. ” Terry picked up the coffee cup, looked into its emptiness, sighed again, and set it down. “Is there any more of this, Ginny?”

“Well…” she said doubtfully. “I could make a new pot. ” She made no move to do so.

Terry favored her with a smile. “Would you mind?”

“We do have some instant…. ”

“Why don’t you get the big urn and make enough for everyone?”

“The instant would be easier. ”

“Yeah, but I think the officers would appreciate brewed coffee, what do you say?”

“Tastes the same to me. ”

“Please?” Terry implored, manfully resisting the impulse to strangle her.

Gus tapped her chair with a thick toe. “Shift your ass, Gin. Make some coffee. ”

Ginny stood up, and with all the self-?sacrificing grandeur of Sydney Carton mounting the guillotine steps, she turned and headed for the kitchen.

The four men watched her go. When she was out of earshot, Terry said to Gus, “I’m telling you, Gus, one of these days I’m going to shoot her. ”

“I’ll load your gun for you. ”

“She’s a royal pain in my butt. ”

“Mine too, but we’re stuck with her. Who else could do her job?”

“A trained monkey?”

“Maybe, but where you gonna find one that’ll work for what we pay her?”

LaMastra cracked up but, catching sight of Ferro’s unsmiling face, turned the laugh into a cough and then busied himself with adjusting his tie.

Reaching up, Ferro tapped the map with a knuckle. “The main idea is to go up and down A-32 in a kind of squeeze pattern, checking both sides of the roads for any place where they might have pulled off the main drag. You know, fire access road, farm road, that sort of thing. ”

“Uh-?huh. ”

“Chief,” the sergeant asked, “how many officers are scheduled for the next shift?”

Gus looked at him with bovine blankness. “Well—” he began, but Terry cut him off.

“Sergeant, every officer we have is on the clock right now. Gus called in all the off-?duty people before you guys even got here. ”

Ferro’s face became wooden.

Gus nodded. “That’s right, sir. We only keep a couple of one-?person cars rolling at a time. ” He shrugged. “Don’t need more. ”

“Haven’t until now,” Terry amended.