Story Excerpts

Into the Weeds
by Alice Hatcher 

The hardest thing about being a small-town cop in northern Vermont is that, most days, you don’t do much, and on the days you do, no one wants to know what you did. On a typical day, I’m issuing speeding tickets to tourists flying down back roads in BMWs and Audis—we call them moose bait—on their way to lake houses and ski resorts. Other days, I’m responding to domestic violence calls, administering Narcan to overdoses, arresting drunk drivers, or securing the scenes of car crashes, hunting accidents, and suicides. I mop up after local tragedies, and there’s no one to talk about it with. No one wants to hear gruesome details about victims they knew, or ugly stories about people they’ll run into at the grocery store. It’s too much horror too close to home. If I’m dealing with a body, I call in the State Police. Otherwise, I work alone. I’m not part of a local police force; I am the local police force, and I probably spend too much time in my head. There’s a certain kind of loneliness that comes from living in a place where you know everyone, but where most people associate you with the worst day of their lives.

I feel it most when I’m having breakfast at the Four Jacks. Most people are polite to me. Some are grateful for the time I gave them a ride home after their car broke down, or gave them a warning instead of a speeding ticket, but even those who nod or smile keep their distance. Most people clam up around cops, and in a small town, people don’t want to get tangled up in ugly situations involving their neighbors. I still go to the Four Jacks for breakfast, though. Jeannie’s worked there for years, and even after we broke up that last time, she always found a few minutes between orders to talk to me like a normal person.

The morning Mrs. Stockard marched into the Four Jacks looking for me, Jeannie had called in sick, and the other waitresses were scrambling to cover for her. Everything was taking longer than usual, and I had been sitting by myself at the counter for twenty minutes, studying French words on the bilingual menu for truckers from Quebec, scrolling on my phone for news about the heat wave hitting the Northeast, and fantasizing about applying for a job on a larger police force in a different town. The fact is, though, I’m too old to make a serious career move and too young to retire. In a different line of work, I might coast to retirement, but quiet quitting isn’t an option when you’re a cop. When a call comes, you have to answer. You have to deal with whatever tragedy is on tap. With every kind of personality. With people like Mrs. Stockard.

I was rubbing an arthritic finger when she angled up to the counter. “I thought I’d find you here, having a late breakfast,” she said, as Mary Watkins set an omelet and a side of home fries in front of me.

I turned sideways on my stool to find Mrs. Stockard scrutinizing me with her piercing blue eyes. She hadn’t addressed me as “Mark” or “Mr. Rousseau” or “Officer Rousseau,” and I had to remind myself she never bothered with niceties or formalities. I wasn’t special in Mrs. Stockard’s world. Nobody was. Given my mood, I found that almost refreshing.

Mary filled my coffee cup and placed a check next to my plate. “I’ll leave this here, Mark.” She gave a sideways glance at Mrs. Stockard and moved down the counter, filling mugs and making small talk with people who had been keeping their backs to me all morning.

“How are you, Mrs. Stockard?” I placed my arm on the counter to brace myself. People who don’t know any better—tourists—would probably call Mrs. Stockard “spry” or “feisty.” I would call her “mean.”

“I’m perfectly fine, but I’m not here to talk about myself,” she stated. “I’m here to report a man who walked into my truck as I was driving down Mill Road this morning.”

“Slow down, Mrs. Stockard,” I said, raising my palm.

She recoiled slightly from my hand. “Am I talking too fast for you? It’s simple. I saw a man, heard a thud, and then didn’t see anyone.”

“Did you look in your rearview mirror?” I had to ask. People talking to cops often equivocate. I probably shouldn’t have bothered asking Mrs. Stockard for clarification. She never equivocated.

“Of course I checked my mirror. That was implied when I said I didn’t see anyone.”

“But you saw a man, you said.”

She pushed up the sleeves of her denim shirt. “I said ‘I saw a man’ because I saw a man walking along the road. I heard a thud as I was passing him, and when I checked my rearview mirror, he was gone.”

I couldn’t help wondering if her eighty-five years had finally caught up to her, and her eyesight or mind had degenerated to the point of unreliability. She seemed more annoyed than anything recounting an incident that would have driven most people to tears or panic.

“Is it possible you hit an animal, Mrs. Stockard? A deer?”

“You’re not listening. I said I hit a man. I saw him very clearly.”

“Did you stop to see if he was okay?”

“Of course I didn’t. I’m not going to stop all by my myself to look for some half-crazed druggie hanging around at the edge of the woods.”

“What makes you think he was using drugs, Mrs. Stockard?”

“Who the hell else would be walking along Mill Road, looking like he did, at seven a.m.? He was filthy. Probably out of his mind.”

She had a point. No one ever walked along Mill Road. It didn’t connect anywhere to anything, and there were only three houses—including Jeannie’s—on its five-mile stretch. It was all the more reason to think she had hit a deer. “Let’s go outside and take a look at your truck.” I stood up, tossed a twenty on the counter, and waved to Mary. “Could you box this up and toss it under the warmer? I’ll be back in an hour.”

“Sorry your order took so long. We’re pretty stretched without Jeannie. I’ll catch you later.” She glanced again at Mrs. Stockard. “When things aren’t so busy.”

“These days, people stub their toe and call in sick,” Mrs. Stockard said, weaving between tables on her way to the exit. “When I put my husband in the ground, I was barely thirty years old and had a dairy farm to run. I haven’t taken a day off since. You won’t find me sitting at home, watching TV. Moaning about this, that, or the other. Ever.”

“You’ve led a very healthy life, Mrs. Stockard,” I said, directing conversation away from Jeannie. If Mrs. Stockard’s comments had no foundation, there was no point in correcting them. She had made up her mind about stubbed toes and slacking. “It’s really impressive.”

“It shouldn’t be impressive. It’s what you do, or what I do. I’ve had to fire grown men because they couldn’t lift a fifty-pound bag of feed.” She paused at the exit and waited for me to open the door. “People talk about how they can’t find good help these days. I’ve never been able to find good help. At least the truck’s been reliable.”

She was right about the truck. She drove a faded blue 1993 Ford-250, a beat-up farm truck, though she probably shouldn’t have been driving at all. It was so dinged up from years of use that it would have been difficult to isolate evidence of a recent collision if it wasn’t for the mirror mounted on the passenger door. The glass was badly cracked and barely clinging to its backing within a misaligned frame. The mount’s lower bracket had separated from the door, and paint had been stripped from the edges of the screw holes. The damaged mirror was mounted at the height of a person’s head or shoulder, and it was possible that she had clipped a man standing on the roadside. On the other hand, it wasn’t unusual for deer to buck right before impact.

“Exactly where did the incident happen, Mrs. Stockard?” I asked, examining the twisted metal of the detached bracket.

“Halfway down Mill Road, heading north.”

“Did you happen to note the time the incident occurred?”

“Just after seven, and I hope that guy’s still there. He owes me money for my mirror.”

“And you just got here? It’s eight thirty, Mrs. Stockard.”

“I can read a watch. I picked up some supplies at the feed store on the way, and Gerard Shaw wouldn’t open his doors until eight. He heard me knocking. He must think he doesn’t need my business.”

I rested a hand on my belt. “Mrs. Stockard, if you hit a man, you left the scene of an accident. That’s against the law,” I explained, taking care to avoid the phrase “hit-and-run.” There was no reason to escalate tensions, and odds were she had hit a deer.

“There’s no ‘if,’ and I didn’t commit a crime. I was driving the speed limit, staying in my lane, and that man was walking half in the road.”

“That doesn’t matter. You should have stayed in your truck and called 911.”

“With what? I don’t have a phone.”

I rubbed my forehead. “At your age, you really should carry a phone.”

“So every kind of jackass and scam artist can call me?”

“I hear you, Mrs. Stockard. I hear you.” I’d been with her for less than five minutes, and I was already employing standard police techniques for defusing charged situations, offering the kind of neutral, noncommittal statements that often give distressed people a sense of “being heard.” The thing is, Mrs. Stockard wasn’t distressed. I shielded my eyes against the sun. “If we drove out to Mill Road to take a look around, would you be able to pinpoint where it happened, Mrs. Stockard?”

“Of course I can. I’m not blind.”

I considered the worn treads on the truck’s tires, the rust edging her dented hubcaps, and the cracked plastic cover of one of her headlights. “We’ll take my cruiser. You can ride in the front. . . .”

Read the exciting conclusion in this month’s issue on sale now!

Copyright © 2024. Into the Weeds by Alice Hatcher