Fleetwood again sat silently. But she was interested. He could tell she was.
“So what could he be up to that required him to go away for the day every third Monday and that also required him to have unusually tight security in a house in an ordinary residential development?”
This time Powder out-waited her. Fleetwood said, “I know you want to tell me, Roy, so why don’t you just get on with it.”
“Turns out Officer Haller needed those Mondays to make deliveries of hydroponically grown skank to his connection every three weeks, north of Lafayette. Good stuff for top dollar. They raided the warehouse where it grew on the edge of Muncie this morning — it’ll be all over the news tonight. Lots of exaggerated numbers about street values, no doubt, but it was a big operation. Long flat building about fifty feet on a side, with heat and lights. The growers got around the tell-tale sign of unusually large electricity consumption by making most of it with their own generators. Of course, Barry didn’t do the farming himself — that was his brother. But Barry did the delivery runs because it impressed — and scared — the buyers to have a cop in the loop.” Powder paused for a moment. “Don’t you find it surprising that the powers that be don’t celebrate how nowadays in this country we’ve liberated ourselves almost completely from dependence on foreign-grown weed?”
“I’ll try to remember to send around a memo,” Fleetwood said, although her face showed that she was impressed at what Powder’s number crunch had turned into.
“Well, we don’t really have to worry about Mrs. Haller getting beaten up anymore, because Barry will be spending all his time away from home now. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here, you know.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I really try to help my officers to become better cops, you know that. But it’s a lesson to me, because there’s no point trying to make a ‘better’ cop out of someone who isn’t a ‘good’ man in the first place. Or woman.”
“True enough,” Fleetwood said.
Powder got up. “And I hope you’ve learned your lesson and will become a better non-cop from it.” He didn’t wait for her to respond this time. “Because Haller shows that you really must not rush to take punitive action against all those other guys — and gals — who seem to have been afflicted with Deer Flu. Give me a chance to check out their individual absentee records first. See you around, Carol Lee,” he said, and he was gone.
Copyright © 2010 by Michael Z. Lewin