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MEDIUM’S CANTEEN
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I was a rookie cop once.
On my first night shift my tutor, Jim, drove me around our beat for an hour. About midnight, just as our community was settling into bed, another crew took a report of a theft by housebreaking.
“That will be William Patrick McGarvie up to his old tricks,” said Jim. Criminals always have a middle name and cops always recite their name in full.
I bowed to his superior knowledge and assumed that since he knew him to be responsible, we would head straight to William Patrick McGarvie’s house and arrest him.
Jim drove out of town, he turned right onto a back road and left up a dirt track, a strange place for a house I thought. At the end of the dirt track, he nestled the car in a copse of trees, there was nothing there, just blackness.
He must have a ploy. Perhaps this is a route William Patrick McGarvie takes on his road home from his nefarious deeds. I looked at Jim and smiled, pleased that I had guessed what he was up to — we were lying in wait.
