"Capron, Bill - Color Blind Detective - Ups Green" - читать интересную книгу автора (Capron Bill)

UPS GREEN -
A CONTINUING ADVENTURE OF THE COLOR-BLIND DETECTIVE
by Bill Capron


It had been a rough morning. I'd delivered an Emmy-type performance at the police station, lying for my client. The police knew I was lying, and they knew I knew they knew. Just out of principle it made them mad. It almost didn't matter that my lie put a neat bow on their case, taking it right where the DA wanted it to go. No, some days they just didn't like me, the way I straddled the truth until the scales of justice were in a proper balance.

It's not that cops are against justice, it was just that their hands were tied every inch of the way, and watching me stride unimpeded through their curious world of arcane laws made their blood boil. They wanted to be them, and they wanted to be me. Protect and serve, that was their job, but the citizens they'd been hired to serve had through the years constructed rules that seemed at times only to protect the victim. It was almost as if they, the good guys, couldn't do good no matter which way they turned, legally hamstrung by the system.

Still, that's the way it should be. Fifty years ago the cops had a lot more leeway, but it was too much operating room for the bad apples that find a place in any organization. No, the maze of the law wasn't constructed to help good cops do their job, but instead to stop bad cops from gaming the system, and, sorry to say, at the expense of those they were hired to protect.

I like to think of myself as a good cop, unencumbered by the rules. No, that's not quite far enough. I think of myself as a self-contained justice system. When possible, I work with the authorities, but never at the expense of justice. I don't make myself judge, jury and executioner, but I create an environment, an agar-culture, where justice will play out to its logical conclusion.

So I would wait to see where the morning's little drama led. I had a pretty good idea. If I was wrong, it would just unravel and all the parties would go their separate ways oblivious to the threat to their freedom; but then, I knew that wasn't how it was going to end. Justice would be served. I made some notes in the file and slipped it into the pending drawer.

I reached over and hit the play button on my answer phone. "Hidey-ho, bro, this is Green. Got a big problem and need your advice."

My brother, Dave. Twenty years with UPS. We had a running joke. When I first saw him in his truck, I asked him what color it was, and he said green. Green truck, green pants, shirt and belt, lots of green stuff. Well of course it was all gray to me. Then two years later, can't remember who I was talking to, I pointed out the green UPS truck, and, lo and behold, I learned it was brown. I told Dave what I thought of his little joke, I mean, we're brothers and he's not supposed to make fun of my handicap, and since then he calls himself Green to everyone, not just me, and when they ask him why he tells his little story.

Me, I calls them likes I sees them. "Hey, Gray, what's the problem?" He tells me to fly in, that he has a use for my special talent, no more.

I caught one of those mid-sized jets to Spokane, then a puddle-jumper to Kalispell, Montana, just north of Flathead Lake. I took my fishing gear just in case. Dave picked me up at the airport, and was content to talk about the fishing until we got to the house. He'd only moved up there three months ago, and it was the first time I'd seen the place. He was on the outskirts of the small town of Browning, overlooking the casino-supported Indian slums of rural America. From a distance they looked almost picturesque, if it wasn't for the damned rusting cars jacked up on blocks behind too many dilapidated single-wides. The view in the opposite direction was expansive and beautiful, especially through my Ansel Adams black-and-white eyes.

When I asked him what was up, he told me it would wait until after dinner. So I passed the time with his wife Debbie and ten- year-old son, Harry. The meal properly stashed within, we packed up the rods and drove east to Cut Bank, then parked on a bluff overlooking a large box canyon. He reached under his seat and pulled out a pair of binoculars, then focused them through the front windshield.

He handed them to me. "Take a look. There's a man and a woman down there, and a little girl."

I refocused the lenses. A tall aging Hollywood-looking type guy with grayish hair that looked bleached, a pretty young wife with her white-gray hair flowing in the wind, and an equally pretty little girl about two with darker hair. They looked like the all-American happy family. "So, what am I looking for?"

"That man is Edgerton Fuller,III. I'd never seen him before, but when I lived in Tucson I delivered a lot of packages to his house from his employer. I got to know his wife and their then one-year-old daughter pretty well."

"And?"

"The daughter is the same little girl, but it's the wrong woman."

"You sure it's the same Edgerton Fuller,III? Lots of kids look alike at that age."

"Gotta be the same guy. Like I said, same little girl, and the packages I take him here are from the same company, the one he works for, Biorad Research. He's a salesman. You know, I'm the only person who would have noticed."

I kept my eyes on the pretty woman. "Noticed what?"

A matter-of-fact, "That he killed his wife."

I lowered the binoculars and eyeballed his face. He wasn't kidding. "Come on, that seems a little melodramatic. Maybe he got a divorce."

He shook his head. "No, that's not it. I'm sure he killed her."

I gave him my best skeptical voice, "So, what makes you so sure?"

He pointed down the cliff. "The woman, her name is Tamarella, at least that's how she answers the phone, and her daughter is Elouise, neither one particularly common." He read the confusion on my face. "It's the same name as the wife in Tucson. And the daughter's the same girl. They even got the same dog. It's just not possible."