My heroes have always been policemen.

Top of the morning gents,

Torture is a funny thing. Despite decades it will continue to interrupt yer train of thought. 

Late at night here at the Rest Home I like to take my coffee by the back window and read my old class notes from narc school. Pert near 40 years ago I got popped for felony cocaine distribution in Seattle and instead of ratting out all my local wholesale associates, I was coerced into agreeing to a mandatory minimum of 10 years of service in law enforcement all over fucking Alaska. I had no room to bargain by turning in any of my business partners because they were already on the pad for Investigator Beuler. My own business partners ratted me out resulting in my arrest. Judge Schillberg explained to me that my 2 choices were 6 years in the can or 10 years working for the other team arresting bootleggers and drug dealers for the Alaska State Troopers in the world's most remote arctic nig-fested shit-hole villages. The choice to work for the cops would earn me a paycheck whereas sitting in a federal penetentiary would earn me bad food, bad sex and a bad attitude. 

Legendary troopers Godfrey and Nay instructed a condensed accelerated police training program as part of my deal out of a long prison sentence at Walla Walla State Penetentiary. Godfrey and Nay continually lectured that most crimes go unreported and most criminals go unpunished and that despite the TV bullshit crime scene forensic analysis solves a very small portion of village crime in rural Alaska and extrajudicial punishment would be left up to my own discretion. The overwhelming bulk of my crime solving is the recruitment of informants and analysis of limited information. Native aboriginal Eskimos fucking hate white bootleggers and drug dealers and happy to drop dime on assholes bringing shitty liquor, weed and meth into their sober and dry villages. Reading village cop, dispatch and jailer training manuals refreshes my ancient memories from decades ago when my friends in the cop business were still amongst the living. 

I awoke startled to find myself alone in the dark hearing branches and bushes crashing from across the field. The woods are the route my best friends to come and visit me. I seen Nolton blink his flashlight twice, then him and Waller hiked outa the tree line and booked up to my porch. I opened the door, let 'em in and they sat with me next to the window, kind enough to not notice my old age. 

Paul and Jeff are two more of Alaska's hero officers and my best friends from the police department. These two seasoned gunmen are extremely dangerous and prefer to visit me late at night. "You still got guns from yer friend Pim?" I showed them a couple of revolvers that've only been handled with gloves so that any prints on 'em are from previous owners. The serial numbers will only lead back to dead gangsters or unsolved homicides in Seattle. 

Without touching them they examined the guns, talked about various ammunition, then picked 2 wood-gripped 357 revolvers and a box of ammo. They donned leather gloves, loaded the guns, put them inside their coats and headed for the door. I asked them what kind of job they were on. Nolton told me that he and Waller finally located a couple of wanted felons that needed killing real bad. "Me and Waller are gonna get a couple boys that need serious extrajudicial justice." 

The following morning's Peninsula Clairion newspaper headlined a story about a double homicide up in Cooper Landing. The Knapp brothers, a couple felon drug dealers responsible for numerous native deaths were found in their car, parked in the Sterling Highway pullout with their knees, nuts and stomachs blasted to shit. Each corpse had six close range entrance and exit craters indicating the assailants were on both sides of the car, shooting through the windshield and side windows resulting in the victims inhaling glass shards from screaming and gasping for air. The troopers found two firearms on scene that were linked to out of state crimes years ago. Neighbors reported hearing numerous gunshots then ungodly shrieks. Like good neighbors, they waited a half hour before calling the cops.

There's been a couple dozen crime scene masterpiece theater homicides similar to these gangland type slayings where the guns are simply dumped on the bodies. Good luck finding any suspects, my old cop buddies Jeff and Paul have been dead for years and there's still quite a stockpile of old firearms nearby. I'm just an old man in a rest home reading old material until I get sleepy. I'd never hurt a fly.

Just the other day I was reading my old emails from Helsinki and dozed off. I awoke back in my old Soviet detention cell seeing and hearing children reading comic books out loud and telling me stories about their toys and games on the playground. A cute red headed kid told me not to go to sleep and despite travelling numerous continents he and his friends appeared next to my bunk and were waiting for me to hurry up and find my way back home. This little boy looked and sounded just like my childhood friend Michael Callahan. Damn kid didn't mind how my nasty my injuries looked and told me his mom was a nurse and she'd come clean my burns and cuts and where I messed myself. 

I asked him how long he was gonna stay and keep me company. He assured me that he could stay over until I got off restriction and we could ride our bikes home and eat lunch with his friends at Maplewood Elementary. Michael shared his sandwiches and chips and screamed and cried at the men when they came to my cell and were real mean to me. He even showed me his Secret Agent lunch box and told me about the brand new cars his dad drove and that his best friend lived on a farm.

He chatted away about how he and his pal were gonna milk the goats and deliver newspapers and buy lots of candy bars when they got bigger. All I had to do was not go to sleep and he'd hold my hand when those men were hurting me really bad. Michael told me awesome stories about riding horses real fast like cowboys through the Indian Trails and racing his Toyota Corolla around Catfish Pond. That little Callahan kid stayed with me for my entire detention, washed around my bleeding shackles and even ran to my jail cell when the interrogator teams were coming for me. If I stayed awake he promised me his dad would take us to Ocean Shores to picnic and skip rocks at the beach. 

I awoke hearing him explaining that he had a friend in the jail cell down the hallway and he'd died during interrogation from severe electrocution. Michael would bring him over and they both read me stories from their new books they got in the mail from Weekly Reader. These two kids were sitting on the edge of my jail cell bed holding their books up high and pointed to the pictures so I could see them with my good eye and chatted to me in both Russian and English. 

Another kid Michael brought over to play was the Neuman kid that had ligature marks on his neck and accidently hanged himself in his dad's garage just blocks from Chase Lake Elementary. Those two kept on telling farfetched childish tales about all kinds of animals that they got to play with and that their friend let them help feed, water and milk them. I could go and play with them as long as I didn't go to sleep when those men hurt me real bad and made me cry. I still wake up late at night talking to my best friend from elementary school, yet Michael Callahan died many years ago. All this old man can do is go back to sleep and figure everything out in the morning.

Fuck I'm drowzy, I need to focus on my old lecture notes. Beverly Cutler lectured us city and village cops that the best way to beat a rape charge is to have an all female jury because at least 2 jurors will secretly believe that the bitch had it coming. Beverly Cutler was a Superior Court Judge and lectured us on the legal entanglements surrounding the prosecution of sexual assaults and domestic violence. She drilled into our heads that whenever she directs a male defendant to treatment or prison for drug or alcohol related domestic or child abuse the female spouse always goes out and gets another alcoholic offender boyfriend. 

The cycle of abuse is generational and the victim always becomes the abuser. Judge Cutler's nail driving lectures stated that Alaska's most violent rapists are women. Her experience is that if the mother has an abusive childhood she'll commit the physical injuries on her own children or she'll repeatedly bed down with awful men that will continue the child beatings or sexual victimization. Cutler surveyed the room and queried us jailers which cells are always the stinkiest and messiest. Before we could respond she rudely barked that it's the female inmates that piss and shit all over their jail cells. Needless to say, mother nature is a bitch and Cutler's rule also aplies to the stinky old ladies here in my rest home. I get so drowsy in my old age and my nightmares seem as fresh as today's newspaper. 

I'm always awaking in hospitals. I've done long stretches at the Kotzebue Hospital fer sick ass dog bites, lip infectons and bullet holes. One kid sat with me and played his guitar and told me how his older brother Jimmy Girvan showed him all these chords and how a capo worked. Tommy was his name and we planned all sorts of midnight missions through the horse pasture, over the fence and play catch at Maplewood Elementary in a totally dark baseball field.

One time at the Barrow Hospital I awoke to a kid next to me whose teeth were cracked and eardrums broken. He said he forgot to latch the gate and his horse got loose and killed on Highway 99. His parents beat him real bad so he asked me if he could hide in the ICU with me and read to me for a while. Kid shook me awake crying and sobbing not to leave him and that if he didn't do his reading he was gonna get in trouble again. Poor kid was in pretty bad shape and despite bleeding lips and ears he spoke clearly enough to read his homework to me and to screamed me back to conciousness whenever I passed away. 

Here's the trippy part, this little kid read me court transcripts and confidential updates from the Kotzebue Trooper Office and impersonated the voices of the historic troopers Dial and Koslof. Those two old cops were busting a gut that "narcs and drug agents are no more than garbage men hired to take out the trash, except Ewing drove a really big garbage truck." I must've fallen asleep cuz I awoke with this kid snuggled against me, again imitating my trooper friends in Alaska. "Fuck, Henry, you shoulda seen my guy operate in the Valley back home." 

"Take a cruiser from Wasilla to Talkeetna and you'll run outa fingers pointing out meth labs, grow ops and cocaine parlors our guy Ewing torpedoed. Tyler said Bleicher and Bowman were constantly bailing this clown outa MSPT, expunging traffics with Cutler at Palmer and fending off a shit load of constitutional and human rights violations. Pre-trial barely kept up with the caseload Ewing dumped on their desk. He ran Legal through the ringer but he's bowling all strikes." 

Over the commotion of nurses and doctors yelling my name I heard Trooper Nay talking to me, "You know Karl, if our lives were different and you continued working for the other side, I'd sure hate to go up against you. I hate getting all mushy, but I'm damn glad you decided to give us a hand. I'd feel real awful killing you, but as it turned out, it's been an honor watching you work." 

The IV tubes got tangled and alarms sounded so I picked up the kid, held him in my lap, untangled the IV lines and quieted the beeping hospital equipment. He continued reciting police stories in the haunting voices of my old friends. I asked the kid how he knew these long dead cops and how'd he mimic their voices. He just shrugged his shoulders, leaned his head against me, held my handcuffed hands and said he knew all these cops back when he was little. 

Pretty smart 6 year old kid. He wiped the tears from my eyes and told me torture is a funny thing and despite decades it will continue to interrupt yer train of thought.

Karl.