BROADCASTS.com

b'Episode Notes
Halloween is the last shift for a bad cop, but on his final watch he stumbles upon something truly sinister... Can he rise to the occasion and do the right thing for once?
Bad Cop in a Small Town on Halloween Night by John Oak Dalton
Music by Ray Mattis
http://raymattispresents.bandcamp.com
Produced by Daniel Wilder
Get Cool Merchandise http://store.weeklyspooky
Support us on Patreon http://patreon.com/IncrediblyHandsome
Contact Us/Submit a Story
twitter.com/WeeklySpooky
facebook.com/WeeklySpooky
WeeklySpooky@gmail.com
This episode sponsored by HenFlix.com
For everything else visit WeeklySpooky.com
Transcription:
Faron didn\\u2019t know what a viral video was, until his daughter showed him a recording of him sleeping in the patrol car in the parking lot of the school.\\xa0 Some asshole kid had shot it on a cell phone and sent it to a friend who posted it on Twitter and the rest went how it went.
That was on a Wednesday morning and by that night there was a dance club mix with Faron\\u2019s loud snores and a sample from Junie Morrison\\u2019s song \\u201cSuzie Thundertussy.\\u201d
By Friday night the memes were in full swing\\u2014there was a screen cap of Faron sleeping in the patrol car and the text read \\u201cWhen you\\u2019ve been racial profiling all day and the donut shop is out of coffee.\\u201d\\xa0 And a lot worse than that.
Monday night was the town council meeting, and if Faron didn\\u2019t know anything about social media he sure didn\\u2019t think the town council did.\\xa0 But he was wrong.
It was a three-person board who met once a month at the library with a handful of old people and a few cranks in the audience.\\xa0 Ellen Soames was the board president and also the town librarian which was a tough combination.\\xa0 Joe Linseed was a retired farmer who held court at the gas station out by the highway most mornings but didn\\u2019t do much here.\\xa0 Buster Winsome was the son of a retired teacher named Ann Winsome and when she passed away Buster filled the rest of her term and then nobody could think of any reason to vote him off.
Faron gave his usual monthly report about his speeding ticket quota and one or two domestic calls and one or two drunk driving stops but he skipped over the fight at the high school because he didn\\u2019t want to mention the high school.\\xa0 The town board seemed to be listening unusually closely and afterwards Ellen asked him to stay and talk.
\\u201cWe\\u2019ve got some changes that have been in the works for a long time,\\u201d Ellen started.
Faron didn\\u2019t bother to ask what changes, he just stood there.
Ellen started back up.\\xa0 \\u201cThe county has agreed to drive through town a couple of times a day.\\xa0 And the high school has been wanting to hire their own resource officer anyway.\\xa0 So we will need you as town marshal through Halloween on October 31st but that\\u2019s it.\\u201d
Now Faron reacted.\\xa0 \\u201cThat\\u2019s this Friday.\\u201d
\\u201cIt\\u2019s been in the works for a long while, Faron.\\u201d
\\u201cCan I at least get my insurance through December?\\xa0 That\\u2019s for Abby.\\u201d
\\u201cIt isn\\u2019t going to work that way.\\u201d
Ellen looked at him with sorrow on her face but Faron knew it was for herself.\\xa0 When her son got back from Afghanistan it was Faron who talked him through what it was like to be a civilian.\\xa0 Faron had gone from high school to Desert Shield and then had been town marshal ever since so maybe he wasn\\u2019t the best bet but he was all Darren Soames had.\\xa0 It still didn\\u2019t stop Darren from ending it all with a Tokarev pistol he shouldn\\u2019t have been allowed to bring back from in country.
\\u201cWe can let you resign,\\u201d she said.
\\u201cI\\u2019m going to need the unemployment,\\u201d Faron answered.
\\u201cNobody is going to know until the week after Thanksgiving.\\xa0 That\\u2019s the next meeting.\\u201d
\\u201cIt\\u2019s okay, I don\\u2019t got my daughter for Thanksgiving.\\u201d
Faron walked out.
The next day Faron was sitting in his patrol car by the flashing light on the main street.\\xa0 It was Highway One but through town it was called Hadley Street although everyone called it Had Been Street.\\xa0 Like there Had Been a grocery store there, and that Had Been a Bank, and that empty field Had Been the school before consolidation. \\xa0
People were speeding and doing rolling stops but why did that matter now?\\xa0 He was talking to his daughter on his cell.
\\u201cHas the teasing died down at the school?\\u201d\\xa0 he asked.
\\u201cIt was never that bad.\\xa0 Mercedes dressed her dog up in an octopus costume and put it on TikTok like Wednesday or Thursday.\\xa0 People got into that.\\u201d
\\u201cWell, thank Mercedes for me.\\u201d
\\u201cAre you going to get in trouble, Dad?\\u201d
What Abby was really asking was her father going to be able to pay for her college, which he agreed to do as part of the divorce decree five years ago and was happy to make happen.\\xa0 He worked as a bouncer at a bar called the Red Triangle in Ohio on the weekends, which was outside his agreement as a law officer in Indiana, and was why he was asleep Monday morning at his third job as resource officer at the high school. \\xa0
\\u201cIf I get in trouble I can get out of it,\\u201d he answered.\\xa0 \\u201cI\\u2019ll see you on Halloween.\\xa0 I\\u2019ll have candy in the patrol car.\\u201d
\\u201cI\\u2019m a senior, I\\u2019m too old for trick or treating.\\u201d
\\u201cWell, walk down there anyways.\\u201d
\\u201cOkay.\\u201d
And they hung up.
Faron turned on the radio in the patrol car and put it on the country station everybody listened to.\\xa0 His ex was the mid-day DJ and had done a lunchtime request show for years that Faron still liked.\\xa0 Dolly was singing about how hard it was to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.\\xa0 But then she played Willie singing about the Red-Headed Stranger and the Yellow-Haired Lady and his heart fell in his chest.\\xa0 Faron was a redhead and his ex was a blonde and they danced to this song at their wedding.\\xa0 So that\\u2019s how Faron knew that news had spread through the little town already about his firing; his ex was playing the song because she was thinking of him.
Faron didn\\u2019t want to think about what it would be like to be an ex-cop.\\xa0 Everybody he\\u2019d pulled over and ticketed, when pretty women were let go after a smile and sometimes the promise of a drink or more, all the guys he knew had hit girlfriends or wives or kids or all three and might have accidentally bumped their face on the patrol car, or found their paperwork lost for days when they got dropped off at county, all the dealers who were busted because they weren\\u2019t his dealer.\\xa0 That was all worth thinking about but having the pity of his ex-wife was the worst.
And then his thoughts turned to Abby.\\xa0 He could pick up more bouncer shifts at the Red Triangle, but not too many more, and he could go back to doing security at the big outdoor venue where they had stock races in the fall and concerts in the summer, but it was an hour each way and the tweakers were bad, you could put them in choke holds and kick them in the balls over and over and they just didn\\u2019t seem to feel any pain or care.\\xa0 At least the Red Triangle had mostly drunks and stoners and only a biker once in a great while.\\xa0 And anymore most of the bikers were cops and firemen running wild on the weekends, and they always got a pass on behavior.
He might be able to scratch together money but he wouldn\\u2019t have insurance, medical or life or anything.\\xa0 He had it all until October 31st and then there was nothing.
And a little thought squatted in the corner, and he only looked at it out of the side of his eye until Halloween night.
Then Faron sat in his cruiser at the flashing light on Hadley starting around 6 o\\u2019clock and gave out candy,\\xa0 He waited until Abby came by and she had dressed up after all and dragged out a couple of girlfriends and it was all meant to be ironic but they were having fun.\\xa0 Faron ribbed them but told his daughter that he loved her, because of the thoughts that had been growing in his mind all week.\\xa0 She was wearing a mask so he couldn\\u2019t gauge her reaction.
As soon as she was gone he put the patrol car in gear and drove south out of town and then a little farther.\\xa0 Two summers ago during the town bicentennial they had closed the main road through town and had a carnival come in.\\xa0 But a night or two in there was an immigration raid of some kind and all the carnies were dragged off or ran off.\\xa0 After a few days of complaints, and nobody from the carnival coming back, Joe Linseed rode his tractor into town and dragged the rides off one at a time to a farm field the government was paying him to keep fallow.
There those old rides rotted away, along with some busted-up trailers and some other ragged odds and ends.\\xa0 It\\u2019s where Faron pulled in and parked, and saw a little campfire in the dying light.\\xa0 He knew Joe Linseed\\u2019s nephews or cousin\\u2019s kids or some kin hung out here all the time but Linseed was kind of his boss so Faron did nothing.\\xa0 Even though he had an idea what they were doing out here.
Faron took a Remington 870 shotgun out of the trunk and started walking towards the campfire where several figures crouched or sat in broken-down patio furniture.\\xa0 Young guys still shirtless in the fall chill.\\xa0 There was a chemical smell in the air.
\\u201cHello, Walls.\\u201d
The call from the gloom brought Faron up short.\\xa0 Only one person called him that, and it was his childhood friend and adult weed dealer Rickey Webb.\\xa0 He knew his mother had named him after her favorite singer Faron Young and had loved his hit song \\u201cHello, Walls.\\u201d\\xa0 Rickey was a nephew on Joe Linseed\\u2019s wife\\u2019s side but never came out to this little encampment people up the road called Rustytown.
Faron thought for a moment, but kept coming.
\\u201cYou look damn serious, Walls.\\u201d
\\u201cAnd all you hillbillies out here look damn jumpy.\\u201d
The energy shifted towards Junior, though who he was junior to Faron couldn\\u2019t remember.\\xa0 He was the lead dog in this younger group and went from juvie to county to state prison and only recently returned from the grand tour.\\xa0 The shining whites of his eyes stared out at Faron and his neck tattoos looked like bruises in the blue light.
\\u201cIf you want some of that Leopold Gold I done brought up from Tell City last week, come by my place tomorrow.\\xa0 You don\\u2019t need to be out here,\\u201d Rickey said.
\\u201cNeither do you.\\u201d
\\u201cI ain\\u2019t never out here but I got business tonight.\\u201d
\\u201cI do too.\\xa0 So'