Mike was taking it slow and steady and I understood he did this out of necessity. He didn’t want his new girlfriend up in his kid’s faces twenty-four, seven. I got that.
It just sucked.
But also, Mike was busy. Unfortunately, Mike informed me, The ‘Burg was experiencing a crime wave. And considering, strangely with the current economy there was growth still happening all around so there were more people paying taxes, the Department had recently gone through cutbacks. Luckily (kind of), some time ago a dirty cop was weeded out and when he was fired after being arrested (which happened after he was shot, nasty business, shockingly nasty as explained by Mike), they didn’t replace him. When another detective moved to the IMPD and a patrolman passed his detective test and also moved to the city, they hadn’t replaced them either. They then decided to find other ways to reduce spending that didn’t include further loss of personnel.
This was good and bad. Mike told me with his seniority, his job wasn’t threatened. But The ‘Burg was growing, crime increasing and the cops were tasked to look after their citizens but having to do it with less manpower and fewer resources.
This, Mike explained, was a recipe for disaster.
The first part of the crime wave was what Mike described as “piddly shit”. Likely one kid or a few of them, graffiti and some vandalism. It was constant though random and because of the last and the fact that other work took priority, it had been happening awhile without the kids being caught. For the owners of the property vandalized, they didn’t care the cops had limited resources, personnel and other priorities. They just wanted it stopped. Alec Colton and Pat Sullivan bought that case.
The second part was a rash of break-ins, the same MO happening throughout Hendricks County, where The ‘Burg resided, and the west side of Marion County which butted our county.
This was who Mike thought IMPD caught, who they interrogated on and off for four hours last Saturday and who turned out not to be the culprit.
A disappointment.
Mike and his partner Merry, obviously, were working that case.
And last, Mike explained, there had been an influx of narcotics that had hit The ‘Burg. Drugs were not unusual but supply was escalating.
All the detectives were working this one and had been now for eighteen months. They’d located and brought down two new dealers that moved to town and targeted vulnerable populations, young adults who’d not gone off to college and stuck in town and high school students.
The ‘Burg had a diverse population. Although the farm families were retreating, it still had its working class. It also had its lower to low-middle income sections. The same with mid-to upper-middle incomes. And with The Heritage and other high end developments, as well as The ‘Burg’s traditional elite of wealthy families who worked in Indy but settled generations ago in a quaint farm town close to work but away from the city, this meant there was definitely an upper class.
The kids of these families and young adults, who suddenly had incomes and responsibilities but didn’t yet know how manage them, were who was targeted.
When they’d find a dealer and take him down, a new one would take his place and the drugs kept coming. So they’d switched strategies, identifying the dealer, controlling the sales but at the buyer, not at the source and hoping this would lead to the mastermind.
Unfortunately, this was also not working. The mastermind had lost two of his soldiers. They were being more careful. And although the drugs were just as prevalent regardless of the police presence, how the kids were getting them was harder to nail down since the dealers were forced to be creative.
This all meant that even though The ‘Burg was not a thriving metropolis, the cops were far busier than I would have expected.
Including Mike.
As for me, I was in Indiana but I had pottery to sell because I had bills to pay. So I also had to work and, as usual, spent a good deal of time at my wheel.
Intermingled with this, I was trying to sort Rhonda out.
This just wasn’t working.
I’d sat down with her twice to talk to her about the boys, her future, the farm. But even as I spoke to her at the kitchen table over coffee, her eyes, along with her attention, drifted away.
I didn’t know if this was a defense mechanism against grief, not wanting to think of these things because Darrin used to take care of them or if it was just Rhonda.