The Grim Reaper Reaper Security ConsultingChapter 17 Miles Madigan
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Monday, September 26, 2022
Monday was a busy day. I bundled the kids off to school and then called Matucket State. While I didn’t go into details, I had to let her Department Vice-Chair know she was going to be away from work for a week or two. I didn’t know who to call at DARPA or the NSA, but Kelly didn’t talk to them daily anyway; she could handle that chore. Then I drove over to the hospital. By all accounts, I would be able to bring her home that day.
First, though, she needed to be cleared by her doctor. Pawlensky was supposed to come in and examine her and give her the green light to go home. That occurred about an hour after I got there, and I was kicked out of the room. Eventually I was allowed back.
“It’s good to see you, Grim. How are the kids handling Kelly being away?” she asked.
I shrugged and smiled. “They’re good. We brought them over yesterday afternoon, so they know Mommy’s getting better, but we haven’t told them anything more than she had a tummy ache. Knowing them, Seamus will want something similar the next time he wants to get out of school.”
Kelly’s eyes popped open at that, but she didn’t argue; she knew our son. Pawlensky said, “Just let him know what’s going to have to be removed.”
“Can Kelly come home today?” I asked.
“Yes, but we need to discuss her care and recuperation.”
“Okay.”
The doctor pulled some papers and brochures from a file. “First, Kelly is on bedrest and light duty for the next two weeks. No work. No going over to the college. I’ll write her a note if needed. She can move around the house, but no heavy lifting or heavy chores. I’m serious, too! Movement is beneficial, but we need to limit it!” she said.
I nodded. “Two weeks, got it.”
“No driving, for two weeks either, at least not as the driver. As the passenger, she’s fine. And no fooling around, either!”
I glanced at Kelly, who was looking back curiously at me. “Uh...”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean. No sex, not until I give you the okay. That’s probably four to six weeks.”
I nodded slowly and said, “Understood.”
“Good. Now, Kelly needs to see me later this week at my office, so you’ll have to drive her over. Before you leave, I’ll have one of the nurses make an appointment. That’s part of the follow-up and I’ll remove her IUD at that time. I’ll also be prescribing some new drugs at that time. The ovaries produce most of a woman’s hormones, so we’re going to be starting a hormone replacement therapy. I’ll need to see Kelly every two weeks after that, until I say otherwise. Once she can drive, though, you won’t have to be there.”
“Okay.”
She went on for a bit longer, and then I asked, “Doctor, Kelly didn’t take the news all that well the other day. I was wondering, well, I see a local psychiatrist every few months myself. Would that help her?”
“Perhaps. Who do you see?”
“Myron Shemel, over at the Matucket WellCare Center.”
“I don’t know him. What do you see him for? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I have some issues with PTSD from Iraq. I did a couple of tours over there at the beginning of the war. He helped a lot, and I simply check in every two or three months,” I explained.
She said, “Well, I do think seeing a mental health professional would be a good idea. We have both a patient group at the clinic and some professionals, psychiatrists and whatnot, to help. It’s a more specialized field if you will.” She turned to face Kelly directly. “I will give you some more information when you come over for your appointment, but I want you to seriously consider getting some help. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you had some level of depression regarding this. Between that and the hormone changes, you’ll probably have some mood swings. Don’t let the problem fester. Let us know so we can help. There’re a lot of things we can do to help.”
With that, we were cut loose. Some paperwork was signed, and a nurse came in to remove the IV lines. Kelly had some clothes that my mother had brought over, and I stepped out while she dressed. Then she was wheeled down to the entrance in a wheelchair, and I was sent off to drive her car over. We helped her in, and she buckled up, wincing at the effort. Then we drove home.
Kelly changed into some sweatpants and a t-shirt and climbed into bed, falling asleep almost immediately. I made some soup for lunch, and she came out for that, but then it was back to bed, with Boxie curled up next to her. That was how the kids found her when they got off the school bus. Busses, actually. Seamus was in fourth grade at John F. Kennedy Elementary, but Riley was now in seventh grade at East Matucket Middle School. They greeted her enthusiastically and Kelly got out of bed to freshen up and putter around a bit. Seamus wanted to see her scars and Kelly shot down that idea right away. Kids! Our parents came over that evening to welcome her home as well.
The good part, and the bad part, of my status as a consultant was that I had a lot of time at home to take care of Kelly. I spent the week polishing up a report for Brian Conway and sent it to him at the end of the week. Likewise, I was able to continue working on the book, which was now in final edits. The schedule was that it would be ready for publishing after the New Year, at which time Simon & Schuster would set me up for a book tour. Hopefully the money would pour in, making the publishing company happy and establishing me as an expert on American police forces. Otherwise, it was back to purgatory for me. Friday, I drove Kelly over to the Harriman Clinic with a paperback in my pocket to read while she did what she had to do.
That Friday evening, after dinner, I made us a couple of drinks and then pulled Kelly onto my lap in my recliner. Kelly said, “Grim, you know we can’t do that.”
“I know. I also know I like it when you sit in my lap,” I replied.
Kelly blushed and kissed me on the cheek. That was when Riley came through and asked, “Are you two planning to start kissing?”
I looked at my wife and then over at my daughter. “And if we were?”
“You two need to get a room!”
Kelly bit her lip to keep from laughing. I just gave Riley a very dry look. “We did get a room. It’s called a house. It’s all ours. Would you like to leave?”
“Dad! I’m just saying, you should act your age!”
Kelly rolled her eyes and looked at Riley. “Would you like to do a barnacle inspection down at the lake?”
Our daughter grinned. “I know I can outrun both of you!”
She probably could, too. She ran on the track and cross-country teams at school. I growled and said, “You really want to find out?” She giggled and laughed and ran off to her room. I put my arms around my wife and said, “Act our age? Get a room? Where is she coming up with this stuff?”
“Grim, your daughter is growing up. She’ll be twelve in February. One of these days I’ll be taking her to Doctor Pawlensky for a checkup of her own.”
“Shit!” I muttered.
“You’d better hope I live long enough to teach her about tampons and training bras.”
My eyes popped at the thought of that, and I gulped loudly. “Jesus, no! No way!”
“Uh, huh!”
I looked down at Kelly’s chest. She had developed early herself, wearing a C-cup by the time she was fifteen, and was now a very healthy D- or DD-cup depending on the manufacturer of the bra. I looked away. If Kelly disappeared before then, one of our mothers was going to have to do those chores. I’d run away from home first!
Kelly just laughed at me. I looked back at her and said, “Training bras?” She grinned and nodded. “Just what are you training them to do?”
“We train them to make boys do what we want them to.”
I groaned at that. “Okay, so much for that. Now, how are you feeling? What did you tell Doctor Pawlensky that you haven’t told me?”
“Grim, it’s nothing you don’t already know.” She squirmed around on my lap and elbowed me in the side. “Like she said, I’m on lockdown for another month or so.”
“Not even...” I licked my lips lewdly.
That earned me another elbow, this one harder. “You pig!”
I hugged her against me. “Okay, okay. I kind of prefer when you’re having fun, too. Worse comes to worst, I can always run over to the Gaiety Lounge on Catamount if I need to. Now that I’m off the force, I don’t have a conflict of interest any longer.” The Gaiety was a strip joint in a very seedy part of downtown Matucket.
“I think you’d have a conflict of interest right here on Lake Matucket. Your children aren’t the only ones who can do barnacle inspections.”
I chuckled at that. “Seriously, how are you feeling?”
“Odd, in a way. Doctor Pawlensky removed my IUD today. The only other times it’s been out was when we were trying to conceive those two. I feel, I don’t know, empty, I guess.”
“Can you actually feel it missing?”
“No. You can’t feel it, not if everything goes right with it. I think it’s just the knowledge that it’s gone and that I don’t need it any longer,” she said. “I mean, I know I needed the operation, but something is missing now.”
“You need to see a doctor about that.”
“I will, I promise.”
“How about physically? Everything healing?” Kelly had on some bandages, but they were smaller than when she came home. She was still wearing stretchy pants and sweat suits.
“Everything is healing up nicely, I’m told. The stitches are going to be absorbed into me or just fall off, and I’m going to be left with a few small red marks that are supposed to fade away.” She looked at me. “How are you doing with this?”
I hugged her some more. “This was the scariest thing I’ve ever gone through. Don’t ever scare me like this again!”
“Grim!”
“Kelly, I’m serious. I just kept wondering how I was going to handle you not being around. Everything I’ve ever been through, the combat, the shootings, none of it was as scary to me as you in the hospital. I just kept wondering how I was going to raise the kids and whether I would start going insane and there was nothing I could do about it.”
“Really?” She looked at me with surprise.
“Kelly, you are the rock around this house, not me. I keep going because you’re here to tell me to keep going.”
“Grim, you’re nuts, but I guess I like you that way.” She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek again, and then lay against me. I reached down and adjusted the recliner and just held her. Then she whispered, “I am going to have to think about that first night when we can fool around again. I wonder what I’ll want you to wear, the black silk boxers or the Speedo.”
I gave her a light smack on the rear. “I don’t remember any stitches on your backside, so a good spanking won’t have to be delayed!”
Kelly just giggled and lay back against me, eventually falling asleep.
I stayed in touch with Brian Conway, checking to see if I needed to do any follow-up, which I didn’t. As expected, the county council took one look at the numbers involved in a SWAT team and ran as fast as they could in the opposite direction. I didn’t even need to come in to make an appearance at a council meeting. He did decide to go with the SuperLite alternative I had laid out, but he didn’t need me to plan it. The council coughed up enough money to cover some additional training and equipment purchases and he would roll it out over the next budget cycle. He thanked me and promised to say good things if he had the chance.
I continued networking, taking some of the money I had made and registering as a vendor with various police organizations throughout Georgia. There was POAG, the Peace Officers Association of Georgia, and the GACP, the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police. The Georgia Sheriffs’ Association was another such organization. You could join these groups as a sponsor and attend conferences and training events. That got your name out there and you could even rent a booth and try to sell yourself to the attendees. I wasn’t quite at that level yet, but by joining you often got listed on their websites. I did get picked by a department down by Valdosta that was setting up a SWAT team to review the proposals they had been given and weigh in on them. That was interesting, and since it was so far away, they had to pay for several days of travel.
I worked it out that if I could do a single decent paying job a month, even after taxes and expenses I would be able to more than make up for what I lost leaving the MPD. I wasn’t there yet, but the trend looked positive.
Kelly’s lockdown ended Friday, November 4. I came home from a training session at the POAG fall conference in Atlanta, where I had given a speech on recruitment and training and then had met with several chiefs and assistant chiefs about possibly working with their departments. I got home mid-afternoon to find my children mysteriously missing, along with the dog. What wasn’t missing was Kelly, who greeted me at the door in a very nice halter-topped dress. It dipped low in the front, was mostly backless, and was very short. She also had on some three-inch stilettos and some nylons or stockings. She gave me a very hot kiss and led me into the living room, where a tray was on the coffee table with the makings of whiskey sours. Her perfume was a witch’s brew that went straight from my nose to a location about three feet lower.
“You should welcome me home like this more often,” I said. “I could really learn to like it!”
“Care to make drinks?” she asked.
“Absolutely.” I sat down on the couch and glanced at Kelly as she sat down next to me, catching a glimpse of lace at the hem of her dress. Definitely stockings, not pantyhose. Yowza! I made a pair of whiskey sours on the rocks and handed her one. “From the quiet in the house, I take it our children are off terrorizing somebody else tonight?”
“Your parents, and it’s not just tonight.”
“Oh?”
“They’re gone until Sunday night.”
I smiled at that. “Really? I’m guessing Boxie is with them?” Boxie mostly slept in one of the kids’ rooms, but if they were away, he jumped into bed with us.
“That’s right.”
“So, the plan for the weekend is...” I left that a question.
Kelly sipped her sour and placed a hand on my leg. “Remember that trip we took back when we were kids, when we took your parents’ boat down to LaGrange? Remember how we tried to set a certain record while we were down there?” I nodded, smiling. It was a week before I had to go join the army and we spent a week holed up on that boat committing every perversion and debauchery known to mankind, or at least known to a pair of horny teenagers. I was eighteen and she was seventeen, but by the time we came home, certain parts of us had aged considerably!
“I am thinking we can beat the old record,” she said. She began moving her hand northwards.
I smiled and looked down the front of her dress. No bra, and I could see everything, including all her special jewelry. “I don’t know, babe. We’re older now. I think I’m going to need a lot of motivation to make the attempt.”
“You just leave the motivation to me. Doctor Pawlensky says my testosterone and progesterone and estrogen are all nice and balanced and everything is all healed up, and I even bought a large tube of K-Y in case we need that.” She sipped her drink and reached out to untie my tie. “Of course, there’s some other hormones that need to be released, but only with your help. I need a lot of hormones to make me feel better, Grim, a lot!”
“And that’s the plan, huh?”
Kelly took my glass and set it on the tray, and then she pushed me back on the couch. “You ask too many questions!”
I didn’t ask any more questions until mid-morning, when the question was whether Kelly wanted bacon or sausage with her eggs. She was wearing high heels and a tiny satin robe, and she answered, “Sausage, as long as it’s long and hot and spicy.” I gave her a dry look at that, and she laughed at me. Then it was back to record breaking until late in the afternoon. I was informed I was taking her to dinner at Morton’s, which would at least allow me to take a break and replenish my vital bodily fluids. Then it would be back home, to work on the record some more. It had been a long six weeks.
Well, a man has to die of something, and this seemed a perfectly reasonable excuse. I wondered if this was how my father had his heart attack. Did Mom need some hormones released and she pushed him too far? What a way to go!
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Saturday, October 20, 2018 There were a number of interesting results from the show. The Matucket County Council protested that nobody was forced out and then began threatening to sue anybody who said so. Nobody listened to them, and they didn’t sue anybody. The FBI issued another statement that Matucket had been an essential part of the elimination of the terrorist threat and that they had never really lost track of anybody. Bo got a couple of interviews where he pushed the law-and-order...
Thursday proved to be about as hectic as I expected it to be. By the time the detectives came to see me, I would be the last guy they would be talking to. By that time, they would have already interviewed everybody except the three dead guys, and they would have been autopsied. The crime scene crew would have been all over the last car they had been in, as well as all over the Quiki-Stop. The security videos from the Quiki-Stop would have been obtained, as well as any from any of the...
Fall 2018 to Spring 2019 Thanksgiving was at my parents’ house. Last year it was supposed to be there, but Kelly had inherited it when Dad had his heart attack that week. Another way of looking at it was that Mom gave him a heart attack, considering what the two of them were up to when the event occurred. With all the mayhem I’d been around in my life I’d prefer to check out the way he almost did. Regardless, this year it was at Mom and Dad’s, and it would give us a chance to tease them some...
2024 Sunday, I helped Jack get home. He had chartered a plane to fly from California to Matucket (“ Can you imagine flying commercial through Atlanta with a wheelchair?”) so I simply drove over to their house Sunday morning and helped him out of the house and down to his rental. None of our homes had ramps and I asked whether we should build some for their next visit. “Grim, I’m not sure you should bother. I don’t think I’ll be coming back here any time soon.” “Jack...” “Grim, I just...
June 2005-March 2006 The next morning, we were back to the Army in earnest. Most everybody had filtered back, and we began with PT, physical training, including calisthenics and a four-mile conditioning run. I was hurting as bad as any of the other troops. Leave had left me soft. It didn’t matter, since I knew I would be back in shape in a few weeks, tops. Montoya and Gonzalez, the fuzzies just out of Benning, were in decent shape. Riley was coming off leave and was in about the same...
Nothing job-related came to my attention by Friday afternoon. I speculated what the perfect job ad would look like - “Wanted! Matucket Firearms Corporation has an immediate opening for product design and testing in their Machine Gun Division! Iraqi war veterans with PTSD desired! Call now, operators are standing by!” I remembered that the AK-47 was invented by a busted-up Russian sergeant during World War II. Too bad there really wasn’t a Matucket Firearms Corporation, either with or without...
Monday, March 19, 2018 “Dispatch to One-Six-Three.” “One-Six-Three to Dispatch, go ahead.” Dispatch to One-Six-Three, say location.” I was curious as to why Dispatch wanted to know where I was, since they had sent me to supervise an accident at Pinetree and Glen Aubrey. There was a three-car pileup on Glen Aubrey after the first car, a silver Nissan sedan had suddenly braked for a squirrel. The next car, a red Ford Fusion had slammed into the Nissan from behind and had then been...
Spring 2019 to May 2022 Saturday morning things started getting silly. I was home when it started, sacked out while Kelly got up to tend to the offspring, when she came in and said, “You’d better get up.” “What’s up?” “The President is complaining about you again.” I looked at her curiously. “Trump?” She nodded. “What’s wrong now? Jack tweeting again?” “I don’t know, but something set him off. He’s tweeting that the Army needs to yank your medals again,” she replied. I rolled my eyes...
Mom got a text from Kelly that she and the kids would fly home early Saturday. Seamus was acting fussy, and it would be very late by the time they arrived on the East Coast. She told me she would call back when she got the kids fed and settled down. I was going to have to con my mother into loaning me her phone, so that she wasn’t listening in while we talked. It was late enough in the afternoon that it was time to watch the press conference on television. I turned it on and dialed through...
June to August 2002 The following week we had finals, and that was it. Seniors had to go through graduation, but the rest of us were out for a couple of months for the summer. For me that meant I had about a week of goof-off time before I had to go back to the mill full time. That would take me through all of June and into July, at which time it was back to practice for the football season, running twice-a-days and sweating off about ten pounds under the July sun. Somewhere during that...
Holden looked at me curiously. “How can I help you, sir?” “Tell me about the department. How did you get the acting chief slot, for one thing? Seniority?” He nodded. “Basically. I was hired by Chief Babcock back when he was first hired. Shawn Warren was hired about a year later. He has Patrol.” “So, you’ve been a captain about two years, and he’s only been a captain one year.” Again, he nodded. “We weren’t even considered for the chief’s slot, at least not permanently. Besides, Chief...
I was glad I had asked for a brunch meeting and not a breakfast meeting. Kelly not only thanked me for being a hero when we got back to the room, she insisted on thanking me again the next morning! It’s too bad that the Herndons were flying back with us, because I would have bet a significant portion of my net worth that Kelly could have been talked into joining the mile-high club otherwise. Ah well... Mike Forrester and Bob Jenkins met us at ten in the cafe for the breakfast buffet. They...
May 2019 The spring moved along, slowly at times, quick and harried at others. February saw Chris Balvin sending out advanced copies of his final draft for everybody involved to do a final edit. We were supposed to review it for any technical or factual errors; it was sent not just to Tolley and me, but also to Jose and Bob. The deal we all had was that any proceeds from the book would be split three ways. Chris was paid a flat $150k up front to write the book, and then he got a percentage...
October 2007 - December 2007 Mid-October, about when it became obvious that I was going to stick it out and go to the academy, Tim Hungerford showed up at the rickety-bench-with-delusions-of-grandeur that I called my desk. He had a packet of paperwork with him. “Take a break,” he ordered. “You need to look this stuff over.” I looked at him. “Why? What is it?” “It’s the packet from the academy.” “Ah!” I nodded at that. “Let’s take a look. You’ve been through this, right?” Tim nodded....
Monday, May 26, 2008 Certain things worked out for me. The bullshit out of the CORB had gotten pretty extreme, and the Justice Department planned to investigate them and not me. The Review Board wasn’t helped when Pendergast was caught saying that he was hoping for the dissolution of the entire Matucket Police Department and its replacement by a federally supervised police force. That was considered more than a bit nutty, even for hard-core Democrats. In any case, it got me off the hook with...
June 2004 - August 2004 Word came down from Battalion that the rest of Second Brigade would be deploying to Iraq soon. It was expected that they would show up sometime in July, but no dates were available. What they would do then was not known, or at least not known to us down at Camp Custer. Where exactly they would be positioned wasn’t known or might change before they got here. However, one interesting tidbit came out. Fourth of the Fourth was going to get some leave. Over the next few...
I told my family to stay there, and I would get my gear and catch up to them. Kelly offered to follow me, but I had to explain that women were not allowed in the barracks, no way, no how! Luckily there was a parking lot near the barracks that would allow me to load my gear up. Dad had driven down in the F-150, so we could toss my stuff in the back and then ride home. The ride home was mostly taken up with my parents and Kelly asking me about the Army and my training. What did I do, what did...
January 2007 Mom was very upset that I wasn’t going to come home on my leave. She just wasn’t buying my explanation about losing my squad. She wanted me to come home, squad or no squad. I think Dad understood, and he told me that his father understood, but Mom was very unhappy. I had been in the Army now for four Christmases, and three had been spent in Iraq. I didn’t even bother telling her about the incident at Yankee North. One of her latest kicks was, “Are you the only soldier in Iraq?...
I stared at Jerry for a second, and then ran over and knelt next to him. His upper right arm was mangled and bloody, and his face was covered in blood. “Oh, Jesus, Jerry!” I wailed, and then I grabbed the mike on my shoulder. ‘OFFICER DOWN! OFFICER DOWN! OH JESUS! OFFICER DOWN AT MATUCKET AND ELM! ONE-SIX-THREE TO DISPATCH! I NEED BACKUP AND AN AMBULANCE ... ROLL EVERYTHING! OFFICER DOWN!” Dispatch was saying something, but I didn’t pay any attention. “Oh, shit, Jerry, don’t you die on me!”...
I couldn’t take any more days off that summer. My time with Kelly was restricted to evenings and weekends, which was probably a good thing, at least as regards to my health. Keeping up with her appetite for sin was tiring! She might kill me, but I’d die with a smile on my face. I did speak to Dad about a temporary dock, and he nixed it, at least for this year. “One, it’s not as easy as you think, or as cheap, or as quick. You won’t get it done, at least not done right, until the end of the...
I had a problem with the academy in Athens related to graduation. Specifically, I would graduate with my doctorate mid-May, but the current Basic Law Enforcement class ran from the end of March through mid-July. I couldn’t stay in my apartment after graduating and we couldn’t justify my moving to a new apartment for just a month. I had been keeping Rich caught up with my schedule and plans over at UGA, but as May moved along, it was obvious my time in Athens was ending. Some of my lectures...
1996 to 1999 In August, football started up again. Matucket Middle School didn’t have a real football team, only flag football, so I was still playing Pop Warner football. I turned twelve on March 1, so I changed to the Midget League team, the Spartans. At twelve I had jumped over the Junior Midget team, which was ages ten, eleven, and twelve. The Midget team was ages twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, so I could probably play there until I got to high school. I knew Matucket High played real...
Seamus turned fourteen on May 8. Like every year before then, Kelly and I wondered whether he would live long enough to see another birthday. The eternal question was which one of us would kill him first. On the other hand, he could consistently manage to take my mind off the ongoing crisis in the Matucket Police Department. Over dinner that night he asked, “Dad, a mistress is a girlfriend, right?” I looked across the table at Kelly and she looked as confused as I did. I turned my head...
September 2003 - December 2003 Dad drove me over to Hartsfield International in Atlanta Thursday morning, sometime around the crack of dawn. Mom stayed at home, which was a good thing, because she spent most of Wednesday night and Thursday morning crying. She was a total basket case, even though I was only going to New York. I didn’t want to be around her when I ended up going overseas. I had to be there early, because I was on a very cheap Delta flight, and you had to be there two hours...
I went into the station the next morning at 0730. I figured I would go in early and see the shift changes and roll calls for a bit to get a feel for things from the bottom up. After roll call, I headed back to my office, only to get stopped by Mindy Hollis. She dragged me back outside to the department parking lot and over to the corner it shared with the impound yard. “This is where we should build a storage annex,” she said. “Why here? In this corner?” “It’s the best choice. It’s inside...