From Bad Policy by James M. Jackson




Thank you for being with us today, Seamus. Tell us about yourself.
Lots of people wonder how to pronounce my first name. It’s  “Shay-mus.” No one seems to have a problem pronouncing McCree, although they  often spell it wrong.

 Since I claim to be a basically honest guy, I need to fess up  from the beginning that calling myself a cop is stretching the truth. I actually  work for Criminal Investigations Group, CIG for short, and every blue moon or  two I am deputized for whatever police department we are assisting.  Most recently I worked with a cop named Bear who got me  deputized for the Ross County (Ohio) Sherriff’s  Department.

If it counts for anything, my father was a police sergeant in  Boston until he was killed while on duty. I just learned the full details of his  death and they shocked me something fierce. I have a son, Paddy who just  graduated from college, and I am proud as heck of him. I say he’s the king of  nonsequitors, but if I don’t get back on track you’re going to think it’s  hereditary. 

I grew up Irish in Boston and escaped after college. I was a  top-rated bank analyst on Wall Street until I quit in disgust. Buy me a beer,  I’ll tell you the whole story, but I didn’t have anything to do with the recent  banking crisis, except to warn it was coming. Anyway, I quit and it cost me a  ton of money and what was left of my marriage.

I was looking around for something to do and the head of  Criminal Investigations Group asked me to set up a financial crimes group for  them. CIG originally assisted police departments across the country with cold  crimes. After 9/11 the FBI shifted major resources from financial crimes to  terrorism. CIG decided to try to fill the breech. I used my contacts and put  together a world-class group of financial sleuths. Afterwards, I stayed on and  used my background to help solve crimes.

So you like numbers and stuff?  Yuck.
You know, if everyone was good at numbers, I couldn’t have made  a living since I bend three nails for everyone I hit straight. Fact is, if I  stuck with numbers I might stay out of trouble, but I’m always wondering not  only what happened but why it happened. It’s the why that gets me in  trouble.

How did you become involved in this case? 
Normally I work on cases remotely, but the one that got me to  hook back up with the Ross County Sherriff’s office and dig into my father’s  death started when an insurance broker I had met on a previous case showed up  dead in my basement. He had suffered an IRA six pack (shot in the ankles, knees  and elbows) before someone finished him off with a shotgun  blast.  Naturally, the cops thought I was involved, and sometimes when
they have a prime suspect they focus all their attention on him. I knew I was
being framed and needed to prove it.

Tell us about this case.  
I’m friends with Lt. Tanya Hastings who is the head of the  Cincinnati Police Department’s homicide unit. It’s a conflicted relationship and  this situation didn’t make it any better. When she doubted my innocence, I knew  I was in trouble. What I had not anticipated was how twisted and evil some people  can be—especially when they think they and their family have been wronged. Most  financial crimes are intellectual. This vendetta against me was based on  long-simmering hate against my family—and I had no clue until I started kicking  over rusty cans.

Was there ever a time during this case that you doubted those  that you normally trust?
In the middle of this case I figured out my Uncle Mike was lying  to me. Uncle Mike isn’t actually my uncle, he’s my godfather and took over my  discipline (which I badly needed) after my father’s death. He’s a retired Boston  Police Department Captain and I had always known him to be a straight shooter.  Turned out he had hidden information from me about how my father  died. A bigger problem for me was that people who normally trusted me  suddenly did not. I suppose that’s natural when you’re a suspect, but it was a
real shock for me since I’ve made it one of my main principals to be trustworthy.

How dangerous was it to solve this case?
When I think of danger, I think of our troops in combat or of  the beat cop who tries to stop a crime. Those women and men put themselves in  real danger every day. By its nature, having motivated people trying to kill you  is dangerous, and that did happen on this case. Unlike our troops or the beat  cops, I could take evasive measures. Plus, when it comes to stuff like that, I’m probably not smart enough to be scared.

Did working on this case affect you emotionally?
It’s one thing for someone to target me because I’ve upset their criminal enterprise. That I can handle; it goes with the job. It’s quite another thing when the criminals target your loved ones. I don’t want to give too much away for those who haven’t read the book, but when those close to me were hurt I became an emotional wreck. It not only affected my emotions, it affected my ability to think clearly. My normal strength of rational thinker was sorely tested.

How did this case affect your personal life?
I think the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is relevant. My house was effectively destroyed by fire. I almost lost two loved ones. Yet the fire forced me to recognize what things were really important to me. The trauma with loved ones brought us closer together. It would have been much better to have gained this knowledge  without the excitement, but at least something positive (besides catching the  crooks) came out of the turmoil.


 
JAMES M JACKSON is the author of Bad Policy for Barking Rain Press. Known as James Montgomery Jackson on his tax return and to his mother whenever she was really mad at him, he splits his time between the woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Georgia’s low country. Jim has published a book on contract bridge, One Trick at a Time: How to start winning at bridge, as well as numerous short stories and essays. Bad Policy is available wherever Jim’s travels take him, from online booksellers  or his website. Read the first four chapters for free. You can find his current schedule on his website http://jamesmjackson.com where you can also sign up for his quarterly  newsletter.


 
 
  

 From the book Cold Feet
                 By   Karen Pullen
 
 
We are honored to have with us today Stella Lavendar from the State Bureau of  Investigation in North Carolina. Stella, tell us about yourself. 
I’m a professional shopper, for drugs. In the market for coke, crack, smack, pot, ice, and pills. If you’re selling, I’m buying, and recording each transaction on video or voice. Later you’ll be visited by an arresting team, and you’d better lawyer up, agree to a plea deal, or join us–we can always use a cooperative informant. My employer is the state of North Carolina, the State Bureau of Investigation.  I joined the SBI out of college, after I graduated with a BS in criminal justice, four years ago. I always wanted to be a cop, because of what happened to my mother. 
 
What happened to your mother?
When I was five, she went into a gas station to pay and intercepted a robbery.  An
attendant was murdered and mom was abducted, never found. I became obsessed with
cold cases and the criminal justice system. For years I kept notebooks of murders and investigations and trials.  I’ve promised my grandmother Fern that I’d find out what happened to my mother, some day. 

After your mother died, who raised you? 
Fern. She is an artist, miserably poor, but she has a lot–I mean a lot–of boyfriends who take her out to dinner, do chores around her falling-down farmhouse, treat her to mini-vacations in charming B&Bs. She is light-hearted, amusing, and sexy. 
 
How did you become involved in this case? 
Fern and I went to a wedding. We sat with the other guests on  the lawn of this fake Scottish castle bed & breakfast, just waiting and waiting for the bride to walk down the aisle.  After observing a kerfuffle between a bridesmaid and the innkeeper, I followed them inside to the bride’s bedroom. She was dead, her body contorted, and I suspected
poison. The investigating detective asked for my help because many of the people involved in the wedding were related to the local police. Once I had my boss’s permission, I was free to work on the case, though I had to continue  doing my night job buying drugs.

Tell us about this case.  
The timing was curious.  Did someone get cold feet and want to prevent the wedding? We were interested in the groom, of course. He swore that Justine was an angel and
couldn’t possibly have had any enemies. Well, Justine may have been a lovely person but a number of people were not happy with her. One guest had lost his  job after a brief affair with her. The groom’s ex-girlfriend obsessively stalked him and crashed the wedding. An angry couple blamed their daughter’s disabilities on Justine, as the midwife present at the baby’s birth. And then it turned out that Justine’s past was very different from what one would assume. She’d kept it secret, or had she? Who knew? 
 
Was there ever a time during this case that you doubted those that you normally trust?
My grandmother Fern’s motives are mixed where men are concerned. When her new boyfriend turned out to be a drug dealer, she wasn’t sure whether to believe me when I told her he was dangerous. I could only tell her so much, because any involvement was unsafe for her and me.
 
How dangerous was it to solve this case?
In my final encounter with Justine’s murderer, I nearly lost my own life while saving a witness. Furthermore, since I was concurrently working as a drug agent, physical danger was a continued possibility.  After selling me a kilo of coke, a paranoid dealer evaded arrest and came looking for me. Good times.

Did working on this case affect you emotionally?
On many levels. It was my first homicide case and I wanted to solve it to prove myself. It brought back memories of my mother’s presumed death, and wanting to bring solace to Fern. The danger to Fern – my only living relative – was real. Finally, the whole issue of marriage continued to churn around in my psyche.  Neither my mother nor Fern married, but I had just been dumped by my fiancé Hogan in the midst of planning my own wedding. To make matters worse, I had to work on this case with Hogan, who is a fine SBI researcher.

How did this case affect your personal life?
I sleep with my dog Merle while my grandmother has all the fun, though I developed a major crush on the investigating detective who is married and therefore off-limits.  Working with Hogan, a serial cheater who hadn’t quite given me up, was challenging. It was an effort to remain professional.

Will you ever become a full-time homicide investigator? 
Yes, tomorrow would be my preference, but my SBI boss wants me to keep buying drugs.  He says I’m good at it because I don’t look like a cop.  Yay for me.
 
What do you do in your spare time?
During this case, I had none, because I had to fit the murder investigation around my regular assignment as a drug agent.  I try to visit Fern a few times a week to make sure her house hasn’t fallen down yet, and go for a slow jog with my dog Merle. Guess that sounds boring, but after my workday, boring is just the ticket.
 
Thank you for being with us today. Good luck with the …drug buying. Be sure and give Merle a treat for letting you visit with us.

 
 
Karen Pullen left a perfectly good job at an engineering consulting firm for more creative endeavors as an innkeeper and a fiction writer. Her B&B has been open for 12 years, and her fiction has been published in Every Day Fiction, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Spinetingler. She earned an MFA from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine on beautiful Casco Bay. She lives in Pittsboro NC. Cold
Feet is her first novel. She blogs at her website, www.karenpullen.com  where you can
also find details on a contest to win a weekend at Rosemary House B&B (imagine spending a weekend in a cute artsy town and two nights in a charming historic B&B, an airjet tub for two, flickering fireplace, eggs Benedict and strawberry-topped Belgian waffles for breakfast).  Cold Feet will be published in January 2013. It’s currently available for pre-order at bookstores and online retail outlets, and should be on the street in early February.