Russell Atkinson's Blog, page 108

GUT SHOT – Episode 7 (and a giveaway)

Did you miss an episode? Fall behind? You can soon win a free copy of Gut Shot. Starting August 1 you will be able to enter a Goodreads giveaway to win a free copy. The giveaway will last the month of August at the end of which two copies will be given away to the winners. Look for the entry form here starting this Saturday. Now on to the next episode.

Gut Shot – Episode 7

© copyright 2015 by Russell Atkinson

The courtroom was abuzz with murmurs and a flurry of note-taking. I saw two sketch artists begin to draw on their pads. Cameras weren’t allowed.

The magistrate had the attorneys state their appearances and identify the defendant as being present. Then he read Woody his Miranda rights and asked if he understood, which is your coals to Newcastle situation if there ever was one. Woody had read those rights to scores of defendants himself. Woody answered with the single word “yes” as Bert had no doubt instructed him. No backtalk or sarcasm. Next came a litany of other rights explained, followed by an acknowledgment every time from Woody that he understood.

The judge informed Woody of the charge on which he had been arrested, the murder of a federal officer, and asked if he understood. Again a “yes.” After that he asked if the defendant waived time. Under the constitution a defendant has a right to a speedy trial, which has been interpreted as meaning within forty-five days from the date of arrest. The defendant has an absolute right to a trial within that time, but defense lawyers almost always urge their clients to waive that right, meaning give it up and allow the trial to take place much later. That’s because the defense nearly always needs the time to learn about the case and prepare a defense. The prosecution already has the evidence and is usually ready to go to trial quickly. However, if the defendant is in custody and not let out on bail, something likely in a murder case, it may not be in the defendant’s interest to sit in jail for a long time.

Bert asked the magistrate if they could address the issue of bail first. It was obvious that if he could get Woody released on bail, then he’d waive time. If not, he’d have to leave it up to Woody. Morrissey objected and said the court was entitled to an answer on waiving time first. The magistrate deferred to Bert’s request and said he would entertain argument as to bail. That was good. He wasn’t a pushover for the prosecution.

Bert immediately requested that defendant be released on a reasonable bail, something along the lines of twenty thousand dollars. He emphasized the fact that Woody was an FBI agent whose integrity and trustworthiness had been proved to the federal courts for years, that he had no criminal record, had strong ties to the community, had cooperated fully during arrest, and would surrender his passport and agree to monitoring with an ankle unit.

“That’s preposterous, your honor,” the AUSA objected. “This is a murder case, not shoplifting. The defendant is unmarried and does not own a house or other substantial property in the area. He has family and friends in several other states and Canada. He’s facing life in prison, potentially even the death penalty if the U.S. Attorney should choose to seek it. We request that the defendant be held without bail.”

With that, a collective gasp rumbled through the gallery. This was the first official hint that it could be a capital case. This was also my first glimpse at some of the facts.

“Your honor,” Bert replied hotly, “that’s outrageous. The defendant can produce dozens of witnesses, fellow agents and AUSAs who have worked with him, who will vouch for his character. If he’s left in prison, his life is in danger. I’m sure you can appreciate that an FBI agent is not a popular person among other inmates. It would be a hardship on the prison system as well as my client if he had to be kept segregated from the general population. He has a girlfriend who lives here and is employed by the FBI. He’s not a flight risk because there’s no crime here. This is a simple shooting accident during a firearms exercise, one still being investigated by the FBI. There’s no evidence of any motive for a homicide.”

I was learning more every minute. I wondered who the girlfriend was. It looked like the accident story was going to be the one they were going with, although I was at a loss to understand how that would hold up if the “Die, sucker” quote on the news was true.

The magistrate looked over to the AUSA who cracked a thin smile. “The government will show that motive is strong in this case. That so-called girlfriend in fact was dumping him in order to date the victim in this case, Jermaine Logan.”

The courtroom exploded in noise. Reporters began rushing from the room to be the first with this scoop. The magistrate hammered his gavel hard enough to nail sheetrock.

When the commotion died down enough for proceedings to continue, the magistrate said he’d heard enough. The defendant would remain in custody for now, but a bail hearing was set for the Wednesday of the following week. Bert said the defendant was not waiving time. I knew it could always be waived later, but it couldn’t be “unwaived” once on the record as waived. For now, at least, if I took the case, I’d have to work fast.

The magistrate asked Morrissey if an indictment could be expected by that time, in other words, would she be presenting this to a grand jury and filing formal charges. So far Woody was just being held on probable cause based on a criminal complaint from one of the agents who had arrested him. I also knew that obtaining indictments was like taking candy from a baby. The AUSA could get an indictment at will and could always get a superseding indictment later, too, if she decided additional charges were warranted. That would trigger a new bail hearing and time waiver.

She said she would be presenting the case to a grand jury but that a formal indictment would probably not be ready at that time. Once the indictment came down, there would be an arraignment, meaning another hearing. I figured she probably wanted to have as many hearings as possible so that she could appear before the press every week or so. She wanted to taint the jury pool if she could.

Woody was led out again and Bert stayed behind until the courtroom cleared out a bit. More than half the people, mainly reporters, were now gone. I caught his eye when he did start to come down the aisle and he leaned over to me and whispered for me to meet him at his office four blocks away after the reporters were gone. I realized that he was going to face the press gauntlet on the steps and he didn’t want me to be seen there. So far as I knew, no one had recognized me, but I’ve been in the headlines a few times recently in connection with those murders I mentioned. My name had been cleared, but it would still be a juicy wrinkle for the crime analysts on the news to speculate about. He didn’t want Woody publicly associated with me. It bruised my ego for a moment, but I realized I’d probably have done the same thing in his shoes. I nodded my agreement.

Baby Names II

Continuing yesterday’s post about my new baby names toy, it’s interesting to see to what extent names are distributed on religious or ethnic lines. For example, Muhammad only became frequent enough to show up in the last decade or so, and it has a definite regional preference:

This probably represents the influx of Muslim immigrants to the northeast and Great Lakes area, but may also represent some people converting to Islam. Here’s another example:

The circles almost certainly represent an indication of the relative density of Mormons in the state population since the name is a very uncommon one among the general population, but is the name of Brigham Young, an important figure in the history of the Latter Day Saints, especially those founding Salt Lake City and other communities in Utah.

I thought Jewish names would show a strong preference for the northeast, especially New York and New Jersey, and a few do, but it turns out that many of the most popular names among Jews are Old Testament names, and of course, Christians and to some extent Muslims share that history. As a result those names tend to be quite common and evenly distributed all over the country. For example, Sarah:

Remember, colors are randomly assigned and irrelevant. The size of the circle matters. For Spanish names, those do cluster rather strongly in states with large Latino populations, but the distribution is more even today than it was a few decades ago. I tried to find Chinese names that showed up since there has been a huge increase in the number of Chinese residents in California in recent years, but I was not successful. I suspect the reason is that most Chinese parents who give birth here give the child a western name as the first name and if they give a Chinese name, it is usually the middle name.

Baby Names

The Social Security Administration has recently released the list of baby names here: . The lists include data by year of birth, but do not include all names for privacy reasons. Read the explanation on their site if you want to know more. I downloaded the data by state and wrote a program to show the relative popularity of a name by state for a given time frame. It’s a fun toy. It’s clear that some names have a regional popularity (or unpopularity). For example, look at the two following graphs for the names Heidi and Ruby for the period 1910 to 1980. Colors are irrelevant and randomly assigned each run. Just look at the size of the circles.

The colored  circles represent the different states and are placed approximately in an analogous geographical position to the state. Labels are to the lower right of the circle that is labeled, i.e to the southeast. So in the lower of the two pictures, Wisconsin, for example, is shown by the light blue circle to the upper left of the “WI”.  In the upper picture it is a lighter, brighter blue and a larger circle. The larger the circle, the more popular that name was for babies within the time frame listed in that state. As can be seen, the name Heidi was more popular in northern, cold-weather states that in the south. This makes sense since it is a name popular in German-speaking and Scandinavian countries, i.e., cold, northern Europe. Immigrants from those countries tended to settle in colder climes. Ruby, on the other hand, showed an even stringer regional preference, but for the south.

But things change over time. Look at these next two graphs for a very recent period:

In the last five years or so Ruby has actually become more popular in the north than in the south, and Heidi has become more or less equally popular everywhere, although not as popular as it once was in the north. I don’t have a good explanation and I will refrain from speculating, but I did notice that most names that were very common in the early 20th century are less so now. In 1910, the most popular male name and female name each constituted over five percent of all baby names. I believe that people are less conventional these days so there are simply more variations and more different names today, thus resulting in no names that are close to the five percent mark.

My own name, Russell, was quite a bit more popular when I was born than it is now. If you want to see how popular your name was in the various states when you were born, or at any other time, for that matter, contact me. Or if you want a comparison of two different names, I can do that, too.  I will perform searches for the first ten people who contact me. Use the form below. I don’t want to know your date or even year of birth. I suggest sending me a 10-year date date range, or just list the name and year(s) you are interested in without indicating whose birth year it is. Be sure to indicate whether it is male or female, the exact spelling, and the date range (from 1910 to 2014) and explain specifically what you want. For example, compare how many male and female Terry’s were born in 2014.

[contact-form]

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby

Funny Girl: A Novel by Nick Hornby


My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All seems right with the world when a best-seller turns out to be wonderful. It’s not just for the fairness toward the book that I say this; it also gives me hope that the general public is smarter and more discerning than I sometimes think. Such is the case with Funny Girl.

The beginning, set in the 1960s, shows us Sophie Straw as an aspiring comedienne. Blonde, busty, and beautiful, yet endearingly naive, she is the quintessential soubrette. Yes, I had to look that word up, too, just like Sophie. She soon lands the lead in a BBC television comedy at a time when Britain in general and the BBC in particular are stuffy and priggish. She and her doughty crew of writers, actors, and producer proceed to unstuff and deprig mother England as they take us through the decades to the modern day and the evolution of social norms in Britain and society in general.

The story is written with warmth and humor, wit and intelligence. It never has a mean or sarcastic tone. Sophie is from Blackpool, which I take to be somewhere out the sticks by London standards, as far from the Oxbridge slice of society of her producer Dennis as possible. Yet everyone, including the viewing public, falls in love with Sophie for her big heart, her innocence, her impeccable comic timing. You will too.

I listened to the audiobook and I strongly recommend you do, too. The reader, Emma Fielding, is superb. I can’t imagine the print book could do as well. This book gets my highest rating.





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Cryptic Acrostics #2

Last year I wrote about my enjoyment of cryptic acrostics here. Click that link if you don’t understand what they are or want to refresh your recollection. Yesterday I finished another one in my Super Crostics book (author: Thomas Middleton). I thought I’d share with you a few of the definition gems (with explanation provided).

Approving a strange day tour after fifty. (9 letters)

Answer: LAUDATORY (take the letters in DAY TOUR in a “strange way”, i.e. mixed, and place them after L, the Roman numeral for 50, to get the answer, which means approving.)

Rogue! to knock an onion!(11 letters)

Answer: RAPSCALLION (to rap someone is to knock him, followed by scallion, an onion).

One hundred in defective department of learning.(7 letters)

Answer: FACULTY (Roman numeral C placed in FAULTY).

Depressed? Fire a nerd (2 words, 7 letters)

Answer: SAD SACK (SAD=depressed, SACK=fire, as an employee, SAD SACK = a nerd).

GUT SHOT – Episode 6

Gut Shot – Episode 6

© Russell Atkinson 2015

The cure for crime is not the electric chair, but the high chair. J. Edgar Hoover

Chapter 3

The next morning Maeva dropped me off in Fremont. When we drove by the Tesla factory I told myself I’d have to get me one of those one of these days. But, no, I’m past that stage. I had my fun with the Volvo.

I rode the whole way up to Oakland standing. Silicon Valley is booming and there’s crowding everywhere – on the highways, the city streets, the buses and trains, too, it seems. The herky-jerky train, the crowds, both set my teeth on edge. I was already in a bad mood when I stepped off the train in downtown Oakland.

I got off at the 12th Street and Broadway station and walked up 14th to Clay. I hadn’t been in downtown Oakland in several years and I was surprised at the transformation. Oakland has a reputation as a tough town, and not without reason. You don’t want to be walking on International Avenue after dark, not unless you’re there to score drugs or a hooker, but downtown during the day is as safe as any big city downtown. The federal court complex was impressive. The landscaping there and in the nearby park was nice and the people all around seemed busy going about normal lives. I’d heard that Oakland was becoming the “it” place to be with the young crowd, too. The jazz clubs, funky restaurants, and Internet startups were blossoming all over. San Francisco was passé, too expensive, and too touristy.

Naturally, just when I was coming out of my bad mood, this good impression had to be spoiled. The courthouse was surrounded by a crowd of demonstrators whose only purpose seemed to be to antagonize police and see if they could provoke a violent response that could be captured on video. They were demanding “Justice for LaDyamian,” whoever he or it was. I didn’t know anything about LaDyamian, but I’ll bet I could guess what race he was. I also didn’t know what “justice” for him was. Most of the time on the news it means the guy is dead. Did they want him resurrected? Typically they want some cop’s head, but then they want that at any given time whether or not there’s a LaDyamian in the picture. As I pushed my way through in my suit, which I do wear when I go to court, even as a spectator, I was almost tempted to announce to the demonstrators that I was on the defense team for a black murder suspect, but that would have been hypocritical. One look at me and they could tell I wasn’t on their side.

The courthouse is named after Ron Dellums, a very liberal African-American Congressman who represented Oakland for decades. After that he became Oakland’s mayor when Jerry Brown became Governor. I was a little surprised to learn of this naming, since Dellums was still living and only left office a few years ago. Usually federal buildings were only named after dead politicians. I went through the security screening, removing my belt and shoes before being let through. Even the lawyers have to do that. Security’s a lot tougher here than in the state courts.

I made my way to the courtroom that Bert had texted me and milled around in the hallway along with a smattering of lawyers. I was quite a bit early. I looked around for Bert and didn’t see him. Then I noticed that some of the “lawyers” weren’t lawyers. Some were reporters, talking on the phone to their stations or newspapers, or fiddling with their makeup. Cameras weren’t allowed inside, but you could be sure they’d be doing a standup on the steps afterward. You could almost feel the feeding frenzy. I didn’t know what else was on the calendar, but I figured the main attraction had to be Woody’s case.

After fifteen minutes the hallway was packed. The courtroom door wasn’t open yet, which is typical, and there are only a few benches in the hallway, so the lawyers have to stand around for half an hour or so on marble floors in their wingtips or high heels holding heavy litigation bags. And you thought we had it easy. This wasn’t a trial court, though; this was a Magistrate’s court, so there were only the regular briefcases, no litigation bags.

Initial appearances are handled by United States Magistrate-Judges. They used to be called U.S. Magistrates, but the “Judge” part was added on a few years back. It’s like grade inflation in the schools or title inflation in the workplace. They’re still the hired help. They’ll always be just magistrates to me, lawyers hired by the courts for fixed-year terms to do the petty stuff. It’s only the United States District Court Judges who have lifetime tenure. Which is not to say the magistrates are without power. They can try many types of cases like civil cases or misdemeanor criminal matters and can set bail or release prisoners. Or not. That was going to be the important decision for today, I knew.

I knew the magistrates in San Jose where I spent most of my career, but I’d never had any dealings with the ones up here in Oakland and had no idea what to expect. Some are hard-asses, some are pretty lenient. I usually liked the former when I was in the FBI, but today I was rooting for one of the softies.

The doors opened and we all filed in. I took a seat halfway toward the front, which was as near as I could get what with the reporters rushing in. My eyesight is mediocre at best, so I wanted to be close enough to see body language. I realized Bert was already seated in the second row as were some other lawyers. He must have been let in through a side door. He’d probably been consulting with his client in the holding area. I tried to catch his eye, but he was talking to the attorney next to him, a young black woman in a tasteful olive-green suit. Her large, round eyeglasses would have given her a studious look were it not for the scarlet frames. She was probably an associate in his firm, I guessed.

The bailiff told us to rise, and the magistrate walked in and sat down. He was a Hispanic male around forty and, to me anyway, looked pretty dapper. He had starched French cuffs with sparkly gold cufflinks and one of those shirts with the white collar and colored body barely visible under the robes. A gold pin ran behind the knot of his tie through the wings of the collar. His hair looked styled, too. His glasses had a gold-colored frame and I’d bet he had another pair with silver frames for the days when he wore his silver cufflinks and stickpin. To round it out, he had a very neatly trimmed mustache, still jet black, which may or may not have been natural.

This morning was a criminal calendar so the bailiff brought out the first batch of prisoners and seated them in the jury box. There were five, all in orange jump suits. None of them was in handcuffs. A stout female deputy marshal stood by the jury box and I noticed the largish bailiff kept his eyes on the jury box, too. I knew from experience that at least two more marshals were right outside in the prisoner holding area.

Two of the cases were extradition matters. When a criminal is arrested by the feds in a state different from the one where he is wanted, there’s a process required to get him back there to be tried. Since the arrest is normally on a federal charge, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, that federal charge has to be dropped and the judge has to release him to the local authorities. You’d be surprised how often the local authorities don’t have the money or inclination to send an officer out to accompany the fugitive back, especially if it’s on the other side of the country. Sometimes they’re just let go. That doesn’t happen very often, but it gives the defense lawyer some leverage to try to work out a deal with the prosecutor long distance. Most of the time, though, extradition is waived by the defendant and he is just sent back. I never did understand when the Marshals transport them and when the locals have to do it.

The next case was a non-violent drug defendant who’d violated the terms of his pre-trial release. The court had to decide what sanction to impose on him. This one was easy. The magistrate simply raised his bail to three hundred thousand, which meant he was going to be languishing in jail until trial. The last two cases were disposed of just as quickly. Those prisoners were led away. A couple of attorneys left, but the other lawyers for the first defendants stayed, probably because they were public defenders who had more clients on the calendar. Still no sign of Woody.

The magistrate made eye contact with Bert and an AUSA on the prosecution side of the room, a thick-set bottled blonde pushing forty named Sheila Morrissey. I knew her only vaguely from when she had come down to the San Jose office to prosecute a case one of my squad members had worked on. I hadn’t liked her, but she got a conviction and seemed competent enough. The magistrate stood and headed for his chambers; Bert and Morrissey followed. Apparently this had all been choreographed ahead of time. They must have realized this was going to be a hot potato. They were only in chambers for three or four minutes and then resumed their places in court, this time with the lawyers up at the front tables.

Woody was led out by the marshal. He was not in cuffs and, unlike the other prisoners, was wearing a nice suit and tie. I realized that this must have taken a great deal of persuasion on Bert’s part. Woody was there on murder charges, after all. The violent defendants were always in cuffs and jail jumpsuits in my experience, except at trial when a jury was present. Bert must have brought the clothes from Woody’s apartment and gotten him changed in the holding area. No doubt the marshals were sympathetic to an FBI agent, but I doubt they would have allowed it without the magistrate approving it.

… to be continued

Anagrams on the News

FREEWAY INFERNO EATS CARS IN SOUTHERN CAL = FIERY RUIN WENT ON AS FEAR LATCHES ON, RACES

Seven Wonders by Ben Mezrich

Seven Wonders by Ben Mezrich


My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Seven Wonders reads like a Monty Python sendup of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I would have laughed out loud as I read if it hadn’t apparently been trying to be a thriller instead of a farce.

The hero of the story, Jack Grady, is impossibly brave and lucky, surviving every cliched hazard from the Lost Ark movies: masses of spiders, snakes, collapsing walls, attacks by deadly Amazonian warriors, poison darts and spears. He can climb anything, swim through claustrophobically small tunnels in total darkness holding his breath for impossible distances. The attractive female biologist who decides to join him manages to keep up.

The book is full of grammar and logic errors. The publishers didn’t spend much on editors for this one. For example, at one point something moves so slowly that its movement can be measured only “in nanoseconds.” Hey, guys, if it’s moving slowly, you would measure it in weeks, years, or centuries. You would measure the distance it traveled in nanometers, perhaps. At another point the evil billionaire (more cliches) is observing a calf. The next paragraph it is described as a lamb. Then the next paragraph it is a calf again. Get your eyeballs in shape before reading this one. You’ll be rolling them a lot.

I usually don’t give reviews this low because when a book is this bad I normally stop reading early and move on, but I was having enough fun looking for the stupid errors and hackneyed writing, thinking about how I was going to review it that I managed to finish it. You’ve been warned. Read it at your own peril.





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GUT SHOT – Episode 5

I’ve posted Episode 5 below. As I warned you, I am also deleting Episode 1 from this blog. I hope you’re caught up. If not, you can still do so by reading the Amazon.com sample of the book online until you get to the start of Episode 2. I don’t know how long that will work. Eventually Amazon will make you pay. That’s okay with me.

Gut Shot – Episode 5

©Russell Atkinson 2015

As soon as I hung up I realized Tommy was crying. I cursed myself for letting myself get too wrapped up in the call to pay attention. I had even unconsciously walked into the bedroom to avoid the noise. My priorities were going to have to change. I picked him up and hugged him to me, trying to calm him down. I knew I should burp him, so I headed back to the nursery to get that cloth to put over my shoulder. Of course, two seconds before I got there Tommy urped up all over me. Ahh, how I love the smell of puked milk in the evening. At least it was just on my polo shirt. I rarely wear suits any more. Thank God for Silicon Valley business casual.

Tommy was happy again, so I put him back in his crib – on his back, of course – while I changed my clothes, keeping my ears open for any sign of distress. By the time I emerged he was asleep and Ellen was arriving with the pizza. We were both ravenous and Tommy was quiet, so without waiting we opened the box and each slid a slice onto a plate, pulled a beer from the refrigerator, and sat. After a few bites Ellen got up, put the rest of the pizza in the oven to stay hot, and pulled out a fruit salad she’d made earlier.

“Almost forgot,” she said as she spooned the fruit into a couple of bowls and plunked them down on the table. She handed me a fork, too. “Was Tommy good?”

“Perfect. Is there a better child in the entire world?” I said. She snorted derisively at the hyperbole, but the crinkles at the corners of her eyes told me I’d said the right thing.

“Bert called,” I told her. “He says Woody wants me because I’ll believe in his innocence. I’m going to go to the initial appearance tomorrow morning. It’s in Oakland. I’ll need the car.”

“Cliff,” she objected hotly, “I need it tomorrow. I have to take Tommy for his checkup and I have to go shopping. I just had you pick up a few essentials today. I’ve got a shopping list a foot long and a doctor’s appointment for Tommy.”

I realized we were going to have to get a second car. Ellen had had her own car when we got married, of course, a Ford Fiesta on its last legs, and I’d had a Volvo C70 convertible, a really nice ride. But when I totaled mine, we traded in her Fiesta along with my insurance money and got a new Mercedes SUV. She had her Bureau car for work, including commute, so that seemed like all we needed, and we didn’t have room for three cars. Then she went on maternity leave and had to turn in her Bureau car. We were fine at first when her mom with her rental car was here to help with the baby, but these problems kept arising now that we were down to one car.

“Okay, I forgot about that. Tell you what, I’ll have Maeva pick me up and drive me to the Fremont BART station. She’s an early bird anyway. We can use the carpool lane. Coming back I can take BART to the City and switch to CalTrain.” BART stood for Bay Area Rapid Transit, the electrified rail system in the East Bay and San Francisco. It didn’t extend to the lower peninsula. CalTrain is the older traditional commuter railroad that runs up the peninsula connecting Silicon Valley with San Francisco. The systems connect south of San Francisco, but aren’t well integrated. Getting to Oakland by public transit isn’t easy from where we live. There’s a body of water with over a thousand square miles of surface area between us.

“So what else did he tell you?” Ellen asked. “Don’t tell me anything you’re not supposed to.” She didn’t want to be dragged into a conflict of interest situation any more than I did. She might even be called on to testify for one side or the other, since she’d worked with Woody.

“Nothing really. Woody says he’s innocent. Bert can’t say more unless I agree to work the case, which I haven’t yet.” I didn’t tell her that Woody said it was an accident. Stories can change, I know, and I didn’t want one explanation on the record that contradicted something later. He could be innocent for other reasons, like self-defense or insanity.

“Is Jermaine still alive? Matt wasn’t sure on the phone.”

“Apparently not.”

Ellen crossed herself and shook her head. She’s a devout Catholic. I’m neither devout nor Catholic.

We were working on our second slice when Tommy began to cry. Ellen immediately began to lactate. “Dang it!” she cried, the closest she ever came to swearing. She knew she was lucky that she had milk since many women can’t manage it, but it could still be a pain. She got up and went in to nurse Tommy, her pizza and beer still on the table. I noticed that she’d only taken a few sips of the beer. That’s all she ever drank while she was nursing. I finished hers off. No point in letting good beer go to waste.

Bert texted me the courtroom number for the initial appearance. I called Maeva and told her to pick me up in the morning. I cleaned up the dishes, but Ellen was still hungry, so we reheated the pizza after a couple of hours. Eventually we got through the pizza, the dishes, and changing Tommy two more times before he finally conked out, or seemed to at least. It was after ten.

We have our favorite shows. Some we stream but broadcast shows we record on the DVR so we can zap through the ads or just because we can’t watch in live time, what with Tommy’s needs and all. So we were watching a nine o’clock show and I was zapping through the ads when I saw a flash of the FBI seal. I rewound and saw a teaser for the eleven o’clock news with the words “Breaking News” in the banner underneath. The female anchor, young and beautiful, of course, unlike the chubby male next to her, said that an FBI agent had been killed and another agent taken into custody. Details at eleven.

We could hardly contain ourselves, but didn’t have long to wait. When eleven rolled around we stopped watching the recorded show two-thirds of the way through and tuned in the news. The top story was about President Obama and ISIS but we were too wrought up to pay it any attention. The story we wanted was second. The male anchor said that an FBI agent had been killed during a training exercise at Santa Rita. He turned it over to the reporter outside. That was an older black woman standing on the steps of the federal courthouse in Oakland. She said that an FBI agent had died from a single gunshot wound during a training exercise involving an arrest scenario.

“A single gunshot, good,” Ellen mouthed softly. She knew, as I did, that that made it more likely to be an accident. If Woody had fired more than once, it would be hard to argue accident.

“Agents on the scene arrested the shooter,” the reporter went on, “a fellow FBI agent. Authorities are not releasing the names of the victim or the suspect, but sources have identified the suspect as Sherwood Braswell, a twelve-year veteran of the FBI.” A picture of Woody appeared on the screen. He was wearing a football uniform, holding his helmet in a stiff pose. It must have been taken from his college yearbook or some team publicity photo. I knew he’d played football back then, varsity at a Division 1 school, if I remembered right. The bushy afro looked ridiculous on him now. He could pass for a Wall Street banker these days, but who among us doesn’t look ridiculous in our old photos. He still had the physique of an athlete, so despite the passage of years the picture was a pretty good likeness if you could ignore the afro and the uniform.

“Charges are expected to be filed here in federal court in Oakland tomorrow,” she continued. She didn’t specify what kind of charges. “The FBI has issued a statement offering condolences to the victim’s family and saying it’s always a sad day for the entire FBI when one of our own is lost. They said the suspect has been suspended pending investigation and urged the press and public not to jump to any conclusions. They have not released the name of the victim but we have learned he was a single male and from back east originally.”

The male anchor broke in and asked if there had been any explanation of why the victim was shot. Had there been a fight or ongoing issues between the two men? She replied that she did not have that information at this time but said she had spoken to one source who wished to remain anonymous. “That source told me,” she stated ominously, “that one of the agents on the scene was heard saying that the suspect had yelled out, ‘Die, sucker,’ right before pulling the trigger at point blank range.”

The anchors went on to other stories and I flipped off the TV. “Holy moly,” I muttered and looked at Ellen. I’ve learned not to swear around her. She met my eyes briefly and I could see tears in hers.

Ellen Pao out as Reddit CEO

User Revolts Ousts Ellen Pao as Reddit CEO

Maybe she’ll sue those 200,000 users for sexual discrimination now.