David Dubrow's Blog, page 60

Celebrity Selfie Hack: Eight Things You Need to Think About

Over the years, I worked closely with many police officers, combat veterans, martial artists, and self-defense experts, learning about what they did to put food on the table.  When discussing violent encounters, the prevailing attitude was, "It's awful that X happened, but it's worse if we don't learn from it."

It's a self-evident form of pragmatism that can be applied to anything that went wrong.

With that in mind, let's take a look at the commentary on the recent celebrity selfie hack.  Not the story itself, because the facts are already out there, but the commentary on it, which demonstrates a lack of willingness to address real-life concerns.

There's no need to burnish one's moral bona fides by declaring that anyone should be allowed to take any picture of oneself of any kind without fear of the picture being stolen.  It takes no moral courage at all to insist that theft is wrong.There's nothing wrong in saying that, for security's sake, you shouldn't put your nude selfies anywhere you don't directly control, like the cloud.  By saying so, it doesn't mean that you condone the hackers' actions in stealing those selfies.  It also doesn't mean that you think the people whose privacy was violated deserved it.  Pointing out an error is a way of ensuring that the error isn't repeated.The very nature of personal security is that it's inconvenient.  If it wasn't inconvenient, it wouldn't be security.  Real security, the kind that comes before house keys and passwords, involves a mindset that acknowledges this inconvenience and works with it.  It requires a decision-making process that doesn't include putting nude photos of oneself on a server that can potentially be hacked (which is all servers).Celebrities, due to many factors that don't need to be discussed, are at greater risk than the rest of us.  Failure to acknowledge this is ludicrous.  They were profiled, targeted, and hit.  There are significant differences between being physically assaulted and robbed vs having one's naked selfies stolen.  Moral preening about both being terrible so we can conflate them is just that: preening.  This wasn't rape.  Every comparison of having one's nude selfies stolen to forcible penetration demeans those individuals who have actually been raped.  Just as every terrible thing that has happened isn't the Holocaust, every theft of nude selfies isn't rape.Discussing what someone did to put him or herself at risk isn't blaming the victim.  Refusal to learn from others' actions is a childish way of viewing the world.There's nothing wrong with deciding that of all the things we're supposed to be outraged by, this case isn't a priority.  It doesn't make you evil.  If learning that Jennifer Lawrence's personal privacy was violated by hackers doesn't peg your Outrage Meter, fine.  Don't let anyone tell you how you should feel.If nothing else, you should consider pulling your nude selfies out of the cloud and transferring them to Polaroids that can be safely hidden under the mattress.

Breadhead Friday: Focaccia

The only experience most of us will have with focaccia is a dry piece flatbread served at chain restaurants as an Italian-style appetizer or part of a more ambitious bread basket.  Which is a shame, because properly prepared, there are few things in the world more delicious than focaccia.  Moist with herb oil and a tender, almost creamy crumb, you won't believe how good it can be.

By properly prepared, I mean you need to have a high hydration dough to get this to work (75%-80%).  The recipe I use is very similar to this raisin bread recipe, though I obviously leave out the dried fruit for more savory ingredients.

Before baking. Sliced tomatoes and plenty of herb oil
After baking: note the char. The herb oil cooks the tomatoes a little, too
A word of explanation about percentages: a 75-80% hydration dough means that if the weight of flour equals 100%, you need to have 75-80% of that weight in water, also.  So if you add a pound of flour, you have to add .75 or .85 lbs of water.  A more detailed explanation of baker's percentage can be found here.

Pepperoni pizza focaccia
Typically, I treat it like a pizza, and put various toppings on it.  We'd have it more often, but it's a bit time-consuming to make: lots of time and care.  But it's worth it.  Every delicious bite.  Make some.  You won't regret it.

Left: tomatoes and cheese. Right: tomatoes, sauteed onions and cheese

Flash Fiction: A Perfect Day for Jellyfish

“Found one, Daddy!” He ran up to me, grinning.  So pleased with himself.  I couldn’t help but smile back.  “You’re sure it’s a good one?” “Uh, yeah.”  Blue eyes slid away.  “It was moving.” “Okay, kiddo.  Let’s see what you’ve got.”  I debated putting the car keys in my swimsuit pocket.  If I left them, someone might steal them.  But if they got wet, the electronic part would break.  With a mental Heck with it, I got up off the blanket, brushed sand off my butt, and followed him at a jog down the beach.     Pointing to a tide pool, he shouted, “Here it is!”  He was almost dancing with excitement. I waded into the shallows and leaned closer.  “Let’s see….”  Careful to keep the disappointment from my voice, I told him, “Well, it’s sort of a jellyfish, kiddo.  It’s a mesoglea: part of a jellyfish.  If a peanut butter and jelly sandwich represented a whole jellyfish, this would just be the jelly.” His bare little shoulders sagged.  I probably should’ve put some sunscreen on him, but we’re never out long enough for it to matter.  He just tans anyway.  “Sorry,” he mumbled. Laughing at his hangdog expression, I said, “It’s all right, Peter!  Don’t worry about it.  If we don’t find one today, it’s not the end of the world.”  I knelt to get to his eye level.  “Here.  We’ll get some bread and peanut butter, and I’ll make you a sandwich with it.” He turned away and giggled.  “Noooo, that’s gross!  I don’t wanna eat it.” “You sure?” “No.”  At almost four, he still didn’t know what that question meant, so he always answered the opposite of how he felt.   “All right.  Let’s go—“ A dull, blurry wash of red to the left caught my eye.  “The bucket, Peter!” I said.  “Get the bucket!”   Caught up in my enthusiasm, he was back with the dollar store sand pail in less than half a minute.  “Is it an alive one?” I didn’t bother correcting his grammar.  “A moon jellyfish, yeah.  Definitely alive.”  In the water, it was a barely visible round shape with a reddish flower pattern in the center.  The trick was to let it swim into the bucket itself; if you tried to get it from an angle, it was more likely to sting you.   “I see it!  I see it!” he screamed.  “Get it, Daddy!” “Got it,” I said, scooping the jellyfish into the bucket.  It barely fit.   “Can I see it?” “Sure thing, kiddo.”  I stepped back onto the sand and lowered the bucket.  “Don’t touch it, though.” He drew back his hand.  “Why?” “Well, it might sting you.  You don’t want a big boo-boo, do you?”  I swallowed past a lump in my throat. “No.  Let’s take it back to Mommy.” On the short drive back he fussed a little about not being able to hold the bucket in his car seat, but my promise to let him help me put the jellyfish into our aquarium kept it from turning into a mini-tantrum.  He’s usually good-natured, but there’s nothing more a toddler hates than the word no, and nothing more he loves than saying it. As we went into the house, he insisted, “I want to tell Mommy.” “Well, she might still be asleep.”   “Yeah.”  He kicked off his sneakers and ran toward the bedroom, shouting, “Mommy, Mommy!  We got a jello-fish!  A big one!” I set the bucket on the kitchen counter, pushing it far enough away from the edge so he couldn’t reach.  Most of the time I don’t think about doing these things: I just do them. The horror stories of kids pulling hot pans of sizzling bacon grease or whatever off the stove and spilling it all over themselves are pretty frightening. In the bedroom, his mother was still asleep, curled up facing away from the door.  Orange bottles of Alprazolam and Eszopiclone sat on the nightstand next to the box of tissues.  She couldn’t sleep any more without the Lunestra, and couldn’t function during the day without the Xanax.  Last night had been pretty bad.  I can take the shouting, the irritability, the moodiness.  But in the middle of the night she’d just started crying these long, deep sobs that shook her whole body and scared the hell out of me.  I had held her, but she had been doing it in her sleep. Peter tried to shake her awake.  “Why’s she still sleeping?” “It’s the medicine, kiddo,” I said.  “It makes—well, helps her sleep.” “Why she need medicine?” I couldn’t look at him.  “Well.  She misses you, kiddo.” “Why?” Clearing my throat, I said, “We, ah, we talked about this, remember?  There was the thing at home a few weeks ago.” He stopped shaking her shoulder, hopped off the bed, and walked over.  “I ‘member.  Like a party, but everyone was crine.” I nodded.  “Especially Mommy.  And me.” “Yeah.”  He looked past me down the hall.  “Let’s put the jello-fish in the fish tank.” “Sounds good, Peter.  Then we’ll have breakfast.”

News Analysis: Studies in Negligence and Danger-Seeking

There are two stories that hit the wire last week, and each need to be discussed with an eye toward pragmatic analysis rather than hyperbole.

The first is the story of the firearms instructor who had been killed on the range by a 9-year-old girl with an Uzi submachine gun.  We're going to ignore media bias for the purposes of this discussion: how the story has been reported, and why certain words were used to describe the incident.

The bottom line is that the range instructor was negligent.  He killed himself, ruined that young girl's life, and caused irreparable damage to both his family and the girl's.  What he was thinking is something we'll never know, though I'm reasonably sure it was a variant of, "We've never had a problem before."

One thing serious shooters understand early on is that there are no such things as accidental shootings.  Any time a bullet leaves the barrel in a direction it wasn't meant to go, it means that the shooter (or in this case, the instructor) was negligent.  He ignored one or more of the four basic rules of firearms handling.  They are:
All guns are always loaded.Never point the weapon at anything you don't intend to destroy.Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.Always be aware of your target and what's around and behind it.In this case, Charles Vacca put the enforcement of those basic rules on the shoulders of someone incapable of obeying them: a 9-year-old girl.  And he died as a result of that horrible mistake.  She couldn't handle the weapon properly.
Imagine driving down the road and almost hitting somebody.  Your mind goes through all the awful scenarios, and you feel terrible about what might have happened.  But there's some relief there, too, because it didn't happen.  The 9-year-old won't ever have that relief.  Nor will her family.  
I am not blaming the victim, because the victim is the 9-year-old.  
The next story involves a former Marine and his Air Force buddy who were beaten outside of a Waffle House in Mississippi.  The Marine, Ralph Weems, had been critically injured as a result of the beating.  Here's the most important part of the story:
"The Associated Press reports that Weems went to a Waffle House early Saturday. His friend David Knighten, an Air Force veteran of the Afghanistan war who was with him, told reporters that a man told him politely outside the restaurant that it wasn't a safe place for whites, because people were upset by the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo."
Nevertheless, Weems and Knighten went in there.
Why?
We all know how the world should be.  It should be perfectly okay for anyone to walk down any neighborhood anywhere at any time of day and not fear being victimized.  But it isn't.  It clearly isn't.  Until we get to that point, we need to act with a modicum of caution and, dare I say it, situational awareness.  
For whatever reason, Weems and Knighten decided to ignore a perfectly reasonable warning, and suffered injury as a result.  You know how in horror movies, there's that one character who opens the door he definitely shouldn't, and you think to yourself, What a dumbass.  I would never do that?  Weems and Knighten went through that door.  
That didn't have to happen.  It's as if they were asking to get beaten up.  Nobody's arguing that they deserved it, or that beating up strangers is a justifiable way of expressing frustration about race relations in the United States.  That's stupid.  But what's equally stupid is ignoring the world in which we live.
The best self-defense techniques always begin with awareness, avoidance, and de-escalation.  Weems and Knighten were apparently unaware of danger (despite being warned about it), they went toward the danger rather than avoiding it, and they didn't de-escalate the situation by fleeing when danger was imminent.
Don't do what they did.  Be smart.

Breadhead Friday: Lean Bread

A lean bread is one that has very little fat or sugar in it, if any.  Most sandwich breads aren't lean breads: they're enriched, so they contain things like sugar, butter, oil, flavorings, and other such things.  They're great, but I wanted to make the lean bread recipe from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day .

The recipe is very simple: water, flour, yeast, and salt.  You mix until everything's combined, and instead of kneading it traditionally, you do the stretch-and-fold method four times, going in ten minute intervals.  It's amazing how just one stretch-and-fold can take a rough, coarse, wet mess and turn it into a glossy, springy dough.

Shaping the dough
To develop flavor in the wheat, this dough requires an overnight rise in the refrigerator.  When you're ready to bake, you take it out, shape it, and let it rise at room temperature for at least two hours.

More shaping
Typical hearth baking is next: a pan of hot water at the bottom of the oven to create steam, and bake at high heat.

The finished loaves. We both need to work on shaping and scoring
Overall, a fun project, and one that produces tasty bread.  I achieved a few larger holes in the crumb, but the important thing is that my little boy and I did this thing together.  We'll see if he picks up the bread bug.

Flash Fiction: Freshman Day

Warning: NSFW.

                “You’d think the freshmen would learn by fifth period not to use the bathrooms on fucking Freshman Day.  I mean, he goes in, sees three guys twice his size staring at him, and stilltries to take a whiz?”  Tyler shook his head.  “Dumbass.”                “Come on, guys,” the kid whined, reaching futilely for his bookbag.  “Just…just please.”  Andre held it just out of his grasp.                Enzo said, “I’m getting tired of just dunking these limp dicks.  Let’s do something else with him.”                 The kid immediately made a run for the door.                “Ah ah ahhh,” said Tyler, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and putting him in a headlock.  “We ain’t done with you yet.”                Struggling, the kid yelled, “Get off!  Get the fuck off!”                 Andre tossed the bookbag into an open toilet stall, grinning when it landed in the commode.  “Two points.”                Enzo pointed his chin in the direction of the broom closet set between the stalls and the sinks.  The door handle was rusted, but the padlock was shiny and new-looking.  “Our new bud here could use a time-out.”                “No!  No!”the kid shouted.  “Help!  Somebody, he—“                Tyler muffled the kid’s panicked screams with his palm.  “Well, let’s hurry up.  He’s drooling on me.”                New or not, the padlock popped open after a few strikes with the edge of a trash can.  “You ready?” Andre asked.                The crotch of the kid’s jeans darkened.  His cheeks puffed out as much as they could against Tyler’s hand as he struggled wildly.                  “Hurry the fuck up!” Tyler shouted, barely maintaining his hold.                Andre yanked the door open.  The closet was empty but for a weird drawing on the side that kind of looked like a guy sitting down.  He’d have liked to have seen more, but Tyler stuffed the shrieking kid in and slammed it shut.                Re-hooking the broken padlock, Enzo snickered.  “If he’d been a couple pounds fatter, we’d’ve had to grease him to get him in.”                “Let’s get outta here,” Tyler said over the kid’s racket of screaming and kicking.  “Before someone hears.”                Still looking at the door, Andre muttered, “Yeah.”
                It really had been a weird drawing.  It was kind of like the guy put one leg behind his head, and in his hand…Andre closed his eyes and stopped even pretending to listen to Dr. Bermel drone on about covalent bonds or some shit.  What had been in the guy’s hand?  And he’d been smiling, hadn’t he?  Just weird, the whole thing.                Andre didn’t bother staying through seventh period Chemistry.  What would be the point?  It was all bullshit.  He walked out in the middle of lab and went home.                An hour of Grand Theft Auto 5 later, he was bored out of his mind.  Even the torture scene got pretty tiresome until he noticed that the dude sitting in the chair with blood on his mouth kind of reminded him of the drawing in the broom closet.  Except the guy in the drawing had been smiling.  Really wide, like the Joker from Batman.  Like he’d had help getting his mouth open that wide.                Andre tossed the game controller on the floor and stood up.  What had been in the guy’s hand?  And how did he get his leg up like that?  If fucking Tyler had given him just a few more seconds to look, he wouldn’t be getting a goddamn headache trying to remember.                  He could wait until tomorrow and look again, but he needed to know now.                “Shit.  Shit, shit, shit.”                  What if he tried to recreate it?  There was a big mirror in his mom’s room.  All he’d have to do is sit on the bed and he could see himself.  He’d have to take his clothes off like the guy in the picture, but Mom wasn’t getting home until late anyway.                Several minutes of grimacing and grunting later, he found that he just wasn’t flexible enough to put his leg up like that, and it hurt like fuck trying.  He’d have to wait until tomorrow.  Glaring at his sweaty reflection in the mirror, he wished he had a knife like the guy in the—                That’s right!  The guy had had a knife in his hand.  A little one, like a steak knife.  Smiling, Andre went to get one from the kitchen drawer.  Yes, the one with the little points on the edge.  As he curled his fingers around the handle, he realized that he’d gotten erect, like the guy in the picture.  Well, he’d take care of that later with some moisturizer and YouPorn.                Holding the knife helped, but he still couldn’t quite hook his heel behind his head.  He was so fucking close!  It was just that tightness where his ass cheek met the back of his thigh.  All he needed was an inch or two more space there, and he could do it.                Wasn’t that what the knife was for?                It was red in the picture.  Like the guy’s mouth.  Like his whole face.                Just one small slice.  That’s all it would take.  From there, straining and stretching would widen it.  Then he could work on the smile.  It had to be just right.                Looking carefully at his own reflection, he lifted his leg as high as it would go, set the serrated edge of the knife against his flesh, and began to cut.

Twitter Observations from a Twidiot

A couple of weeks ago, I created a Twitter account and joined the Twitterverse.  Through observation and a few online articles, I've been navigating it as well as can be expected.  I'm tweeting, retweeting, following, and favoriting.

Like any social medium, it can be a time sink, and you get out of it what you put into it.  It's difficult to be clever, current, and relentlessly positive in 140 characters or less.  I admire everyone who does it well.  It's a skill that requires practice.  I have opinions and thoughts like everybody else, but I don't want to alienate virtual strangers with unwanted political discourse or bitching.

My ultimate intent is to meet new people, learn from them, and discuss things of mutual interest.  And, of course, interest them in my own writing so they want to read my books.

One of the things many Twitter experts say is that you shouldn't constantly spam Twitter with links to your book.  This makes perfect sense: if my only experience of you is you stuffing a book in my face, saying, "LIKE HORROR? READ THIS IT WILL SCARE THE DICK RIGHT OUT OF YOUR PANTS" over and over again, I will get the impression that you're not interested in anything else, and will just mute you from the timeline.  However, there's not a lot of air between constantly spamming links to your book and constantly spamming links to your writing blog, especially when the articles you're linking to are a few years old.  It's still spamming.

Many authors on Twitter do this.  I don't understand it.  Why follow someone if all they do is try to sell you something, especially if it's a book you've already read?

One of the most off-putting things I've experienced is getting direct messages from people I've just followed, asking me to buy their books or like their Facebook pages.  So it's not enough that your typical public communication is "BUY MY BOOK", but you also sidle up to everyone you meet and say, "Buy my book."  Don't...don't do that.

Louis Awerbuck

Typically, I reserve Friday posts for my hobby, which is baking bread.  I'm brooming that this week because this is the last month Louis Awerbuck's column will be running in SWAT Magazine .  Louis died on June 24, 2014.

His friend Robbie Barrkman wrote a moving tribute to him that you can read here.

If you've never heard of him, it wouldn't be a surprise, and Louis himself wouldn't have cared one way or the other.  He didn't seek the spotlight.  To call him a firearms and tactics instructor would be technically correct, but they're labels, and labels are necessarily limiting.  For the straight biography, visit his website.

I worked with Louis (pronounced "Louie") on two instructional video projects in the early 2000's: Only Hits Count , a combat shooting video, and Safe at Home , a home defense video.  The leather-jacketed villain holding the hammer on the cover of Safe at Home is me (with hair).

Simply put, Louis was a man of respect.  A brilliant tactician with real world experience that he never boasted about: it just informed what he taught and how he taught it.  Self-effacing almost to a fault, and had an incredibly dry, clever sense of humor.  His delivery was deadpan in a way you've never heard before.  Sere.  Arid.  I can't claim him as a friend, but I really quite liked and admired him.  During my time in publishing, I'd worked with many, many combat shooting experts.  Some good, some great, some mediocre.

Louis was in a class by himself.  I wish I'd known him better.  It would have made me better.

Requiescat in pace, Louis.

Hope

I'm going to tell you a secret that I hope you won't tell anybody else.  Keep it on the QT, if you please.

You ready?  Here it is:

I hate hope.  I absolutely loathe it.  I work hard to eradicate it from my personal lexicon, and when I find myself using it, I feel embarrassed.

Hope is helplessness elevated to virtue.  Hoping is everything you're not doing when you want to make a change.  Hoping doesn't get you what you want.  Hoping something happens or doesn't happen has never made something happen or not happen at any time in the history of the universe.

At least with worry, you're thinking about possibilities, and if possible, planning contingencies to mitigate that worry.  With prayer, you're acting positively according to the tenets of your faith.

If you're down to hope, you've got nothing left.  The quiver is empty.  That's not a place to be.

Obviously, there are certain things we can't change: the weather, the outcome of a sporting event, the success of a surgery, etc.  Things entirely outside of our control.  In that case, what's better: hoping, or planning?

Success means eliminating the requirement of hope in one's plans.  Success requires work.  Hope requires helplessness.

Flash Fiction: An Unfortunate Lunch in the Playground

Without thinking, I barked, “I already told that other cop, the big dude with the harelip, the whole thing!”
“I know this is…upsetting.  We just want to make sure we’ve gotten all the details,” the detective replied with exaggerated calm.  What was her name?  Garza.  Her voice was coarse, a little rough like Demi Moore’s.  A shame she looked like Cheech Marin’s older sister after a week-long coke binge.
I rubbed my hand over my face.  “Could I have another Coke?  I’m really thirsty.”  They’d kept me waiting in this Saltine box interrogation room for close to two hours, and a migraine was pulsing right behind my eyes.  The caffeine might help.
“In a minute.  Let’s get the broad strokes first.”
A nervous laugh escaped me.  “Broad strokes.  Sounds like the name of a porn site.  You know, stroke off to these broads.” 
She didn’t crack a smile.  She just waited.  She had acne scars, a lot of them.  Like reverse Braille on her cheekbones.
“Fine.”  I breathed in deep, closed my eyes, and tried to calm down a little.  The blood.  So much of it out of such a little…it had been everywhere.  The mom shrieking, What did you do to my baby?  Like it was my fault.  Like Idid it.  “I went to Park City Park to eat my lunch.  I’d bought it at Jimmy John’s, the one at Country Club and Stuart.”
“Why did you go to thatpark?  It’s mostly a playground.  Do you have any children, Mr. Emerson?”  Her tone was very flat, almost disinterested.  It didn’t fool me.  She thought I might be a child molester.
“Am I in trouble for wanting to eat al dente?  Or, uh, what is it…al fresco?”
The rode-hard-and-put-away-wet-looking Detective Garza shook her head.  “You’re not in trouble at all.  What you did may have saved that little girl’s life.”
“Oh.”  I swallowed.  If I were her, I wouldn’t want to live after what that…monster had done.  How do you get past that?
“Why that park, Mr. Emerson?” she prompted.
I looked over the rim of my glasses at her.  “It’s summer.  It was a nice day out.  And the local moms like to wear spandex and tight yoga pants.  Get the picture?”
“Yes.”  She definitely did get the picture.  I’m surprised she wasn’t there getting material herself.  Aren’t most lady cops dykes? 
“So I was eating my Jimmy John’s number five with hot peppers, and I wasn’t staring or anything.  Just taking in the scenery.  I wasn’t sitting there jerking off.”  I shrugged.  “Look: if they’re gonna show it, I’m gonna look at it.  So I’m eating, right, and I heard one kid shout, ‘Give it back!’  I figured it was usual kid arguments and kept eating.  You know, one kid wanting his ball back or something.”
“Go on.”
“But, well, it wasn’t.  I heard a louder scream.  One that…it was like…I don’t know.  I’ve never heard anything like it before.  I looked up and I saw one little girl, she might have been six or seven, and she was…”  I stared straight at the detective, but I wasn’t seeing her.  As ugly as she was, she was a damn sight prettier than what was in my mind’s eye.  “She was smashinganother kid’s face into the pavement.  I mean, slamming it into the concrete walkway over and over again.  And grinding it.  Like she was trying to shred the kid’s skin off her face.”
Detective Garza just kept looking at me.  Waiting.
God, my head hurt.  I cleared my dry throat and said, “I, you know, looked around for the kids’ moms, but they were on the benches by the basketball court, texting.  I mean, there was blood.  The kid’s face was being erased, and her mom was too busy checking Facebook to give a damn.”
“But you did.”
“I did what?  Give a damn?”  I uttered a high-pitched laugh that embarrasses me even now to remember.  “I guess I did.  Like I told the big cop, I got up and ran over, and the, the kid who was trying to kill the other one, she got up, spat at me, and ran into traffic.”  The furious, blood-flecked face of the murderous kid filled my vision, and I shook my head to clear it.  “Cars squealed, but she got run over, I think.  So yeah.  That happened.”
“Can you tell me what happened next?”
Yes, but I don’t want to.  I don’t want to think about it anymore.  “So I went to…I don’t know, try to help the hurt kid, but her face was hamburger—“
The door behind me opened, and another cop in a suit poked his head in and said, “Pilar.”  Detective Garza got up, went over to him, and had a whispered conversation with the guy for what felt like ten minutes.  I spent the whole time trying to seem like I wasn’t listening, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying anyway.
The other cop left, and Garza said, “We’ll have to continue this at another time, Mr. Emerson.  We’ll call you to make an appointment.”
Surprised and relieved at the same time, I got up.  “Uh.  Okay.  Why?”
Garza’s eyes flicked to the open door.  “It turns out that what you witnessed may not be an isolated incident.”
I blinked a few times in an effort to process this.  Not an isolated incident?  What, is this happening all over town?  “Okay.  Right.  You guys drove me here.  Can I get a ride back to the office?”
She blew out air from her nostrils.  “There’s a bus stop a block south.  The buses are still running.  We just don’t have the resources right now.”
“Great.  Thanks.”  Should’ve known better than to ask.
As I brushed by her, she said, “Get home as fast as you can, Mr. Emerson.  And…lock your doors.”