Coffee Talk
(October 3, 2015)
To be honest, Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland traveled down to Monterey Bay, California, with mixed motives. Certainly, one was to attend the annual law-officers' convention put on by the Law Enforcement in Towns and Municipalities of Ten Thousand Inhabitants or Fewer Association. Uh, they abbreviated it as LEITMOTIF Association, but that scarcely helped Durland, who couldn't understand what "association" meant, let along "leitmotif."
On Saturday, the two had attended morning sessions in the convention center, but truth to say they had gleaned little from the presentations on "Maintaining Community Relations," "Technology and Identification Techniques," and "Psychological Profiles of Lawbreakers."
"Well," Blubs said at 11:45, looking at the program, "there's nothing on that would benefit us until the evening plenary session on problems in law enforcement. And dinner will come before that. So we've got a clear afternoon until six-thirty. Feel like doing anything?"
"Let's get some doughnuts," Durland said. "I saw some in the reception hall."
"Durland, you read my mind," Blubs said. They made their way through a crowd of uniformed policemen and policewomen, occasionally saying hello to faces they recognized, mostly ones from Oregon, though police from six states were there. The reception area, which could double as a dining room or ballroom, had been set up with tables all around the walls, and the tables held urns of steaming hot coffee and enormous platters of all varieties, shapes, and sizes of doughnuts.
The two Gravity Falls officers quickly filled up a couple of plates, each with an assortment of glazed, cake, sugar-dusted, lemon-filled, chocolate-iced, and Bavarian cream doughnuts. To that they added tall cups of coffee, and then, carefully balancing everything, they headed out onto the veranda, which overlooked the Bay, and looked for an empty table.
"Finding a place is as hard as finding a perp!" Blubs complained.
"Sheriff, why do we call them perps?" Durland asked. "What does that stand for?"
"Uh, it's short for perpendicular," Blubs explained. "Because you want a criminal to be on his feet when you arrest him. You do not want them layin' down. Pickin' one up off of the ground is tiresome."
"Hey!" somebody called. "Come sit with us!"
Blubs saw two men at a table for four. One was dumpy and mustached, with dark hair and a pudgy round face, the other tall and skinny with a lantern jaw and an expression that for deep thought and intelligence rivaled that of a not-too-bright cow. Both men wore blue uniforms—with shorts instead of trousers. They rode everywhere on Segways. Both of them had stacked plates and coffee cups on the table before them, too.
Blubs and Durland made their way over. "Thank you!" Blubs said. "Big crowd this year! Now, I'm sorry—" he set his doughnuts and coffee down and pulled out a chair—"and I know I've seen you around, but I don't recall your names. I'm Sheriff Daryl Blubs, and this is my right-hand man, Deputy Edwin Durland. We're the law up in Roadkill County, Oregon."
The heavier, older policeman shook his hands. "Glad to know you, Sheriff. I'm Gene Green, and this is my deputy, Patrick de Bonney."
"Call me Pat," the skinny one said.
Green resumed: "We're park policemen from Echo Creek, California. That's a suburb of L.A."
"Isn't everywhere?" Blubs asked, chuckling.
Green smiled as if he'd heard the joke before. "So how are things in—was it Roadkill County?"
Blubs, his mouth full of a chocolate-covered doughnut and his gray mustache festive with red, white, and blue sprinkles, nodded. "County seat is Gravity Falls. Logging town."
"Quiet place?" de Bonney asked.
"Reckon so," Durland said, grinning. "The Sheriff and me are responsible for keeping things quiet on the law-breaking front."
That was so. Crime in Gravity Falls had declined precipitously the previous Thursday, when the two had left for the convention.
"How're things on your end?" Blubs asked. "Much law-breaking going on in Echo Creek, was it?"
De Bonney chimed in: "We've got mud pits."
"You do?" Blubs asked. "Rain a lot, does it?"
"No, it's fairly dry," Green said. "But these are ancient mud pits. Prehistoric mud pits. Mammoths and mastodons and saber-toothed tigers could have got caught and fossilized in them."
"Did they?" Durland asked.
"Uh—well, no, not so far as anybody knows. But they could have."
For a few minutes the lawmen silently disposed of half a dozen doughnuts each. The breeze, off the Bay, smelled fresh and felt cool. Sailboats with white, yellow, blue, and red sails dotted the water, and gulls soared white against the blue sky, chattering like a book club after a bottle of Zinfandel. Sea lions barked monotonously off in the distance. The long line of the wharf teemed with tourists, and when the breeze shifted now and then they could catch the aroma of seafood from the restaurants there.
"Are you fellows staying over?" Green asked.
"Day or two, maybe," Blubs said. "Anything to do?"
De Bonney said, "You could go on a whale watch. That's always fun."
"What do you do on a whale watch?" Durland asked.
"You get on a boat and go out on the ocean and watch whales," de Bonney told him.
Durland thought for about ninety seconds. "It's like a stake-out for whales!" he concluded.
"Oh, we've had us some times on stake-outs," Blubs said. "This one time, we were on a stake-out on the highway. Durland was catching up on some important paperwork—remember, Durland?"
"It was like a treasure hunt," Durland said.
"Yeah, and it was dark as it could be, and all of a sudden—whoosh! Somebody ripped the roof right off our police cruiser!"
"Stole the roof?" De Bonney asked.
"Took 'er right off," Durland confirmed. "Woulda made us mad, 'cept we realized we had us a convertible."
"Who did it?" Green asked.
"Not who," Blubs said. "What. It was a flying creature. Huge."
"Evidence suggested it was a mutant owl," Durland said grimly.
"Did you catch it?" asked de Bonney.
"Naw," Blubs said. "Got away clean."
Solemnly, Durland said, "Owls is flight risks."
"We have had some of the gol-durndest cases in Gravity Falls," Blubs said, reaching for a lemon-filled. "I remember, there was this murder by decapitation. That means the head was cut off."
"I know," Green said. "Who was the victim?"
"Wax Stan," Durland said.
De Bonney looked surprised. "Weird name."
Durland assured him, "No, Stanley's pretty common."
"Hold on, and I'll clear this up," Blubs said. "The victim's name was Stanley. He was made of wax."
Telling the story took a couple of minutes. Green shook his head at the end of it. "So a couple of kids cracked the case?"
"Kids that we coached in police procedures," Blubs said. "We were involving the community. It pays off."
"They did a ride-along with us," Durland said. "The little girl offered to braid my hair."
Green stared at Durland's buzz-cut.
"He was wearing his raccoon-skin cap at the time," Blubs clarified. "Had it in the car for Pioneer Day. Oh, that was another time we had a special mission—guarding the President."
"Sounds like you fellows have had some adventures," Green said. "Our town's reasonably quiet, too. But I tell you what, some strange things happen there."
"The doughnut thief," de Bonney said.
"What!" Blubs looked as if he were about to have a stroke. "Somebody stealin' doughnuts? That is beyond the pale!"
"Hope you nabbed him," Durland said, his face wrenched into a glare of anger.
"Well, we went in pursuit," Green said. "But she got away. Like your owl."
"She?" Durland asked.
"It was a lady," de Bonney said. "Real weird lady, too."
"Tell us about it," Blubs said.
Green polished off a chocolate-filled. "Well, it was like this. Pat and me, we were on a routine patrol. Quiet day as I recall. Not much going on."
"Lot of tourists, though," de Bonney said. "Come to see the prehistoric mud pits."
"We get tourists in Gravity Falls, too," Durland said. "Maybe some of the same ones as you get. Our county, they come to see the Mystery Shack and Upside-Down Town and Mystery Mountain. Only lots of 'em don't come back from Mystery Mountain. Oughta look into that one of these days."
"Well," Green said, "we knew that somebody had been going through the dumpster behind Donuts. Pete the Doughnut man—"
"A man made outa doughnuts?" Durland asked.
"Uh, no, he sells doughnuts. Anyway, Pete had said that every day after he dumped the stale doughnuts, somebody was stealing them out of the dumpster."
"Doughnut rustling," Blubs said solemnly. "A class-A felony."
Green nodded. "Well, technically the doughnut shop—its name is Donuts—is not on our normal beat. It's kinda on the fringes of the park. But close enough, and you know the hot-pursuit law. As long as a doughnut is hot, you can pursue it."
"But these were in the dumpster," Blubs said.
"Yeah, but you know how hot a dumpster can get in the California sun? Pretty hot."
"Did you have any suspects?" Durland asked.
De Bonnet nodded. "We were afraid it might be—" he lowered his voice and whispered—"police corruption!"
"Internal Affairs was looking into it," Green said. "Major case, see. Anyway, we were on the job, rolling along through the park, busting litterbugs, making people keep off the grass, you know the drill."
"Oh, yeah," Blubs said. "We are the guardians at the gateway of order." That had been one of the key points in the first session they had attended that morning, and it was the last one Blubs remembered before he dozed off.
"You got that right," Green said. "Hey, mind if I write that down?" Blubs shook his head, and Green borrowed a pad from de Bonney and a pen from Blubs and forgot what he was supposed to be writing down. He had gone to sleep a moment before Blubs that morning. Stuck for a moment, he jotted down a grocery list: "Beans. Ketchup. Doughnuts. Coffee. Toilet paper." Then he returned the pen, tore off the list, and handed the pad back to his deputy. "What was I saying?"
"We are the guardians at the gateway of order," Blubs repeated, surprisingly, for he had the attention span of a Mayfly.
"Good point," Green agreed. "Well, first thing we did, we got called to a suspicious fire."
"Hot dog wagon burned down."
"Man!" Durland said. "That's what I'd call—all together, one, two, three—"
Three of them said, "Hot dogs!" Durland said "Arson!" and blinked. "Uh, I mean hot dogs!" They all laughed.
"We were questioning this kid—" Green resumed.
"Marco Diaz," de Bonney supplied. "Real timid boy. Scared to break the rules. No spirit whatsoever."
"Ideal citizen," Blubs observed.
"Wish all civilians were like him," Green said, grinning. "Peaceful, law-abiding wussies. Anyway, we were questioning him and got a lead on this girl that he said he'd seen coming out of the dumpster behind Donuts."
"She started the fire, too," de Bonney said.
Durland started humming a Billy Joel tune.
"But the worst thing, the Diaz kid said, was that this girl—or woman, he wasn't too clear on details—took the bag of doughnuts from the dumpster!"
"Sounds like a crime lord," Blubs observed.
"We got a description," de Bonney said. "It didn't make too much sense. You remember it, Chief?"
Green nodded. "One boot, on her left foot, right foot bare. Green skirt, short, stained, green top, cut off raggedy at the bottom so her midriff was showing, purple bow at the neck, kitty-cat face on the front, purple hair, iron helmet with a spike on top—"
"A hemlet?" Durland asked.
"Helmet," Green corrected.
"Yeah, hemlet," Durland said.
"No, the first part is hel," Green told him.
Durland shrugged. "Yeah, but I can't say that word 'cause if I did, my mama would wash out my mouth with soup."
"Soap," Green said.
Durland blinked. "No, soup. Soap tastes awful."
"He eats it sometimes," Blubs said, "So he knows. Go on—so this suspect was wearing an iron helmet. That sounds suspicious to me."
"To us, too. There were holes in the sides of it, and the girl's purple hair, in two buns with long, uh, streamers, poked out of the holes."
"Sounds like an anime character," Durland observed.
"Oh, also, she had mud on her face."
Blubs shook his head. "Mud on her face? That's a big disgrace!"
Green nodded. "So we started looking all over the place."
For a moment they all sat in uneasy silence, half-expecting something would rock them, but nothing did.
Then de Bonney said, "There was a commotion at the Mud Pits, but we got there a little too late. We missed the election."
"How did it come out?" Durland asked.
"Freedom won," Green said.
"Hurray!" Durland said, waving a small American flag.
Blubs stared at him. "Where did you get that?"
"I always carry it," Durland said with dignity, "in case of emergencies."
"Anyway," Green said, "we got more of the story from Diaz. He says this girl wasn't from around there. She was from another dimension."
"Oh, we know about that!" Blubs said.
"How?" Green asked.
"Never mind all that. What happened?"
"We tailed her to the dumpster behind Donuts. And we saw her jump in!"
"Nailed her!" Blubs said. "This is getting exciting!"
"But when we opened the dumpster and went through it," de Bonney said, "she'd just disappeared."
"Magic," Green concluded, "is real."
For some seconds the four lawmen sat contemplating. Then Blubs said, "We could tell you some strange stories, too. You got a dollar bill on you?"
Green did. Blubs said, "Look in the circle on the back of it. The one on the left."
"The seal?" Green asked.
Durland jumped up, looking out into the bay. "Where? I love those critters! What are they, bugs?"
Blubs ignored him. "The pyramid with the eye. I can't say much, but I'll tell you this—if you run into a perp that looks like that, do not shake his hand!"
"I won't," Green promised.
With that settled, Blubs said, "This whale watch—if we could get tickets, would you gentleman want to go with us?"
"Sure!" Green said, sounding excited. "I've only been once. Monday?"
"It's a date!" Blubs said.
Technically, the conference ended on Sunday at noon. However, Blubs and Durland stayed over, went on the whale watch, had a great time, did other stuff, and didn't return to Gravity Falls until Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the crime rate in Roadkill County immediately ticked up again.
The End