Chapter 5: The aftermath and suspension
Bronson Stone, the Sheriff of Crystal Cove County, silently sipped on what seemed to be his ninth cup of coffee as he sat in his office behind his desk.
The 44-year old sheriff frowned as he saw a reflection of himself on the dark computer screen, where he noted that some of the brown hair was giving way to the grey, mostly in the area close to his ears.
It was clear that he was not getting any younger as the days passed, and then he turned and looked at a certain photo on his desk.
The photo was of him in his early-20s, as a young Marine, standing together with his squad mates following their completion of the Scout Sniper Course at Camp Pendleton, and the sheriff sighed as he noted how young he looked in the photo.
He remembered that the photo was taken in 1986, four years after he had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where by the time of his enrollment in the Scout Sniper Course, he had attained the rank of lance corporal.
In his nine years of service with the Marine Corps, Stone was mainly assigned to the Force Reconnaissance Company of the 1st Marine Division, where as a Scout Sniper, he served in the platoon under the charge of one Sergeant (later Staff Sergeant and eventually Gunnery Sergeant) Sam Rogers.
Stone scoffed at the thought of Sam Rogers. It can be argued that a lot of why he didn't advance in the Marine Corps as far as he wanted to can be attributed to him.
Sharing his view with Sam Rogers was the man who Stone has also credited in getting into law enforcement, leading him to where he is today.
Coolsville City Councilman Louis "Lou" Strickland was a fellow Scout Sniper in the Marines, who at the time of him getting acquainted with Stone, had just transferred from the 4th FORECON Company at Alameda.
Serving under Staff Sergeant Rogers' charge, Stone and Strickland came to be nicknamed as the Dynamite Duo for their tendency to get into trouble wherever they go.
Their first collision with their platoon sergeant came when they were deployed to Panama for Operation Just Cause in 1989, in which the duo, both of whom by then at the rank of sergeant, got into a fistfight with another Marine at a bar that caused a great deal of damage.
That fistfight came after Stone and Strickland got one too many drinks, and the Marine in question had tried to stop them when one of them tried to hit up on a local girl, who clearly wouldn't want anything with either of them.
After receiving a reprimand for their actions, Stone and Strickland were split up, in which Strickland was transferred to another platoon and into the charge of one Gunnery Sergeant Leroy Jethro Gibbs, while Stone remained under Sam Rogers' charge.
It was reasoned that the two men won't cause as much trouble when they're separated from each other and assigned to different platoons, and their platoon sergeants begrudgingly agree to the arrangement.
However, that disciplinary action wouldn't be the last for the two men.
Two years later, while taking part in a battle during the Gulf War, Strickland, Stone and a squad of Marines under their charge, got into bigger trouble when they engaged in an unsanctioned raid that saw the deaths of countless civilians.
It was Gibbs and Rogers that had them written up, which then lead to an investigation, followed by a court-martial.
This time, although the court-martial found the duo to not be criminally responsible for the deaths, the evidence and testimony, particularly from their platoon commanders and the platoon sergeants that wrote them up, was enough for them to get discharged from the Marine Corps in 1991.
Stone snorted when he remembered the details of the court-martial, though he remained relaxed when he thought about what happened when he returned home from the war.
One thing to note was that during their service with the Marine Corps, both Stone and Strickland had joined the police forces in their respective hometowns.
As he began his service with the Marine Corps, Stone had also enrolled in the police academy in Los Angeles, which ended when he received his badge and was sworn in as an officer of the Los Angeles Police Department two years later in 1983.
Outside the time Stone was busy butting heads with his platoon sergeant in the Marine Corps, he worked his way through patrol and was eventually made sergeant by the time he was deployed to serve in the Gulf War in 1990.
Although the firestorm over him and Strickland's actions during the Gulf War remained the talk in the military, it barely dented their respective law enforcement careers and when they were discharged from the Marines in 1991, the two men resumed their full-time work in law enforcement.
By this point, Strickland, who had gotten his badge in 1981, was made lieutenant and is placed in charge of the detective bureau of the much-smaller Coolsville Police Department, while Stone was assigned to the night shift at the 77th Street Division.
Stone was on duty on the night of April 29 just as the fallout from the Rodney King beating hits the fan, following the acquittal of the four officers involved in the beating, and the department's flat footed response resulted in the whole thing blowing up as South Los Angeles become engulfed in a series of riots and civil disturbances in the days that followed the not-guilty verdicts.
In the days that followed the riots, questions were raised about the conduct of the 77th Street Division's efforts to contain the riot.
In particular, Stone was on duty when the initial riots began and the severity of the rioting that came from the lack of measures from the division was attributed to the lack of communication on Stone's part.
In spite of the questions raised, Stone was cleared of any wrongdoing and was later made lieutenant in 1997.
That was the year Strickland, by then at the rank of captain in the Coolsville Police Department, was appointed by the Coolsville City Council to be the city's next chief of police.
With his friend's reaching the top position in the small police department, Stone was considered for a transfer to Coolsville and serve as Strickland's chief of staff, though ultimately, Stone decided to stay put in Los Angeles.
However, in 2001, as Stone was promoted to captain and took command of the Rampart Division, clouds began forming in the horizon regarding their law enforcement careers.
Stone was placed in charge of the division at a time it was recovering from another damaging scandal, this one the Rampart scandal.
His leadership and the effectiveness in his rehabilitation of the division were questioned by civil rights activists, and Stone soon found himself clashing with the department's top brass at Parker Center following the appointment of a new police chief in 2002.
The department's agreement to the consent decree was the last straw for Stone, and he promptly quitted the department just before the Christmas of 2002.
In that same time, Strickland was having problems of his own as he commanded the Coolsville Police Department.
A series of controversies and accusations of corruption tainted the department's reputation, and following a year-long federal investigation that revealed corruption within the ranks of the Coolsville Police Department, Strickland found himself with his job on the line.
To make matters worse, Crystal Cove County has been battling budget deficits and in the county's 2001 budget, it was decided that in light of the federal investigation, the county would request Coolsville City Council to hold a vote to disband the Coolsville Police Department.
In spite of Strickland's pleas, the city council voted overwhelmingly 6-1 in favour of the measure.
As a result, the Coolsville Police Department was disbanded in the new year, where policing functions in the city were taken over by the much-larger Crystal Cove County Sheriff's Department, whose main roles in the city, up until then, was providing courtroom security and at the Office of the County Board of Supervisors while policing outside the city.
A man scorned, Strickland decided to enter politics and make a run for a seat in the Coolsville City Council.
He would hardly be the first former police chief to subsequently make a run for the local city council after he tenure ended, and Strickland certainly took pleasure taking up the role in holding the various mayoral administrations accountable.
Running as an independent, Strickland campaigned on a promise for greater accountability and transparencies, include finding efficiencies to get the city's finances back on track, and in spite of questions regarding his tenure as police chief, he was nonetheless popular with the voters and he subsequently won his seat that March.
When Stone confided that he has quitted the LAPD, Strickland advised him to come to Coolsville and throw his name in the hat as an special sheriffs election heats up.
The special election came after Rufus Carmichael, the then-incumbent Sheriff, was forced to resign in the aftermath of an indictment by a federal grand jury for charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to commit fraud and corruption.
The federal grand jury indictment came as a result of a years long federal investigation in the sheriff's department, in which there have been a storm of controversy surrounding the county jail system.
In particular, the sheriff's department was alleged to have not only abused prisoners, many of whom are racial minorities swept up by the War on Drugs and the tough on crime agendas, but also exploiting said prisoners as a cheap labour for public works, receiving bribes in return for not bidding on contracts, a source of revenue that would certainly go a long way in solving the department's cash-flow problems stemmed from budget cuts in the 1980s and 1990s.
While not a part of the prisoner abuse and exploitation scheme, Carmichael has certainly took advantage of the revenue stream from the exploitation scheme and actively put in efforts to conceal the Ponzi scheme that came with the exploitation.
Specifically, taking advantage of tough on crime measures, Carmichael has instructed deputies to step up on the stop-and-searches, even if the probable cause was about as flimsy as a single sheet of toilet paper.
It was never about ridding the streets with criminals, rather it was to fill up the slave force needed for the department to continue to profit off their criminal enterprise.
Whatever abuse perpetrated by the deputies, not only did Carmichael look the other way, he even actively participated in the cover-up.
Eventually, Carmichael was forced out of office when the scandal came to light, and he was succeeded by an interim sheriff for the duration of the campaigning for the special election.
With that cloud of controversy surrounding his opponent, who was a serving area commander from within the sheriff's department, Stone campaigned as an outsider and on a promise to tackle the challenges facing the department and set them right, and he subsequently won in a landslide in the 2003 special election.
After he took office, Stone proceeded to shake things up in the sheriff's department, though as the months went by, questions were raised regarding Stone's leadership and approach in running the sheriff's department.
Shortly after Stone took office, one of his first acts was to purge the department of its leadership and bring out a number of senior officers out of retirement to fill the senior ranks in an interim capacity.
He also overhauled the training and code of conduct expected by his deputies, though his purge was limited in scope to account for the manpower shortages.
Furthermore, Stone seemed to have done little to rein in the controversial practices of the sheriff's department, where its practices were reminiscent of that of the LAPD's Rampart Division during the peak of the Rampart Scandal and during Stone's leadership.
Civil rights activists continued to criticize the sheriff's department for continuing to engage in racial profiling, and the take-down of criminal suspects has often led to accusations of police brutality.
There were also increased cases of investigators planting evidence and using questionable tactics in obtaining evidence and confessions, all while the rank and file increasingly came to see Stone as a bureaucrat who concerns himself of the fact that he's the Sheriff of Crystal Cove County rather than the roles and responsibilities that comes with the position.
In spite of the relentless and mounting criticism from both sides, Stone retained his popularity over the fact that across the board, crime did take a dip in Crystal Cove County since he took office, and he rode on that fact as he successfully won re-election in 2006.
Stone grunted as he gulped down the last drops of his coffee, and then he got up from his chair to walk over to the adjacent table to pour himself another cup of coffee, during which he walked past a display board showcasing his various achievements.
The board had several medal awards he had won over the years, his community college diploma in management, a certificate of achievement from his completion of Scout Sniper Course, the various medals he has earned during the course of both his service with the Marine Corps and with the LAPD, accompanied by his old Sergeant rank badges and nameplate from his Marine Corps days.
There was also a portrait photo of him in his Marine Corps full service uniform, complete with the badges, medals and his sergeant stripes.
In addition, the display board had an old newspaper article from the Crystal Cove Gazette depicting his 2003 election victory with the following headline:
"STONE DECLARED WINNER
Former Los Angeles police captain emerges as the winner in the county sheriff special election"
Stone nodded as he saw the photo of himself in the front page of the newspaper, which was dated March 20, 2003, and it was that minute that the desk phone rang.
With a sigh, the sheriff walked over to his desk and answered the phone.
"Yeah Bucky, what is it?" Stone barked as he answered.
Soon, Stone arrived at Coolsville Central High School, where he was greeted by a gang of reporters who were crowding by the driver's door of his car.
"Sheriff Stone, what's the word on the cause of death?" One of the reporters asked as he stepped out of his car.
"Sheriff, do you suspect foul play?" Another reporter asked as he walked towards the main entrance, where several deputies were waiting.
Upon arriving at the main entrance, Stone nodded at the deputies, who then moved in to push the reporters back.
"No more questions." One of the deputies said as they pushed back the reporters.
Inside, Stone wasted no time marching to the crime scene, which was at the entrance to the school library and has been taped off.
Crime scene technicians were already combing through the scene while the medical examiner's office were collecting the victim's remains. The assistant medical examiner was jotting down notes on a clipboard, while the two investigators conferred, as Stone approached.
"Alright, Chan and Neville, what have we got?" Stone asked, prompting the two investigators to turn towards him.
"Victim, aged 49." Detective Chan responded. "Her driver's license identified her as Martha Thomas Gates, the school librarian of Coolsville Central High School."
"Who found her?" Stone prompted.
"The English teacher, Mrs. Laura Blakely." Detective Neville responded as he pointed towards a nearby classroom and continued, "Apparently, the school was in the middle of an evacuation when Mrs. Blakely noticed that the victim was not present in the evacuation, so she went to the library to check on her, where she found her on the floor, lifeless."
"Where is Mrs. Blakely?" Stone asked.
"Over in that classroom, deputies are holding her until we have a chance to speak to her." Detective Chan said as he nodded towards where Neville was pointing at. "The school principal, vice principal, and four kids are also there."
"The suspects?" Stone asked.
Neville nodded. "One of them is on the school football team whose father is on the County Board of Supervisors, while the other is in the school drama club whose father is the owner of Blake Enterprises."
"Wonderful." Stone nodded before turning towards the assistant medical examiner and asked. "Time and cause of death, Dr. Wymils?"
Dr. Wymils put down her clipboard as she responded, "Based on the victim's rigor, I'll say that the victim died less than an hour ago, and cause, at this stage I'll say that it was blunt force trauma to the head. Of course, I will know more once I conduct the autopsy."
"Of course." Stone nodded again before he headed over to the classroom.
When he arrived in the classroom, Lantsman, Blakely and Grimes turned towards him.
"Mrs. Laura Blakely?" Stone asked.
"That's me." Blakely nodded as she stepped forward.
"I understand that you were the one that discovered the victim." Stone said. "And I understand that there was a school-wide evacuation when you found her."
Then, eying the other six, Stone continued, "Could any of you elaborate what led to the evacuation?"
Grimes turned towards Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne and said, "Perhaps now's a good time for the four of you to get your ghost stories straight."
"Ghost stories?" Stone raised an eyebrow before his eyes settled onto Shaggy.
Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne only exchanged glances with each other before Fred began, "It's a long story."
By the time the four have finished providing a resume on what had happened, Stone only grunted as he closed his notebook.
"I must say that was quite the tale you four kids have told me." Stone said and nodded at Shaggy as he continued, "Especially you, Mr. Rogers. Did you know that your old man gave me a lot of grief when I was serving in the Marine Corps back in the day?"
Although Shaggy resolved to remain on his guard the minute Stone mentioned his father, the change of his eyes' expression didn't went unnoticed by Daphne.
"But whatever it is that your old man did to me shall be for another time, for it looks like you four kids are in big trouble." Stone continued. "For starters, forget about pulling this witch prank to get even for what you felt were unjust 'detention'. You were the last to see the victim alive, and there is this ten-minute gap for which your whereabouts cannot be confirmed and that you could simply have alibied each other."
"Even though there's no reason for them to harm Mrs. Gates?" Principal Lantsman asked. "If we're being realistic, Sheriff, neither of them have any late books to return to the library, plus Mr. Rogers here has only attended this school for a month after moving from New York with his family."
"And think about it." Blakely added. "Wouldn't it be too far for them to kill the librarian even though she's not the one that sentenced them to serve detention for six weeks?"
"Perhaps." Stone conceded. "Though nevertheless, considering the damage done to school property from their prank, I'm sure you've got the proper sanctions to deal with this."
"Indeed we do." Grimes nodded as he turned towards the quartet and said, "Which is why as of this moment, you four are suspended until further notice."
"This is just great." Daphne said as they walked out of the school building. "Suspended! What am I supposed to tell my parents when they come back from their business trip in Budapest? Or my sister Delilah, for the matter?"
"Dad's definitely not going to be amused when he learns about this." Fred agreed.
"Oh, no Mother." Velma said as she briefly placed her hand on Shaggy's right shoulder in re-enacting what she might say to her mother. "I know you'll believe me when I tell you I did nothing wrong. It was ghosts. Ghosts."
As Fred and the girls walked away, something clicked in Shaggy's mind.
Ghosts. Velma's voice echoed in Shaggy's mind. Zoinks! That was what Scooby was actually saying! Not "roasts", but "ghosts"!
Immediately, Shaggy realized something and rushed up to Fred and the girls. "Hey, wait up!"
When the trio stopped and turned towards him, Shaggy said, "Like, maybe we don't have to tell our parents."
Fred arched his eyebrows as Shaggy continued, "I know someone who could clear our names."
He then proceeded to gesture towards where Scooby was tied at, or rather, the Great Dane's makeshift grave.
Seeing Scooby wasn't there, Shaggy frowned before he called out, "Scooby-Doo, where are you?"
At that, Scooby popped out from his hiding spot and said, "Right rere!"
Shaggy chuckled as he said to Fred and the girls, "There he is!"
As Fred waved his hand at Scooby, Shaggy continued, "Handsome devil, isn't he?"
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