Episode Notes
Halloween is the last shift for a bad cop, but on his final watch he stumbles upon something truly sinister... Can he rise to the occasion and do the right thing for once?
Bad Cop in a Small Town on Halloween Night by John Oak Dalton
Music by Ray Mattis
http://raymattispresents.bandcamp.com
Produced by Daniel Wilder
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Transcription:
Faron didn’t know what a viral video was, until his daughter showed him a recording of him sleeping in the patrol car in the parking lot of the school.  Some asshole kid had shot it on a cell phone and sent it to a friend who posted it on Twitter and the rest went how it went.
That was on a Wednesday morning and by that night there was a dance club mix with Faron’s loud snores and a sample from Junie Morrison’s song “Suzie Thundertussy.”
By Friday night the memes were in full swing—there was a screen cap of Faron sleeping in the patrol car and the text read “When you’ve been racial profiling all day and the donut shop is out of coffee.”  And a lot worse than that.
Monday night was the town council meeting, and if Faron didn’t know anything about social media he sure didn’t think the town council did.  But he was wrong.
It was a three-person board who met once a month at the library with a handful of old people and a few cranks in the audience.  Ellen Soames was the board president and also the town librarian which was a tough combination.  Joe Linseed was a retired farmer who held court at the gas station out by the highway most mornings but didn’t do much here.  Buster Winsome was the son of a retired teacher named Ann Winsome and when she passed away Buster filled the rest of her term and then nobody could think of any reason to vote him off.
Faron gave his usual monthly report about his speeding ticket quota and one or two domestic calls and one or two drunk driving stops but he skipped over the fight at the high school because he didn’t want to mention the high school.  The town board seemed to be listening unusually closely and afterwards Ellen asked him to stay and talk.
“We’ve got some changes that have been in the works for a long time,” Ellen started.
Faron didn’t bother to ask what changes, he just stood there.
Ellen started back up.  “The county has agreed to drive through town a couple of times a day.  And the high school has been wanting to hire their own resource officer anyway.  So we will need you as town marshal through Halloween on October 31st but that’s it.”
Now Faron reacted.  “That’s this Friday.”
“It’s been in the works for a long while, Faron.”
“Can I at least get my insurance through December?  That’s for Abby.”
“It isn’t going to work that way.”
Ellen looked at him with sorrow on her face but Faron knew it was for herself.  When her son got back from Afghanistan it was Faron who talked him through what it was like to be a civilian.  Faron had gone from high school to Desert Shield and then had been town marshal ever since so maybe he wasn’t the best bet but he was all Darren Soames had.  It still didn’t stop Darren from ending it all with a Tokarev pistol he shouldn’t have been allowed to bring back from in country.
“We can let you resign,” she said.
“I’m going to need the unemployment,” Faron answered.
“Nobody is going to know until the week after Thanksgiving.  That’s the next meeting.”
“It’s okay, I don’t got my daughter for Thanksgiving.”
Faron walked out.
The next day Faron was sitting in his patrol car by the flashing light on the main street.  It was Highway One but through town it was called Hadley Street although everyone called it Had Been Street.  Like there Had Been a grocery store there, and that Had Been a Bank, and that empty field Had Been the school before consolidation.  
People were speeding and doing rolling stops but why did that matter now?  He was talking to his daughter on his cell.
“Has the teasing died down at the school?”  he asked.
“It was never that bad.  Mercedes dressed her dog up in an octopus costume and put it on TikTok like Wednesday or Thursday.  People got into that.”
“Well, thank Mercedes for me.”
“Are you going to get in trouble, Dad?”
What Abby was really asking was her father going to be able to pay for her college, which he agreed to do as part of the divorce decree five years ago and was happy to make happen.  He worked as a bouncer at a bar called the Red Triangle in Ohio on the weekends, which was outside his agreement as a law officer in Indiana, and was why he was asleep Monday morning at his third job as resource officer at the high school.  
“If I get in trouble I can get out of it,” he answered.  “I’ll see you on Halloween.  I’ll have candy in the patrol car.”
“I’m a senior, I’m too old for trick or treating.”
“Well, walk down there anyways.”
“Okay.”
And they hung up.
Faron turned on the radio in the patrol car and put it on the country station everybody listened to.  His ex was the mid-day DJ and had done a lunchtime request show for years that Faron still liked.  Dolly was singing about how hard it was to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.  But then she played Willie singing about the Red-Headed Stranger and the Yellow-Haired Lady and his heart fell in his chest.  Faron was a redhead and his ex was a blonde and they danced to this song at their wedding.  So that’s how Faron knew that news had spread through the little town already about his firing; his ex was playing the song because she was thinking of him.
Faron didn’t want to think about what it would be like to be an ex-cop.  Everybody he’d pulled over and ticketed, when pretty women were let go after a smile and sometimes the promise of a drink or more, all the guys he knew had hit girlfriends or wives or kids or all three and might have accidentally bumped their face on the patrol car, or found their paperwork lost for days when they got dropped off at county, all the dealers who were busted because they weren’t his dealer.  That was all worth thinking about but having the pity of his ex-wife was the worst.
And then his thoughts turned to Abby.  He could pick up more bouncer shifts at the Red Triangle, but not too many more, and he could go back to doing security at the big outdoor venue where they had stock races in the fall and concerts in the summer, but it was an hour each way and the tweakers were bad, you could put them in choke holds and kick them in the balls over and over and they just didn’t seem to feel any pain or care.  At least the Red Triangle had mostly drunks and stoners and only a biker once in a great while.  And anymore most of the bikers were cops and firemen running wild on the weekends, and they always got a pass on behavior.
He might be able to scratch together money but he wouldn’t have insurance, medical or life or anything.  He had it all until October 31st and then there was nothing.
And a little thought squatted in the corner, and he only looked at it out of the side of his eye until Halloween night.
Then Faron sat in his cruiser at the flashing light on Hadley starting around 6 o’clock and gave out candy,  He waited until Abby came by and she had dressed up after all and dragged out a couple of girlfriends and it was all meant to be ironic but they were having fun.  Faron ribbed them but told his daughter that he loved her, because of the thoughts that had been growing in his mind all week.  She was wearing a mask so he couldn’t gauge her reaction.
As soon as she was gone he put the patrol car in gear and drove south out of town and then a little farther.  Two summers ago during the town bicentennial they had closed the main road through town and had a carnival come in.  But a night or two in there was an immigration raid of some kind and all the carnies were dragged off or ran off.  After a few days of complaints, and nobody from the carnival coming back, Joe Linseed rode his tractor into town and dragged the rides off one at a time to a farm field the government was paying him to keep fallow.
There those old rides rotted away, along with some busted-up trailers and some other ragged odds and ends.  It’s where Faron pulled in and parked, and saw a little campfire in the dying light.  He knew Joe Linseed’s nephews or cousin’s kids or some kin hung out here all the time but Linseed was kind of his boss so Faron did nothing.  Even though he had an idea what they were doing out here.
Faron took a Remington 870 shotgun out of the trunk and started walking towards the campfire where several figures crouched or sat in broken-down patio furniture.  Young guys still shirtless in the fall chill.  There was a chemical smell in the air.
“Hello, Walls.”
The call from the gloom brought Faron up short.  Only one person called him that, and it was his childhood friend and adult weed dealer Rickey Webb.  He knew his mother had named him after her favorite singer Faron Young and had loved his hit song “Hello, Walls.”  Rickey was a nephew on Joe Linseed’s wife’s side but never came out to this little encampment people up the road called Rustytown.
Faron thought for a moment, but kept coming.
“You look damn serious, Walls.”
“And all you hillbillies out here look damn jumpy.”
The energy shifted towards Junior, though who he was junior to Faron couldn’t remember.  He was the lead dog in this younger group and went from juvie to county to state prison and only recently returned from the grand tour.  The shining whites of his eyes stared out at Faron and his neck tattoos looked like bruises in the blue light.
“If you want some of that Leopold Gold I done brought up from Tell City last week, come by my place tomorrow.  You don’t need to be out here,” Rickey said.
“Neither do you.”
“I ain’t never out here but I got business tonight.”
“I do too.  So