Shades of blue.

Three traffic stops on Friday, each with their own absurdness. I accredited it to the fact that it was the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year. I hope that doesn't mean that I'm into all the moon crap as one of my counterparts questioned.

1.
I was driving northbound on a busier street in town, minding my own business, drinking coffee and being thankful for such a sweet job. Ahead of me a car pulled onto the road from a residential street, completely blowing through the stop sign. I immediately activated my lights, and she stopped. When I walked up she told me that it was a new car and she was still getting used to how it worked. I asked her if the gas pedal and the brake were in relatively the same place as her previous car. Then I wrote her a ticket.

2.
I was sitting at a dead-end in a residential neighborhood, where you can simultaneously watch about three intersections. There was a paltry amount of traffic, and everyone was obeying the law and stopping for all of the stop signs. I was getting bored so I put in gear and started to creep out to resume patrol. A car approached the intersection that I was not ten feet from and completely blew through the stop sign, not even a whisper on the brake pedal. I activated my lights and she stopped. I walked up and she was very apologetic and really didn't have an excuse for why she didn't even pretend to stop. I wrote her a ticket because the house next door has five kids that play in the street a lot. Tragedy waiting to happen. When I walked back up to have her sign it she started crying and told me that what she actually was doing was praying and was so deep in concentration that she didn't even see the stop sign. I should have told her that she didn't pray hard enough. Instead I just handed her the yellow copy as she cursed the Divine.

3.
Waiting for a red light at one of the "no right on red" intersections in town and the car ahead of me turns right. I cut through the gas station parking lot and turn the lights on. She doesn't pull over. I honk the air horn a couple of times and she signals to turn left. I am right behind her gesticulating, with the lights blasting away and she turns into the Starbucks parking lot. She slowly finds a parking space, pulls in, turns the car off and starts to get out as I'm parking and jumping out of my car to beat her to the asphalt. I tell her to get back in her car and point to my lights blazing and ask her if she realized I was pulling her over. She looks stupefied -- she had no idea. Duh, she hadn't had any coffee yet. Yeah, she got a ticket. And I noticed, after I pulled away from the stop, she put it in gear without getting that first cup of java.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What was it about today? There was something about the way she started to answer our questions before we had even finished asking them that struck me as wrong. The explanations just came out too readily. The dry-mouth was a massive red flag and I could see the face of my SCAN instructor -- he had an eyebrow raised and I didn't let it pass by unnoticed. Out in the hallway I thought for sure that my counterpart would agree with me, that we would huddle up and figure out our attack. His dissent made me question my conviction, and I volunteered to do the leg work to prove to myself that I wasn't crazy. He stayed and continued with the questioning. Before we parted I looked at him and said she's guilty as sin. He looked back with those hazel eyes. What if I'm wrong?

When I returned, victorious, she was mid-sentence with an entirely new line of bullshit. I was tired of the game, of the lying I am always so tired of the lying, so I pressed her hard, impatiently, and asked for corroboration. She was too reluctant and you could tell she was getting tired of keeping track of her story. So my counterpart posed her with the old, well if you're innocent then you won't mind if we look, right? To which she, of course, agreed. Because if you say no you look guilty.

Which kills me, by the way. Because if you say yes, we are going to find it, and then you are guilty. What tangled webs we weave.

We started in the bedroom, because it's always in the bedroom, and I found her drug stash. My counterpart uncovered a drawer full of sex toys and was totally engrossed when I noticed her apparently rearranging shoes in her closet. In a flash I realized that rearranging shoes in your closet while the po-po is performing a consent search in your bedroom is just not normal behavior. So I suggested to her, look, why don't you step out here and stand in the middle of the room where we can see what you're doing. I made a bee-line for the purse she had been trying to bury under a pile of shoes and, as if by magic, recovered what we had been looking for. Her eyes were burning holes into my soul the entire time I slowly unzipped every compartment of the purse. I kept watch on her out of my periphery and new I was going to find it. So much so that it was almost like watching a movie that you've seen before, the inevitable unfolding.

The rest was mostly procedure and paperwork.

I cornered him later though with I called it. Part of me felt cheap for saying it but I couldn't keep it down. He knew, and the look in those hazel eyes spoke volumes. Maybe it will be different now, I don't know. Things are changing all of the time with us.

As always it's his paper, his credit. I can't wait to read the two-dimensional version of how the whole thing went down. If nothing else I learned, unequivocally, to not question the gut reaction. You are right, the mystery is in figuring out how you are right.

Later, on my own, on the bike path, flying on the asphalt with the sun burning my nose. Glorious sanctuary that it is, the bike path. I found myself praying. Thank you, God, for such a beautiful day, the wind on my face, the sun, the strength to hurl myself forward, mile after mile. Thank you, Lord, for giving me a calling and the tools to be successful. Keep me humble, Lord, and always smarter and stronger than yesterday.

Later I got a text of admission that my gut was right on, and something about a hope that I didn't think it was down-played. And the flirtations. It is like being given a present of a book that's in a language I can't read. What does any of it mean? I think I should stick to my solitude, and to Rumi. Because when he says we have a barrel full of wine, but no cups. Which is fine with us, I understand.