by Donna Andrews
"And then the police came to tow my car away."
My writer friend, Ellen Crosby, was describing her week. Most of the bits of news she shared weren't conversation stoppers. We're near neighbors and fellow critique group members, so we know a lot about each other's daily lives, families, and writing projects. But I'd somehow missed hearing that she'd done something dire enough to get her car impounded.
"Um...towed your car away? Why?"
I was relieved to find that Ellen hadn't become a scofflaw. Her family's oldest car, an ancient Ford Escort that her family had driven all over two continents, had developed transmission problems and they'd had to replace it. But instead of selling the Escort, they'd decided to donate it to the Fairfax County Police.
How cool is that?
Ellen warned them that the transmission was going, but the officer she talked to arrange the donation said that wasn't a problem--they were pretty handy with cars. And he told her all about the exciting new life her car will be leading now that it has joined the force.
First, the Escort will get a major overhaul and tuneup in their shop, and then they'll take it down to the ops center and let the rookie cops chase it around the track for a while, practicing their high speed car chase skills. Sometimes, by way of a change, they might plant various illegal substances in the car and turn the bomb-, arson-, and drug-sniffing dogs loose on it.
Of course, no matter how skillful the repair staff at the police operations center are, sooner or later its age will catch up with the Escort, and it won't be able to give the rookie cops much of a workout. At that point, the car will suffer one of several fascinating fates. The bomb squad might get to blow it up. Or the SWAT team could shoot it up. All, I hasten to add, for educational purposes. Or they might turn it over to the fire department, which also has rookies to train. The fire department could set the Escort on fire, so the rookies can put it out, or they might just let the rookies cut it into little bits while learning to use the Jaws of Life.
I confess, I'm slightly envious. Of the cops and fireman, that is. None of the training I got in my day job ever involved blowing things up or setting things on fire. I'm even just a little envious of Ellen's Escort, which is not only better traveled than I am, but is about to lead an exciting new life in law enforcement.
At the moment, my 1999 Honda Civic, aka Son of Zero, is still running quite nicely. So I won't tell it just yet that when the time comes near for it to go to that great auto body shop in the sky, I'll probably turn it over to the Fairfax County Police Department. Because that's the sort of thing a mystery writer should do.
Mystery writers are also prone to startling passersby with statements like "I put a dead body in one of the bathrooms of that house"--said by Marcia Talley, when driving through an elegant street in Chestertown, Maryland; and the body in question appeared in Occasion of Revenge, not in real life. I've done the same thing myself. "This is where I killed off Eddie Stallman," I've been known to say, when driving down a certain tree-lined street in Arlington. Eddie, of course, is a character (in Delete All Suspects). Incidentally, readers should be wary of trying to hunt down all the locations used in a writer's books. Some of us make fictional places up--there is no town of Caerphilly on a real Virginia map, only in my Meg Langslow books. And sometimes we use places where tourists shouldn't venture. Laura Lippman turns pale whenever she hears about someone making a pilgrimage through Baltimore to all the places named in the Tess Monaghan novels--some of those places she only went to because was a reporter covering crime stories, and even the most hardened criminals have some sense that killing off reporters isn't good publicity.
A few weeks ago, I was a speaker at the Bay-To Ocean Writer's Conference in Wye Mills Maryland. I was introducing myself to another of the speakers, a writer named Candice Poarch. And she looked very familiar. Suddenly, it dawned on me.
"Oh, we've met before!" I exclaimed. "At the Fairfax County Jail!"
Perhaps it was just my imagination, but I think people nearby began edging away from both of us.
"When we toured the Fairfax County Jail as part of the Fairfax County Citizens Police Academy," I elaborated. People relaxed and sidled closer again.
Of course, I didn't explain, because it would have been too complicated, that unlike Ellen and Candice, I hadn't been able to sign up for the Citizens Police Academy and was only there at the jail as Ellen's guest. I'm still trying to get a chance to go.
Some people (and cars) have all the fun.
Comments