BENEATH THE SURFACE

THE HUMANITY BENEATH

Mailboat IV: The Shift in the Wind was largely written in the red-letter year of 2020. Not only were normal activities slowed to a trickle by the Coronavirus pandemic, but new riots flared up in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody. It was a hard year for me; I couldn’t get into my favorite coffee shops to write. And as someone with friends representative of both sides of the fray—people of color and people in law enforcement—I felt torn in two.

Coincidentally, one of my main characters in Mailboat IV (and coming back for Mailboat V) is a woman of color, Angelica Read. I allow my characters to be themselves, whatever that may mean. And Angelica let me know when I first met her back in Mailboat I that she was a Mexican-American immigrant.

Another one of my writing rules is to portray people as accurately as I can. For Angelica, that meant reading a stack of very good books about the Mexican-American experience, as well as enjoying some delightful exchanges with Alondra Gaspar, a friend of a friend and a first-generation Mexican-American. Her insights and reviews of my manuscripts were invaluable for bringing Angelica to life.

A personal rule is to avoid thoughts of either-or when it comes to how I view and treat people. Through the race riots of my lifetime, the plight of African-Americans and other minority groups has come to the forefront, as it should. Modern policing has come under question—and under fire. Solutions have been suggested, some of which I find innovative and relevant. Others I find dubious, and it’s my opinion that the founders of some theories have no working knowledge of policing and the unique circumstances around it. In short, I’m suspicious some of these theorists have never actually known a cop.

But frankly, few people have. Sheriff Andy Taylor and his deputy Barney Fife were beloved members of their community. But today, police and the communities they work in live in different worlds. The thought of approaching a cop for anything but a truly serious dilemma is unheard of. They seem distant. Detached. Barely human. If you’re a member of a minority community, odds are you’d never voluntarily approach a cop at all.

But just as I have always sought to look past skin color, language, accent, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, religion, politics, social class, et cetera—I have sought to look past the uniform to find the humanity beneath. Thanks to an early interest in writing “cop stories,” I’ve had ample opportunity and excuse to study American law enforcement.

Two of my long-running main characters in the Mailboat Suspense Series are Officer Ryan Brandt and Detective Monica Steele. The story carries us deeply into their personal and professional lives. Behind their pages lie countless hours that I’ve spent with men and women in uniform, whether on the streets, at their police stations, in their homes, or (in one case) on the trails of our national parks. (Girl, you know who you are.) And it dawns on me that I have a unique and valuable perspective. I know cops. I know the stereotypes we deal with in the real world; the stereotypes that have been handed down through literature, film, and television; and—importantly—I know the truth. I know what cops are really like.

Becoming more attuned with minority groups has become a more recent goal, and when I’ve finished listening for a good, long while, I’m sure I’ll start speaking. I’ve always been the girl in the middle, the one who believes there’s a way to solve any argument, if we only listen. I believe in the basic goodness of people, no matter what they look like. But I’ve already been listening to cops for years. And considering the experiences we’ve recently had here in the U.S., I thought it was time to show you what I know, with the veneer of fiction removed, and take at least one tiny step toward clearing up the dissonance.

When I began writing the Mailboat Suspense Series in 2014, I knew I needed to add new depths to my law enforcement research. Every department is different, based on the size and makeup of its staff, the size of its geographic and demographic area, the size of its budget, the resources at its disposal, the cooperative arrangements it has with neighboring departments—I could go on.

So to write about the Lake Geneva Police Department, I knew I had to get to know the Lake Geneva Police Department. In the spring of 2014, ahead of my first research trip, I called their front desk.

To be frank, I hate making these cold calls. I knew before I picked up the phone that the person on the other end would expect questions about how to pay parking tickets and where to report a crime—not how to get a private tour of their police station for the purposes of writing a novel.

But I sucked it up and called the number. When the telecommunications officer picked up, I did my best to explain myself clearly. I was an author. I was setting a suspense series in Lake Geneva, and several of my main characters were police officers. I was planning to set several scenes at the Lake Geneva Police Department. So was there any way I could get a tour?

“Okay, how big is your group?” the telecommunicator asked, with the sound of a woman ready to take routine notes.

I sighed. This was why I hated these calls. I started over.

“Oh-h-h,” she said, now grasping the unique nature of my request. “Hmm. Let me put you through to the lieutenant.”

I ended up leaving a voice mail for Lieutenant Ed Gritzner. When he called back, I explained my project and told him when I’d be in town. To my delight, he agreed to arrange a private tour for me with one of his sergeants.

It was a humid August day when I walked through the front door of the Lake Geneva Police Department. At the glass-protected front desk, I explained to the telecommunicator that I was there to meet Sergeant Jason Hall for a tour, and she buzzed me through to a secured waiting room.

A few minutes later, Sergeant Hall walked in, dressed in a navy blue uniform. His silhouette was made bulky by a ballistic vest and a belt bristling with tools, black pouches, and, of course, his sidearm. His manner when he greeted me was professional, his handshake firm, his spine straight, his shoulders square. This was the front most people encountered when they placed a call for service. The stone wall. The nameless soldier. The soulless robot.

I wasn’t intimidated. I already knew several law enforcement officers. I knew what I saw was a mannerism they wore when meeting any member of the public. I knew there was so much more to Sergeant Jason Hall. It was only a question of if and when he chose to let down the front. I entrusted that decision and its timing to him.

Once he understood a little about my project, he proceeded to lead me room-by-room through the police station, explaining what each was for, where things were stored, and what kind of technology they had at their disposal. As I asked questions about their resources, their policies, and the unique culture of the Lake Geneva Police Department—steering clear of both cultural and fictional stereotypes—I saw it dawn on him that I wasn’t a total greenhorn. Where I was still uneducated, I endeavored to ask my questions in an open, assumption-free manner with genuine curiosity.

And gradually, the front came down. He wasn’t a law enforcement officer giving a tour to a citizen anymore. We were two enthusiasts talking shop. With the gusto of a kid showing off his toys, he pulled open cupboards and drawers to reveal all the gear his department had on hand. And I glimpsed the real person behind the bullet-proof armor. I saw the guy who was once a little boy with a fascination for flashing lights and breaking-edge technology. I saw how that fascination had never abandoned him, even as the harsh realities of law enforcement set in during his training and after years of service behind the badge. I saw what was true of most cops: that in his hands, these tools were the means to help people.

I make a habit of asking cops why they went into law enforcement. The most common answer?

“I just want to help people.”

Then why do we so rarely see that side of our law enforcement officers? Why are we presented with a stone wall, a nameless soldier, a robot? There are many reasons. But for one, cool professionalism and command presence are trained into a cop at the police academy. It’s literally their outermost layer of armor and can straight-up save their lives on the streets.

Hours later, our tour—and our by-now lively conversation—came full circle to the break room. As if someone had flipped a switch, we both ran out of things to talk about. Jason drummed his fingers on the back of a chair, the thrum filling the empty room. He cast about as if reluctant for the tour to end. As if hopeful he could make my research experience even fuller.

“Well,” he said, then shrugged. “Wanna go for a ridealong while you’re here?”

“Yes!” I said.

I signed a waiver and spent my afternoon with Officer Katie Tietz, one of their female officers—who, by the end of our time together, had also felt comfortable enough to let me see her real personality. Like every female cop, she was made of some combination of tom-boyishness and tungsten steel and was eager to prove her guts. Deep into our ridealong, she lit into a gruesome tale about a small accident at the shooting range. Ultimately, the story was funny, but she spared no details. Suddenly, she stopped herself, remembering she was talking to a citizen and not another cop.

“You okay with me telling this story?” she asked, a brow lifted.

I waved my hand palm-up, butler style. “Proceed.”

“Good!” And she dove back into her tale. Cops are always trying to one-up each other with the strangest, most disgusting story. Frankly, I was honored that she forgot she wasn’t talking to a sister cop.

But perhaps the most dramatic transformation from unknowable law enforcement officer to human happened a few years later on another trip to Lake Geneva. Lieutenant Gritzner and Sergeant Hall arranged for me to go on another ridealong, this time during Sergeant Hinzpeter’s shift. Hinzpeter introduced me to Officer Kara Richards and explained that I was her ridealong. Her face went blank. She scanned me up and down, her eyes barely flicking, but I caught the movement. Then she threw a glance at Hinzpeter that said a thousand words. Thanks a lot, Sergeant.

The next moment, she forced her annoyance aside, donned her cool professionalism, and shook my hand. “Follow me,” she said.

I fell into step behind her, trying not to laugh out loud. I already knew how this was going to play out. Ma’am, you won’t believe everything you’ll end up sharing with me today.

I was right. What was meant to be an hour or two ridealong stretched deep into the evening. By the end of it, Kara had told me her life story, stories about her family, the things that mattered to her, her hopes and dreams for the future. I watched. I listened. I didn’t judge. All I wanted was to get to know her. She attacked everything she did with intensity. When responding to a medical emergency, she took the stairs two at a time as if she weren’t weighed down at all by her vest and belt, while I, unencumbered, struggled to keep up with her. While walking through a darkened hallway at the high school, I noted aloud that she had literally vanished into the shadows, and the only way I was able to follow her was by sound.

“Good,” she said. And I understood that the ability to hide—to not be a target, to come home to her family at night—was important to her.

We only cut the ridealong off when I had to leave for a book signing that night. She dropped me off at my car with a look of genuine regret that this was our good-bye.

I’ve had this happen to me so many times, and not just with law enforcement officers, but with people from every walk of life. My job is not to opine, but to listen—and maybe to amplify the voices I hear by writing about the things they tell me. A couple of weeks before writing this essay, I met a Mexican-American man at a book signing. Noticing that my books were crime fiction, he told me at length about the interactions he’d had with cops, few of them pleasant. He asked if I talked with cops, the way I was talking with him. I told him yes.

“Good,” he said. “All we know is what we see on TV—cops busting down the door, cops hiding in your own house waiting for you. We see them being way too aggressive. And so we get scared, and we do something dumb and it only makes everything worse. But you know that’s not what it’s like. You know what they can and can’t do. If you write about them the way they really are, maybe it’ll help somebody.”

I told him I’d never thought of it that way, and I thanked him for giving me that perspective.

When you greet people with openness and interest, all biases set aside, chances are they will feel secure enough to show you their true colors. My goal, as a person and an author, is to push past external differences to see the human underneath. It’s never failed to make me friends from all walks of life. And the truth is that we really are the same at the most basic level. My belief is that if we could set aside fear and replace it with curiosity, relations between our police and minority communities could finally change for the better.

As the Mailboat Suspense Series has continued, so has my partnership with the Lake Geneva Police Department. In fact, the chief of police officially assigned Lieutenant Gritzner and Sergeant Hall as my liaisons. Not only do they field every wild research question I can come up with, they also play through scenarios with me and read every word I write to check for accuracy.

My readers have sometimes likened my relationship with the LGPD to a sort of real-life Castle. Personally, I think it’s even better. For one, I’ve never actually risked my life while hanging out with them. For another, their help means my novels are as real as they can be. But I also get to follow my passion for understanding people—all people—for whoever they are, exactly as they are, and sharing my explorations with my readers.

Did you enjoy this glimpse beneath the surface?