Things around town were quiet for a few days after Melissa’s coming-out event. She was initially reluctant to go to work at Jake’s Bar in what Ingrid called ‘Full Warpaint’.

Despite her initial reservations, Ingrid ensured she looked the part before letting her go on her way. She waved Melissa off like a mother would do to a child going to school. For a brief moment, she felt rather proud of Melissa.

When Melissa nervously walked into the Bar, she saw Jake up a stepladder. He was fixing up a sign that read, “Insult the Bar Staff once and say sorry, then you are forgiven. Do it twice, and you are banned for life, no ifs, buts or maybes. Jake.”

Melissa wasn’t sure if that would work given some of the often very ribald comments that were passed around, especially when any Women’s Sports were featured on the main TV screens.

Sean had found some of the comments frankly insulting, but for many of the hard-core Football Fans, the only women who should be on TV were the cheerleaders. He’d just smiled, held his tongue and poured more beer.

“What do you think, Melissa?” asked Jake as he stood back and admired his handiwork.

“Not bad,” she replied and swiftly headed for the kitchen to start ‘prep’ for the lunch menu.

Word had gotten around that ‘Barman Sean’ was now ‘Barmaid Melissa’. Some of the regulars were expecting Melissa to be dressed like the Barmaids at the Roadhouse on I-5 and be wearing tight, tight hot pants, silly height heels and a skimpy top. Nothing could have been further from the truth, which dampened things down considerably, but even so, Jake had to take a few of the more vocal customers outside for a proper talking, too. Once they returned and had apologised, Jake treated them to a beer on the house. The ‘or else’ option was all too clear to one and all.

By the end of that first week, things were back to normal or as close as they’d ever be again. Melissa took to wearing an ankle-length skirt and cowboy boots with a small heel. Only one drunk had squeezed her backside. That person was ceremoniously banned for life, with the relevant Facebook and Twitter entries to back it up.

Brad had tried hard to get people to turn against Melissa, but it appeared that the trip to the Café had stopped that in its tracks. His next attempt was to bring up the question of which bathroom Melissa would use. That was an old anti-LGBT ploy. At Jake’s place, there was a separate bathroom for staff, which solved that issue, as there would never be more than three staff on duty at any one time.

Nancy’s Café responded by making their two bathrooms ‘Unisex’. Brad was not amused and made it clear on Facebook that he regarded Melissa as a sexual predator and needed to be dealt with.

Naturally, the Chief of Police could not see anything wrong with Brad’s comments and went as far as endorsing his right to free speech as per the Constitution.

Neither of them quite anticipated the responses from people in Town. They all expressed the opposite view, and it was Brad who needed to be dealt with. They all made sure that each post included the words ‘I’m expressing my right to free speech’. Several posts went as far as to refer to the tools that were used to castrate male calves.

Brad responded by taking down his post to stop any more comments.

What happened the following Sunday morning was open to some confusion. Some witnesses would swear on a stack of Bibles that the FBI raided the homes of the Mayor, the Chief of Police and all the deputies. Others would say that it was the IRS, with others swearing that it was the ATF, but in any case, all of them were led away in cuffs. Hundreds of boxes of possible evidence were also removed and taken away to somewhere for investigation.

While this was going on, the big iron gates to the Mortensen Estate remained firmly closed and padlocked. They’d either fled already or were not going to come out easily should their place be raided. The local TV station had sent a news crew to report on the raids.

Not to be outdone by the news crews, one enterprising couple sent up a drone and flew it over the Mortensen Estate. They were not very good pilots, and the thing ran out of battery power before they could get it somewhere safe to land. They’d streamed the whole thing on Facebook and had made quite a lot of money in advertising by the time the drone crashed.

The pictures showed the Mortensen clan having a BBQ as if nothing had happened. When one spotted the drone, it was a sign for some target practice to take place. The shooters were probably half drunk, and none of the shots hit the target. The whole thing trended on Facebook for well over a day, despite many attempts by some very highly-paid lawyers to get it taken down.

The States Attorney had drafted in a team of Police Officers to take over the duties of those who had been arrested for the next few weeks. There was a lot of chatter in the town about who would be taking over. After a few days, it was generally agreed that the new Police Chief had to be someone from outside the area. The view was that they’d have no cosy under-the-counter links to local families and, therefore, be less likely to be corrupt or at least in cohorts with the previous regime and the Mortensens.

For a few days, the town was quiet. There had been little more than a brief mention of the arrests on the local TV channels, but it wasn’t important enough to go state or nationwide. The gossip was that someone was singing like a canary and that a grand jury was about to be convened somewhere in the state where a load of charges would be put to the jury.

All that speculation was forgotten when a convoy of Police Cars came through the town with all lights flashing. The convoy included several vehicles with big FBI signs on the side.

To the surprise of the onlookers, they didn’t stop in town but headed through town and straight for the Mortensen Ranch.

As it happened, Melissa was heading to work when she encountered the convoy coming in the other direction. Two police cars blocked the road right outside the gates to the Ranch. Melissa had no choice but to stop and wait. She became the perfect witness to what happened next.

A Patrol car smashed through the gates and didn’t stop. The rest of the convoy followed that car, and suddenly, the road was quiet again. All that remained were the two cars blocking the road.

An officer emerged from one car and came over to Melissa’s truck.

“Good evening, Ma’am. License and Registration, please?”

Melissa was surprised by this request.

‘What’s wrong, Officer? Have I committed some offence?”

“Ma’am, as far as I know, you have not, but you could be a witness to this operation, and my orders are to find out who you are. We don’t want this to leak onto Social Media until the operation is complete. So, if you don’t mind, License and Registration, please?”

Reluctantly, Melissa leaned over to the passenger seat and pulled a wallet from her handbag.

She handed her driving license to the Officer. Then she reached up and pulled the vehicle registration from the sun visor and handed that over as well.

“Er, Miss? This license and registration is in the name of Sean Williams.”

“That is correct, Officer. I’ve just started living as a woman. I am waiting for my lawyer to prepare the paperwork to change my name.”

The Officer returned the documents to Melissa.

“Where were you going tonight?”

“I’m due at work. I work behind the bar at Jake’s Bar and Grill. It is just over a mile down the road and is just before the town limits.”

“I get the feeling that the change to living as a woman is a sudden thing?”

Melissa chuckled.
“You are very astute, Officer. Society is quite schooled at making people conform to what everyone thinks they should be. I was faced with a choice. Be exposed by Brad Mortensen, or come out of the closet. I came out.”[1]

The officer smiled.

“I think that you should get off to work, Miss Williams.”

Melissa went to start the car, but stopped herself.
“Officer, thank you. If all the Police were as courteous as you, there would be less anger directed towards many of your colleagues.”

“Thank you, Miss. Comments like that make it all worthwhile.”

The Officer moved his car and allowed Melissa to get to work.

Talk of the raid on the Mortensens was already dominating conversation at Jake’s Bar when Melissa came on duty. Even a ‘49ers vs Steelers’ game that was showing on TV was being ignored.

“This is the event of the century, if not the last one as well,” exclaimed Jake.

Melissa was not so sure. As a child, she’d been on the last day of a Holiday in New York on that infamous day in September. She and her family were on the ferry going to visit the Statue of Liberty when the first plane crashed into the tower. They had a grandstand view of that event. While the raid on the Mortensens was of huge significance to the local area, in the grand scheme of things, it was a mere blip.

Melissa was pleased as it stopped any conversation about herself dead in its tracks, but she did wonder what would happen next. With the Mortensens, the Mayor and the whole of the Police Department likely to be in custody, she wondered who was going to Police the town. While the old PD might have been 100% corrupt, it was made up of people from the local area. Who knows what the new cops would be like? Life in a semi-rural town was very different from that of an inner city.

She wasn’t the only one with those concerns. In town, a group of residents, all of whom had served at one time on the Town Council, met to discuss the same thing. Amongst them was Nancy. She said very little during the meeting other than to provide copious amounts of tea and coffee. There was a reason for her sitting quietly and observing the discussions of her fellow residents. She knew them all very well, and if there was one thing that she knew that they’d never be able to agree on, that was who was going to be the next permanent Police Chief.

Nancy’s ace that was up her sleeve was that she knew someone who might very well be ready to accept the offer of a job as Chief of Police.

She bade her time and let her neighbours rattle on for hours, and would never reach a decision about who the best candidate would be.

It was almost two weeks later that Nancy got the chance to contribute to the debate about who was going to be the next Chief of Police. Her hand was forced by the current temporary Chief leaving because his mother, who lived near San Diego, had been taken ill.

Another temporary Chief was drafted in. This one came from Eureka, so it was much more local, but he made it clear that he was only staying until the end of the year as he was due to take up a role in Sacramento.

A meeting of ‘concerned residents’ was called. They met at the Gym at the High School. After a lot of chatter, Nancy got the attention of the chairperson, Bob Schultz.

“Nancy? You wanted to say something?”

She stood up and swallowed hard.
“I sure do, Mr Chairman. I know of someone who might be open to taking the job of Police Chief permanently.”

She paused.
“Before anyone asks, the person is a woman and is a relative of mine. Like me, she comes from New York and is a former Officer in the NYPD.”

Before she could say anything else, she was interrupted by Edgar Harris, the local Undertaker.
“She? You said former NYPD officer?”

Nancy smiled.
“Chad, if you had let me finish, I would have covered all that.”

Chad sat down, and Nancy continued.
“As I said, she is a former NYPD Officer and comes from a long line of NYPD officers. She is currently a deputy with the Custer County Police. She is married to the Sheriff. He is stepping down in November. There is another deputy who is in line to be Sheriff before her. That deputy was like the current Sheriff, born and bred in the county, so she may well be looking for a new position.”

She paused for breath. As no one had interrupted, Nancy continued.

“What is good is that they have been to town before. They passed through the town on their Honeymoon, where they had an encounter with our previous PD. They had a present from the PD in the shape of a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant when they were outside my Café. I think we all know the situation. Many of us here tonight experienced the old PD regime and don’t want a repetition of that anytime soon.”

Nancy sat down and waited for the inevitable questions.
The first came from Bob Schultz.

“What do you propose to do? We can’t just offer her the job on your say-so? Why isn’t her Husband interested in the job?”

“Bob, on their visit here, her husband told me that he was thinking of not standing for re-election. That tells me that he’s probably done with Law Enforcement. Before he was Sheriff, he was a Military Policeman and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I know from my own experience that there comes a time when you need a real change. Coming here and opening my Cafe was my big change. I suggest that I call Kelly and sound out her interest. If it is positive, then I’m sure that we can get her to come here for a formal, above-the-board, and on-the-record interview. Then, more of us can see for ourselves what we will be getting. How does that sound?”

After a few more questions, no one else had any better ideas, and the meeting broke up. As she left, Edgar Harris stopped her.

“You knew about your relative all the time, didn’t you?”

“I did, but I felt that, as a relative newcomer to town, it would be better for any other suggestions or ideas to be aired first. Then I could not be accused of ‘taking over’ the meeting.”

Edgar looked confused.
“If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then just ask your wife about the last AGM of the Bridge Club and, importantly, why they no longer meet at my Café.”

Edgar looked puzzled.
“She didn’t tell you then? To cut a long story short, I was accused of profiteering by some members and then of trying to take over the club. I never made any money from the club, as my accounts clearly showed, but that wasn’t good enough for the ruling clique. Plus, the last thing I want is more responsibility; running my Café is more than enough, so I resigned from the club and withdrew my offer of hosting their evenings.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Edgar, your wife Ellen, was not one of those who came out against me. Since that day, none of them other than Ellen and your good self has set foot in my shop. Just ask her what happened and if she felt that I was trying to take over. I’m not interested in doing anything but running my Café, especially not becoming the next Mayor. I think that you would make an excellent Mayor.”

“Why don’t you stand? I’ll support you!”

Nancy shook her head.
“I won’t do it, but you have a base here, so it would be a shoo-in.”

“I’ll think about it.”

They left it at that.

That evening, Nancy phoned Kelly.

“How’s my favourite niece?”

“Good to hear it. I’m good as well.”

Nancy took a deep breath.
“My reason for calling is that I wanted to ask, has Matt decided about standing for re-election again?”

“That’s good. If you are interested, there is a vacancy here for the Chief of Police. The old lot are in jail and are being investigated for corruption, bribery and a lot more besides.”

“Long overdue if you ask me. I thought of you. With Matt in the background, it would be a great role for you. I know you could handle it.”

Nancy listened to Kelly’s explanation as to why she was not suitable for the job.

“Don’t you worry your lovely self about those idiots back East. I have more than enough dirt on a good number of your family to send them behind bars for years, and before you ask, the statute of limitations does not apply to these cases.”

“Yes, my dear, I am serious. We both got out of that nest of thieves, vagabonds and thugs for hire. You can add to that a good number of crimes related to the ‘Troubles’[2]. The Brits don’t have this concept of wiping crimes off the books after several years, especially crimes related to supplying arms to terrorist organisations. There is evidence galore with my Lawyer. That’s why they have left me alone, and if you are here as well, then that applies to you. Our current Administration is keen to support the peace and reconciliation process and may not be too keen to block extradition. In any event, the publicity will make them very much persons not wanted in parts of NYC.”

“Are you interested?”

“Gotcha. Talk it over with Matt and let me know. Don’t take too long about it, though. The natives are getting restless. Having temporary cops running the show isn’t ideal.”

“Ok, my dear. Let me know what you decide.”

Nancy put the phone down, hoping that she’d done enough to at least get Kelly interested in the job. The town needed a level-headed Chief, and with Matt as backup, she was confident that Kelly would shine in the role.

[to be continued]
Authors note
This piece brings this tale into a sort of alignment with ‘County Sheriff - First Steps to a New Job”.

[1] The sentence that begins “Society…” was cribbed from an Angela Rasch story (on BigCloset). I hope that she does not mind. I thought that the words were very apt and appropriate for this situation.

[2] The ‘Troubles’ is a general term used to describe the conflict between the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland that ended with the Good Friday Agreement of the late 1990s. Many Irish Americans provided money and guns to organisations like the IRA and, to a lesser extent, the UDA. The US government tended to turn a blind eye to that support, but with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, that attitude changed. Nancy is referring to aid given after that time.