Disclaimer--you all know what goes here by now. I don't own the characters. They belong to Alliance and Co. I'm a poor college instructor and suing me wouldn't get anyone anything.
Because I think Turnbull, for all his apparent annoyances, gets a bum deal from us. . . .
Constable Turnbull straightened his desk, perfectly aligning blotter, letter opener, message pad and telephone. He flipped the switch that killed his computer for the night. He surveyed the desk top once more, straightening the message pad which was a hair's breadth out of line. Satisfied, he snapped a nod at the desk and stood to roll his chair beneath it.
He turned to the credenza and retrieved his Stetson and placed it underneath his arm as he so frequently saw Constable Fraser carry his. The older constable was a source of inspiration for Turnbull. Fraser could do everything, it seemed, and Turnbull aspired to be like him. He studied Fraser, which seemed to unnerve the other constable, but if he were to succeed as Fraser had, he felt it necessary to understand the other man and his methods.
There were some aspects of Fraser's behavior that Turnbull had reluctantly realized were impossible to duplicate. Inspector Thatcher had denied his request for a husky/wolf mix dog, and he had had no luck befriending members of the Chicago police force. This likely had much to do with the fact that the only member of the police he encountered was Detective Vecchio, and the detective's curt manner discouraged fraternization. Another aspect of Fraser's behavior which he'd been unable to embrace was the older man's apparent indifference to females.
Turnbull tried, but when he was being punished with guard duty outside the consulate, he noticed the women. Summer was the most difficult time for him, for the women were practically undressed so much of the time. It made sentry duty that much more difficult, for his eyes wanted to follow the exposed flesh. No matter how frequently or how severely he castigated himself, he noticed them. He had a hard time not flinching when some of them slipped pieces of paper with phone numbers and addresses in his pockets, and he found it tough sledding to ignore them when they cam into contact with him and he could feel their fleshy parts press against him
It might have been better had he had some talent for investigation, but one of the reasons he'd been posted to Chicago was the little incident involving the theft of an antique china doll belonging to his superior officer's wife. As the new man fresh from his training in Regina, Turnbull had been assigned the investigation. After inspecting the house, searching for blues in both the house and garden, Turnbull had been stumped. There appeared to be no evidence of a stranger in the home, and he could find little evidence of forced entry. The door's lock plate had been scratched, and the china hutch showed pry bar marks, but there was no proof that any of the scratches had anything to do with the theft. On the contrary, it had appeared to Turnbull that they had been placed there to make it look as though the house had been robbed. As he began to search for the doll, he had questioned a number of dealers, many of whom mentioned that the inspector's wife had tried selling them the doll.
One told him, "It wasn't what she claimed it was, though. It was a copy."
Next, he checked with the insurance company and learned they were planning an evaluation of the wife's china collection when the doll disappeared. Turnbull, armed with this information, assumed the wife had taken her own doll and disposed of it to avoid exposing a fraud. When he discussed it with the inspector, the other man had been enraged. The next thing Turnbull knew the doll was recovered in Montreal, and he was on his way to Chicago. He would never have thought he could botch a case so badly.
And here he was, banished to a foreign country with an inspector who no more wanted to be here than he did and a superior officer of the same rank who was, well, perfect. There appeared to be no case Fraser couldn't solve, no task he couldn't perform. Turnbull, on the other hand, could apparently barely manage sentry duty, the easiest of his tasks.
It never seemed to fail, he reflected as he switched off his office light and headed toward the stairs. Everything he did was wrong. Fraser secreted a felon in his office and gave Turnbull strict orders to admit no one and to tell no one the man was there. When Turnbull followed Fraser's instructions, he was reprimanded by his inspector, a police lieutenant, members of the FBI and members of the American's Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He was excluded from the security detail for the trade meeting because he was too inexperienced, but he'd heard Inspector Thatcher, who'd failed to properly close her door, tell Ovitz she didn't want that "incompetent buffoon" on the detail.
About the only person in the consulate who seemed to like him, Turnbull thought, was Diefenbaker, and that was likely because Turnbull walked him when Fraser was too busy and slipped him the occasional sandwich. It had hurt, though, when Cooper had been sent to retrieve Dief instead of Turnbull when Fraser requested him at Randall Bolt's aborted trial. Apparently Inspector Thatcher thought sending a constable unknown to Diefenbaker was preferable to sending Turnbull.
Perhaps he should rethink his career choice, Turnbull reflected. Maybe he should go home and go to work with his father at the marina. He'd been offered a position as a bank clerk when he finished school. Perhaps he could do that.
As he reached the foot of the stairs, a pair of boots came into view. He looked up into the eyes of a sergeant he couldn't remember seeing before. "You keep moping like that, Constable, and you're likely to trip over all that self-pity."
"Sir?" Turnbull asked in surprise.
"You might be green, son, but you'll learn," the older man said. "We all make mistakes, and we all have our Chicagos at some point in our careers. Mine was Resolute. I lost my inspector's best lead dog when the team broke through ice on a river. Next thing I knew, they were posting me to Cornwallis Island. Wasn't much older than you."
"I don't think I fit the uniform, sir," Turnbull said morosely.
The sergeant looked him up and down. "Looks like it fits just fine, son. You simply need seasoning."
Turnbull didn't respond.
"Look at Fraser," the older man continued. "Hard to believe he was ever incompetent, isn't it?"
Turnbull heard something suspiciously like glee in the older man's voice, a note that sounded as thought the man were about to tell tales out of school. "You ask him about Vance Randem and the Alaskan-Yukon Triple-Tier Deception." The old sergeant nodded firmly once with the hint of a smile on his face.
Baffled, Turnbull watched the man begin ascending the stairs. He turned and headed once more to the door, but he'd only taken one step when he turned to ask the sergeant a question. The man had vanished. Turnbull stepped to the staircase and looked up, frowning as he calculated the shortest length of time it would take a man to climb them to the landing above and then factored in the man's age and general fitness. There was simply no way the man could have reached the landing in the time Turnbull's back was turned. He stood staring thoughtfully upward.
As the young constable puzzled over the disappearing sergeant, Constable Fraser appeared at the head of the stairs. He halted a moment, obviously surprised to see Turnbull still in the consulate. "Good evening, Turnbull," he said as he began to descend the stairs.
Turnbull nodded politely. "Excuse me," he began when Fraser reached the bottom. "Did you see the sergeant?"
"Sergeant Atkins?" Fraser asked with a frown. Sergeant Atkins was assigned to the consulate.
"No, sir, I don't know his name. He was an older gentleman, about your height with grey hair. He was wearing the dress uniform," Turnbull reported. "He knew you, and I assumed he was here to see you."
Fraser paled slightly. "He didn't give you a name?"
"No, sir," Turnbull replied before adding, as an afterthought, "but it wasn't Sergeant Frobisher."
"And you spoke to him," Fraser said carefully.
"Yes, sir," Turnbull answered, frowning slightly as he tried to remember exactly what the man had said. "He suggested I ask you about an Alaska-Yukon Triple Deception and something random."
"Vance Randem and the Alaskan-Yukon Triple-Tier Deception," Fraser said softly.
Relieved, Turbull started to confirm it, but he noticed Fraser had gone a curious shade of crimson. "Are you all right, sir?"
Fraser stood stock still, frozen as though he were carved from stone. After a moment, he blinked and studied Turnbull a moment. As the younger man was about to nervously excuse himself, Fraser asked, "Have you eaten?"
The young constable was momentarily confused and taken aback. Fraser seldom said anything to him except to give him his duty roster or to ask him to perform various simple tasks, and Turnbull was exactly sure what to reply. He irritated Fraser at times, he knew, but this was the first time the older man had ever shown any interest in furthering their acquaintance. "No," he said finally.
"Would you care to join me?"
"Yes, thank you," Turnbull heard himself reply.
Fraser gestured for the young constable to precede him, and said, "Allow me to tell you the story, Constable. When I was a new officer, not unlike yourself, I was posted to the western Yukon. My superior officer was a man . . . ."
END
Leigh A. Adams
adderlygirl@yahoo.com