2019-11-17 - An Uneventful Ride-Along

It's a Sunday mid-day and Carter is Devlin's ride-along partner. Thus far, it's been a relatively quiet Sunday for Gray Harbor. No one's even been murdered yet. As they drift around the park, Carter nods toward the empty field. "Looks like the singed places where the grass burned are starting to fade." He glances over at Devlin and asks, "How are the certs going? And how are you settling in?"

Devlin says, "Doing fairly well over all. They are scheduling me to teach some of the advanced first aide classes. Guess they want to justify paying me." He smirks a bit, "Nothing new for me there. But it is a good way to meet people in both departments. I am surprised they are letting me come along, but I am game. I can do some first aide but not the advanced things.. like establish an IV, administer pain killers.. all the fun stuff." He shrugs, "But it's better than a hotel room.. "

"I'd imagine just sitting around the hotel must get pretty boring," Carter says as he turns down toward Oak, idly scanning the street as they go. There's been little chatter over the radio. He asks, "What about settling into town itself? Outside of work? Been doing anything interesting?"

Devlin says, "Mostly meeting people like Dr. Kosimar and my 2nd cousin Hera. Even met some of the people from EMS that way and a few from the Pee Dee." He listens to the chatter, "Nice to hear chatter like that. Makes me feel comfortable.. to a point." He smiles, "I do like a little action. Just glad that work will not be accompanied by IEDs, artillery, and other not so pleasant things."

"Well, I wouldn't say that it won't be accompanied by unpleasant things," Carter says with a wry smile, "But generally speaking, yeah, I don't think you're going to see much heavy weaponry here in Gray Harbor. Most of the deaths around here are.. well.. they seem of the more mundane variety, anyway." Seem being the operative word. He nods about the chatter on the radio though and says, "Sundays, I've found, aren't too bad most of the time." He travels along Oak, slowing down a little bit just to check on one of the houses that's for sale, glancing around just to make sure there's no evidence of a break-in, but seeing nothing obvious, just keeps on going.

Devlin says, "Like being on training for a patrol when I was in garrison." He smiles, "Everyone expects the medic to not be paying attention.." He then hmms, "Few kids over there with spray paint cans behind them." as you slow down. "Nice to see just simple mischief."

"Yeah, but they're headed that way," he nods through the path from the neighborhood into the woods. "There's an abandoned water tower back there that the kids like to tag. Generally, we don't bother with them since it keeps them from doing so elsewhere." He continues on, for the time being, not bothering with the kids. "What about you? You get into any trouble when you were a kid?"

Devlin says, "Not much really. I may have been a military brat, but Dad went out of his way to make sure we got to take classes in good schools for Shaolin Kung Fu and later Tai Chi. I had both of my black sashes before I enlisted." He grins, "My Drill Sergeant thought I was full of shit. He decided to use me for his training dummy for our first hand to hand class. I countered his move before he even knew what was going on."

Carter nods his head as he listens, turning off oak and winding back around toward the downtown area. "I ran around with some kids when I was younger, when bouncing from home to home. You tried to make what friends you could for as long as you could. We used to break into abandoned places, mostly, and hang out there. Never spray painted or anything like that, mostly just trying to find places away from the rest of the world that we could make ours for a little while."

Devlin nods, "Yeah, some of my friends and I would find places in the housing areas to hide in the woods. And later when mom and dad started getting houses, we'd find other places." He rubs his chin, "Honestly.. we never had a lot of time to get into trouble over all. Two older brothers and two older sisters.. I am the youngest."

"We had a bit more time, I guess, seeing as we never really settled down anywhere long enough to get into any kind of a particular routine, or study stuff outside of school, like taking those kinds of lessons," Carter says thoughtfully as they make their way back toward Downtown. "Of Claire and I, I'm the older."

Devlin nods, "I suffered from a case of.. if your little brother gets in trouble.. you two get punished for it. Made me realy popular with my brothers. Most of the trouble I did get into was because they drug me along. But with all the martial arts classes we took.." He shrugs. "So this is a pretty quiet town. What would you call is the most common issue you deal with?"

"I mean, I haven't been there that long, so I haven't really seen the full scope of what the town has to offer. Thus far it's been runaway horses, exploding pumpkins, and a murder at the motel," Carter says when Devlin asks about the sorts of crimes that he has run into. "Still working on figuring that one out. I'm more assisting the detectives than anything there, really. Took some statements at the scene, reviewed some video footage from the cameras."

Devlin nods, "When I was doing my training runs in LA, I swear there was atleast two or three GSWs a shift. Those gang bangers made it feel as if I was deployed.. just guns no heavy stuff thankfully." He takes a breath, "The worst were the domestic disputes were someone got seriously hurt. I got attacked a few times because I was treating one spouse and the other wanted the victim to hurt more and suffer."

"Yeah, there have been a few of those around here, too, but nothing too serious," Carter says. "No idea if that's the norm, yet, but I guess only time will tell. I keep hearing about how dangerous and weird this place is, so I'm reserving judgment until I've been here for a while longer to see how much of that pans out."

Devlin nods, "I have heard they have had some weird murders.." He hmms as he looks over to the side, "Looks like someone camping in the alley. Bigger problem in LA than here it seems.."

Carter nods, "This one was pretty weird. Guy's face was bashed in with a guitar, but something about the blood -- there wasn't enough or in the right radius for him having been violently beaten to death in the face with the guitar," Carter says, "And most of the people that we talked to said even the one beef he really had was mostly for show for their followers and stuff. So.. still sorting that one out."

Devlin nods, "So he was killed some place else then for a guess. Blood splatters not right then.. " He rubs his chin a little, "I've seen insurgents move a body to suit an ambush set up. Easy enough to catch if you pay attention to the blood and think about how it should have splattered." He finally takes a sip on that cup of coffee that has been ignored, "I hated those times.. following up the engineers or the infantry."

Carter nods his head again and says, "Yeah, there's a whole team looking into it. It's pretty strange. Can't even figure out who would have had motive, really." But then he shrugs his shoulders and says, "I'll leave that to the detectives to sort out." He swings around back toward the station and says, "So have you experienced anything particularly weird since being in town?"

Devlin says, "Yeah.. a couple of weird things." He sips on his coffee, "That flue hit me like a ton of bricks for a couple of days. the dreams were.. rough.. I had heard of fever dreams before, but man.. these were nasty."

Devlin adds a moment later, "And.. sometimes the dreams just seemed too real. May be that was the fever."

"Maybe," Carter says, "I know that a bunch of the cops at the station came down with it and said it was pretty bad. I didn't catch it, myself, but I'm glad to see that you made it out the other side okay." He studies Devlin for a moment or two and says, "Have you discovered you can /do/ anything unusual since being here in town? Sense things you couldn't before? That sort of thing?"

Devlin says, "I've seen a lot of strange things on my deployments.. still trying to figure those out."

Carter studies Devlin for a moment or two and then just nods, pulling back into the parking lot at the station. "Sorry this ride-along wasn't more eventful," he says once he stops the car. "But it was nice to have the company for a while, anyway."

Devlin says, "It was helpful to get a better feel for the neighborhoods. One of the places they are going to send me is to the ER to see how things run there." He smirks, "Almost feel like I am back at o'le Ft. Sham Huston again... "

"Well, as long as it was at least a little helpful," Carter says, and then pulls himself out of the patrol car, getting out and stretching his legs a bit. "I should probably head in and get some paperwork done, but it was good to see you again, man. Maybe next time we'll get something a little more exciting."

Devlin says, "Beware what you wish for. You never know what may happen.." He smiles a bit, "Need anything for lunch? While your working on paperwork, I can run grab something for you."

Carter smiles a little in surprise at the offer and says, "Oh, uh, sure, that'd be cool. I forgot about lunch. Where were you thinking of going?"

Devlin says, "Pretty open, there is a good Mexican place just outside of town. As good as what you could get in Texas. There are some other places too, if you want something else, I'm flexible."

"Mexican is always good," Carter grins. "I could definitely kill a beef chimichanga." He fishes in his pocket for his wallet to pull out some cash to give to Devlin, "I really appreciate it. I wasn't looking forward to poking through the vending machine later, or seeing if there were any stale donuts leftover. Usually I bring stuff from home but I was kind of in a rush this morning."

Devlin nods, "Got it. Soda or something else?" He takes the money as he gets ready to roll. "And no speeding.." the tone teasing, "Back in about 30."