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very busy as she listened to a few calls.
    She was just making the gentleman
sweat a little.
    Even if she caught him with a joint or
a couple of grams, he had no criminal record and it wouldn’t bring
much joy anyway. What was the point?
    Twenty-eight years old by the birth
date. He was old enough to know better.
    Only a couple of years older than she
was.
    Proving impairment was dicey. Taking
his story at face value, and with her own impression of him. He had
been recorded on her dashboard cam and the fellow was behaving well
enough.
    Among other things, he
didn’t try to lie to her. That took something, what exactly that was she
couldn’t quite say.
    Self-respect, maybe, or was it just
bowing to the inevitable? He seemed calm and in control of
himself.
    She got out again and went up to his
door.
    “ Okay, sir. We’re going to
let you go. Incidentally, it’s a bad idea to smoke pot and drive.
There are laws against impaired driving too. But that’s it for this
time. Get that light fixed and drive safely, please.”
    “ Thank you, Constable. And
please don’t take this the wrong way—”
    She looked him in the eye. It wasn’t
unfriendly. She wasn’t judging him, or making any other
comment.
    “ And what’s that,
sir?”
    “ What’s your
name?”
    She approved in spite of herself, and
didn’t over-react. People had the right to know who they were
dealing with. They were all accountable, otherwise it was just
tyranny. There was some semblance of guts in it.
    “ My name is Constable
Barrett. Good night, sir.”
    She watched fumble to put his papers
back in his wallet. Hands still shaking.
    Hmn,
    He reached down, rolled up his window
and seemed to take a deep breath as they exchanged one last
look.
    Laine watched him start up, signal,
and pull carefully out into the road. His taillights receded into
the night, and as she approached her own vehicle, her radio was
again buzzing with calls from dispatch.
    She was prepared to quickly forget the
incident.
     
    ***
     
    Not so fast, maybe.
    Shit.
    Such a nice guy, too, but things were
not always what they seemed.
    “ Dispatch. Unit Nine
here.”
    “ Come in
please?”
    “ Looks like we got us a
live one here. A real winner, even. Will advise.”
    “ What’s up, Unit
Nine?”
    The air hung heavy as Laine watched
the mirror.
    The guy went on down the road, and
then he must have found a laneway in the darkness and the driving
snow. Seeing Laine pull a careful U-turn and head off in the
opposite direction must have been too much for him.
    Maybe taking him at face value was a
mistake.
    That whole nice-guy act.
    He might be dumber than he looked.
Maybe he was coming back for the dope—and maybe it was more than
just a joint or two. Otherwise why take the risk? Maybe a lot more,
although she hadn’t seen much of anything on the road surface in
her two brief swipes at it. There was at least a quarter or a half
an inch of snow adhering to the surface. Swirling white vortices
swept across the tarmac from the southwest. He could have chucked
it in the ditch or maybe the wind blew some small package off the
road…
    She was westbound on MacTavish.
Situational awareness.
    “ Who’s in the area,
Dispatch?”
    “ Unit Fourteen is holding
at two concessions east, MacTavish and Enniskillen Concession Six,
copy?”
    “ Copy.” Standard procedure
when they had the units available.
    Someone was always nearby, even if you
couldn’t see them.
    The snow-devils danced in the
headlights of oncoming cars as Laine tried to see if the guy was
going real slow or if he stopped or anything. He seemed to be
coming along at a pretty good rate of speed, although that could be
deceptive at night. It’s just that she had slowed down.
    Her speed was dropping, having lifted
off the throttle as soon as she became aware of what was happening.
Touching the brakes would have warned him. She wanted to see what
he did next.
    What if the driver..
no, suspect —she
mentally revised his tag on pure