The Second Doublewide on the Right, part 46

I’m Fixing To Present Part 46 of The Second Doublewide on the Right:

Ocmulgee County Deputy Sheriff James Earl Murphy was hacked off big time. The sheriff had reamed him out over the debacle he had made out of the drug raid on the last trailer in the Shady Dale Mobile Home Park, where no contraband had been found and no arrest had been made.

The sheriff’s bitter words still rang sharply in his memory when he had sat in his boss’s office. “It doesn’t look very well when we use our resources and can’t find so much as one dang marijuana seed. What the heck happened? I thought you had some evidence, at least enough to get a judge to sign a search warrant?”

“Uh, I did have evidence,” the deputy had replied. The suspect passed some drugs to an informant of mine and all the circumstances pointed to—”

The sheriff had interrupted him and said, “We don’t operate on circumstances, deputy. We have to have hard evidence, and you know that, now get the heck out of my office and go do the job correctly.”

Deputy James Earl spent the next two days licking his wounds, but at the same time forming a plan of action in his mind. At the end of the second day he arrived at the Sheriff’s Office toward the end of his shift. It was almost midnight when he got there. The graveyard shift, half asleep, seemed to barely notice him when he came in. He was sure no one noticed him when he secured the key to the evidence room.

When he got inside the secure room he didn’t turn the lights on. All he needed was his flashlight because he knew where what he desired was located. He went past the fresh sealed packages of evidence containing drugs, guns, and all sorts of material evidence, and continued toward the back of the room where the old evidence was stacked on shelves. Way back there where all the ancient evidence that probably never would be used in court due to the earlier conviction of the criminal it was found on, back where the stuff that would probably never be missed, was where he was going.

The flashlight beam landed on the brown envelope he was seeking. It contained several ounces of marijuana, a bag of crack cocaine and an envelope of powdered meth. It was evidence he had collected in a case from several years past. Since then the defendant had been convicted and sent to prison for a separate charge of armed robbery. The chances of him ever going to trial for the drug charges were minimal, so Deputy James Earl decided to recycle them.

He quickly pulled his shirt out of his pants and slid the brown envelope underneath his bulletproof vest, and tucked his shirttail back in before making his exit from the evidence room.

The sleepy crew never seemed to notice when he replaced the key and walked out of the building with old evidence which he intended to turn into new evidence.

When the deputy arrived at his trailer in Shady Grove, he noticed a dim light emerging from his bedroom window, but no sign of light from the trailer next door, which meant that he had company.

Candy Sue Collins was sound asleep in his bed, but he didn’t wake her because his mind was elsewhere. He was thinking how he was going to plant the drugs in Quantavious Cortez Carter’s trailer. And more importantly, what kind of evidence he would present to the magistrate judge in order to get another search warrant?

There was no way Quantavious was going to give Candy Sue any more joints. She had told him she thought he had figured out that was what had led to the raid on his trailer.

During this time of contemplation Deputy James Earl was sitting on the stoop outside his trailer in the dark having a smoke. That’s when his thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of a vehicle, which he immediately recognized. It was the old pickup which belonged to Jimmy Ray Hurd, who lived in the next-to-last trailer in the park, the one just before you got to the dope dealer’s place.

He quickly snuffed out his cigarette and observed that the truck was departing the park in the dark with no headlights on. Unobserved, he watched as the truck’s lights finally came on when it reached the highway, wondering where he was sneaking off to in the middle of the night. He was a suspect in several break-in’s and burglaries, but no one could ever pin anything on him.

Quantavious Carter was first on Deputy James Earl’s list, but he vowed that once he took him down, Jimmy Ray would be fixin’ to be next.