Methland by Nick Reding

Author:Nick Reding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

Every morning, Jeremy Logan leaves his house and drives five blocks to work in a blue Ford Expedition emblazoned with the words Oelwein Police in the town’s green and yellow colors. Logan is of middle height and weight. His short brown hair is in a crew cut, which, along with the sharp features of his face and the acne scars along his cheeks and jawbones, gives him a decidedly military air. It takes only minutes, though, for Logan to reveal a deeply ingrained streak of friendly sarcasm and a sharp appreciation for the irony that surrounds him. According to Clay Hallberg, for decades, if not since the police department’s founding, the men saddled with protecting the citizens of Oelwein have been a violent bunch, and disdainful of the rights of the citizens in this notoriously tough railroad town. (When asked to confirm this, Nathan Lein smiled and said, “I wouldn’t want to be arrested, put it that way.”) Of the ten-man force, Logan is the only one with a college degree. Many of his officers are built more like offensive linemen; almost all of them shave their heads. Knowing this and taking into account once again Logan’s physical characteristics—the army crew; the soft middle signaling a distaste for the gym—is to understand that Logan is a reflection of his job, which exists in the delicate middle ground between the brute strength of the department and the slick, erudite bonhomie of Larry Murphy. Sarcasm, says Logan, is more than a coping mechanism. It’s like a second language.

Being the chief of police is perhaps the only job in town more visible than being mayor. Murphy, when he’s not running Oelwein, has a political consulting business that sends him regularly to Des Moines, a three-hour drive south. Murphy’s kids are grown, and he works from home, meaning that he can choose to hole up for a couple of days should things get tough—as they did when he lobbied to make riding a bike on Main Street illegal. Logan cannot. He is constantly on display, whether picking up his three young children from school or heading to the scene of an accident in his truck. When he does things that people don’t like—agreeing to arrest students at Oelwein High, for instance—it’s not just he who hears about it. It’s his wife, too, who has to smile and nod while she waits for her latte at the Morning Perk. Still, says Logan, this is a walk in the park compared with the year before Murphy made him chief of police. That year nearly drove Logan out of the town where he’d lived his whole life.

Details vary, but the consensus around town is that the former police chief, under whom Logan had achieved the rank of sergeant, ran a loose ship. All Logan will say on the record is that there was a certain “laxness around the department,” and that he thought it appropriate to one day approach the chief and tell him how unhappy he was with the situation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.