On Violence and Varietals: Confessions of a Savage Somm

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An Excerpt from Rich’s upcoming Memoir

…I walked up to the misshapen leg, ensured everyone had pictures, and then removed the billfold from his back pocket. As I opened it, a county officer was standing beside me. I pulled out his driver's license, and the county officer, stammering, drew in a loud breath and said, "Oh my God. I know him. That's John. We went to school together. I know his wife.” I turned to him, and he was already pale. Another officer suggested that he and the THP make the death notification to the family. They were likely wondering where he was.

          At that time, there were probably a dozen EMTs and Paramedics picking up pink and bloodied pieces of John's flesh and fat off the road. I turned from the gore, looked at John's leg lying in the bush beside the blood-smeared guardrail, and began trying to guess his trajectory. I saw a strange sight as I shined my flashlight into the forest's darkness. It was John’s intestines. They were hanging like popcorn Christmas garlands through the trees.

          I grabbed a fireman and showed him what I'd seen, and he agreed that John's body must be down the embankment below the guardrail. So, he and I put on rappelling rigs and rappelled down into the darkness beyond the roadway, and there we found John. He was lying face up, his arms twisted unnaturally by his side, and his helmet was still strapped tightly to his head. I opened the visor on his helmet and stared into his dead eyes. He was gone. The fireman removed his trauma sheers and cut his intestines loose, as they were still strung through the trees above us. We opened the body bag we had brought and rolled John's remains into it. If you have never handled a dead body, it's like a bag of Jell-O with sticks in it.

          Once we got his body and ours hoisted back to the top of the ravine, we collected his leg and put it inside the body bag. Then we placed his remains gently on a gurney, along with the dozen or so biohazard bags containing other assorted pieces of him. Someone told me John left behind a wife and two daughters.

          My time at Name-Of-City-Redacted’s Police Department would limp along for now until I had my next chess move ready to execute, and that was going to take time. So, one night, while sitting at Shoney's all-night breakfast buffet, just staring out the window and contemplating my future, we got a call on the radio. The county officers were pursuing a white hatchback that had failed to stop. Comm-center asked that we pick up the pursuit as it crossed into the city. I jumped in my car and headed for Old McCampbell’s Ferry Rd. En route, I fell behind Officer Chad Plimpton's patrol car, and we both waited at the intersection for the fleeing suspect. A few moments later, the white hatchback came into view. Before I could pull in behind the car, it crashed into a ditch and took out a stop sign. The metal pole flipped over the car and back into the roadway.

          I told comm-center that the white hatchback had 1045'ed (crashed). Then the car pulled back into the roadway and took off at a high rate of speed, heading south down Cherokee Boulevard. Reluctantly, I requested permission from Muffin-Top to pursue. He didn't respond. So, in the absence of Muffin-Top's weak leadership, Officer Plimpton and I continued the pursuit, with Officer JP trailing a few car lengths behind us.

          After several miles of extreme speeds down long, dark country lanes, Sergeant Muffin-Top came on the radio and terminated the pursuit. Honestly, that wasn't a bad call. The speeds were ridiculous, and the reason for the pursuit wasn't a justification for deadly force. I saw Plimpton turn off his blue lights, as did I and Officer JP. I peeled off from Plimpton, who was in the lead, and JP followed me.

          JP and I pulled into a gas station that was closed for the night. As we pulled alongside each other to discuss the pursuit, the lights went out at the gas station. Then we heard a giant explosion. I said, "Oh shit, I bet he 1046'ed."

1046 meant: “An accident with an injury.”

          I pulled out, headed towards the last known location of the pursuit, and came upon Officer Plimpton's patrol car sitting sideways in the middle of the road with the door open. JP and I stopped our vehicles and got out. I started walking down the street and found Plimpton. He was kneeling on the road, his gun was in his right hand, and he was freaking out, “I killed him. I’m so fucked! I fucking killed that guy."

          I said, "First off, where's the guy." Plimpton pointed at the white hatchback wedged upside down in a ditch between a broken power pole and the mudbank. The hatchback had gone airborne, snapped the pole, and came to rest upside down with its roof crushed. I told him, "Holster your weapon, Brother. Did you shoot him?" He said, "No, but I didn't stop chasing him. After I turned off my lights, he hit the gas, and I did too. He went airborne. When I got to his car, I saw him hanging upside down by his seatbelt. He's DRT – I’m fucked!”

DRT meant: "Dead Right There."

          JP told Plimpton he needed to call it in as I cautiously approached the hatchback. I'd seen my share of dead bodies in combat and on the street as a cop, but I never looked forward to it. Once I arrived at the smoking wreckage, I leaned down to the driver's side and saw a lot of blood but no body. I turned around and yelled to Plimpton, "Was he ejected?" He said, "No. He's hanging in there dead. I checked for vitals. He's gone."

I looked again at the empty seat and said, "He's gone alright. He's not in here…"

I hope you enjoyed this brief excerpt from “On Violence and Varietals!”