Black and White in a Gray World: A Day in the Life of a Detective

Story by Jon Christensen

It was the second day of fall and the sunrise cast a stark contrast on Carson City. Detective Cate Summers crested Lakeview Hill and looked down on the valley below. The city was laid out under a bright clear sky like a vision in a crystal ball.

If only Carson City were that easy and all of her cases could be wrapped up neatly like the novels she listened to on tape as she drove to work.

Summers had hated to leave Carson City. But she couldn't be a cop and really feel at home here too. So she lived in Reno and commuted.

Carson City was too small and at the same time it was getting too big, too fast. It wasn't like Kansas City, where she first worked as a cop and people shot at the lights on her patrol car in some neighborhoods.

She had loved Carson City from the moment she first saw it, when she came to visit her aunt and uncle, who live in town. She had jumped at the chance to join the police department. And for nine years, while she taught in the DARE program, she lived downtown.

Then she became a patrol officer. The closest she had ever come to dying was on the streets of Carson City. She was chasing a fugitive, when he suddenly turned and grabbed the pistol from her holster as she ran smack into him. She had looked down the barrel of her own gun before wrestling it away from him.

But that wasn't the worst of it.

The worst was having people walk by her house, people she had arrested or suspected of crimes. "Deputy Summers! You live here?" they would say with a feigned innocent surprise. "I didn't know that."

Word inevitably got around. Some of the other deputies had even had their houses tagged with graffiti. They put up with it. But Summers didn't need it.

At 39, her home life had to be strictly off limits. She liked to leave work completely behind. And she didn't want to have to look over her shoulder all the time. She had her own life in Reno now.

But coming into Carson City, Summers was excited about work. They had a new lead in the Pinon Plaza homicide case, where one young man was killed and two were wounded in a shootout with two other gang members in August. People connected to the case were starting to move around. A member of the dead man's family was rumored to be in Arizona trying to buy a gun.

Summers had called law enforcement in Arizona and the FBI. "They're moving," she said. "They're spreading out, looking for the perps. And if they're looking for them, they might be surfacing somewhere."

And the ballistics report had come back from the lab on the 7-Eleven shooting. Some of the bullets were fired from a Ruger. Technically it was just circumstantial. But it was something.

You always needed something to go on. And it was nice to start the day with something new. Still, she hoped nothing major would happen today. Sure, it would be great to get a big break in the Pinon Plaza case, like a secret witness calling in with the location of the shooters. But otherwise, she hoped to get caught up with her other cases.

More than a dozen case files were waiting for immediate attention when she got to her desk. Summers and the four other detectives in the Carson City Sheriff's office each carry a caseload of around 35 active investigations.

Detective Steve Johnson's desk sat next to hers in the crowded office. The night before he had been called in when a homemade bottle bomb went off in Mills Park, near where Summers used to live. Johnson also got the case of the missing heads stolen from a local graveyard. Johnson seemed to get cases from "The X-files."

Summers' cases seemed more like "NYPD Blue." Johnson and the other guys even called her Summer with, after a character on the TV show. She could take a lot and stay calm. But when she finally broke, she could get real mad. Especially when it came to sexual assaults and crimes against kids.

But things were never as black and white as she would like. Now she was busting kids she had taught in the DARE program. "You didn't listen, did you?" she told them.

A bookcase near her desk contained the Nevada Revised Statutes, manuals on child mistreatment cases, the Physicians Desk Reference for looking up drugs, and Carson High School yearbooks dating back to 1990. The detectives could use a page with a suspect's photo on it as a legitimate lineup for witnesses to pick out a perpetrator.

Carson High was Summers' first stop this morning. Dressed smartly in a blue blazer, white short-sleeve turtleneck, khaki pants, and flat-heeled shoes, she strode purposefully through the administration offices to the new sheriff's department outpost in the back. Here surveillance cameras allowed deputies to keep an eye on the corridors and trouble spots like Smokers' Corner and Mills Park across the street from the school. The outpost was set up in the aftermath of fights and bomb threats at the school last spring. The high school seemed calmer now, at least on the surface.

Summers asked the office to fetch a student from class. The girl had reported being raped at a drunken party. Summers talked to her in the principal's conference room.

Summers was forceful, and direct. Her badge and the gun in her shoulder sling holster showed when she leaned back in her chair and her blazer fell open. But her bright brown eyes showed concern and compassion.

"He's not denying having sex with you," she told the girl. "He'll stand up in court and say you didn't fight this, you kissed back."

The girl sobbed. She had been drinking. She didn't know what she was doing. But she knew she didn't want it.

Summers told the girl she would do more interviews with witnesses to verify her story. But the district attorney would ultimately have to decide whether she had a case. And the girl's father would have to be told. Summers offered to call him.

"When bad things start to happen there are no secrets," Summers told the girl. "People have to start talking. You have to be ready for this. That's why you need the support of your dad."

Summers left the school and drove across town to deliver a case file to the family of a victim of a statutory sexual assault. The family was planning to file a civil lawsuit and they were entitled to her file on the case. Summers could also be called to

testify. Often the police couldn't do enough for victims of crime, she thought. So she was happy to help if she could. On the way back to the office, she stopped by a doublewide mobile home to check on the family of one of the victims in the Pinon Plaza shooting. "We want to keep tabs on them," she said.

"We got some information that they are starting to spread out and take the law into their own hands."

Summers knocked and knocked but there was no answer. "This is the thing I fear," she said. "We're losing all these family members."

Back at the office Summers left a message for the high school student's father. Then she called the district attorney about her case. It was Summers' job to make the best case she could. But she had to admit it didn't sound like a very good case when she laid it out to the district attorney.

"Everything is so black and white for cops," she said. "Rarely do we deal with grays. For us it's either they did it or they didn't. The DA has to see grays.

"These sexual assault cases can be frustrating," she said. "No one sees eye to eye. And eight times out of 10 we don't see results. There's not enough for the DA to prosecute. You just pray to God it never happens to somebody in your family."

Summers has pictures of her niece and nephew on her shelves and bulletin board. But otherwise, the office is decorated with cop art: bad guys' faces superimposed on targets, mug shots, and LAPD babes with spike heels and guns.

The coffeepot rumbled loudly. But Summers ignored it. She looked through her files, a cross section of crime in a small city: forged checks, petty larceny, credit card fraud, vehicle burglary, sexual assault, murder and attempted murder.

Then she remembered. She had a vampire job this afternoon. She had to get blood from a prisoner in jail for a DNA paternity test. It was the sergeant's case. But the detectives tried to help their boss with legwork like this. On the way out she grabbed a red licorice stick for lunch.

Next . . . A visit with a meth abuser and a case of check fraud.