IS THIS ABOUT MY TIME IN PRISON? by Marc Cameron

Oddly enough, the Spanish words for wife and handcuffs are the same—esposas.

I grew up in Texas and worked law enforcement there for a decade, considering myself pretty fluent in ‘cop Spanish’. When our youngest was seven, a Sunday school teacher once asked the class if anyone knew some Spanish words. My son raised his hand and said “Suelta la navaja o disparo—drop the knife or I’ll shoot.” Not sure if I made many points as a parent that day. 

Anyway, I didn’t learn the esposas thing until I was on special assignment to the border area around McAllen, Texas. We were broken into teams of two or three, and then given a tall stack of warrants along with the admonition to go put as many of these fugitives in jail as we could over a ten week period. It was Deputy Marshal Heaven.  During this trip, I was assigned to help with the extradition of a prisoner from the US back to Mexico. He’d already been convicted in his home country of murdering a prostitute by tying her to a bed and tracing the outline of her body with machinegun fire, shooting off bits of her as he went (a scene I re-imagined in a later book.) He was also wanted for the murder of a Mexican Federale.  My team was to walk the prisoner across the Rio Grande on the pedestrian portion of the bridge near Roma, Texas. We’d meet Mexican authorities halfway over the river for the handoff while each of us stayed on our own side of the border. The Mexican consul asked if they could borrow the “esposas por las piernas.” Turns out he meant leg irons, not wives for the legs, as I first thought.  He promised he’d return them the next day after they got their guy to prison. He returned them, but the locking mechanism was filled with dried blood, making us wonder if the prisoner even made it around the corner once he was across the border…

Border Crossing at Roma

Deputy marshals arrest more fugitives each year than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. We’re pretty good at slapping on the esposas.  For long trips our policy mandates what some affectionately call a three-piece-suit—handcuffs, waist chain, and leg irons. There’s a display in front of the marshals office in Alaska with an old ball and chain (which, I should point out, are not called esposas), several types of handcuffs, some leather ‘mitts’ that strapped the prisoners’ hands to a belt, a leg brace to keep the prisoner from bending their leg and thus running away, and a few other restraints that lawmen used to use to transport prisoners to jail. Now, we have the three piece suit, a ‘black box’ that covers the key holes for higher level escape risks, plastic Flex Cuffs, electronic stun-belts, and hoods for spitters—though a pair of pantyhose works just as well with the added benefit of the little nylon leg ‘ears’ drawing the ridicule of other prisoners on the one who has chosen to spit on us.

When we first meet Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, he’s unloading his prison wagon in Ft Smith. I think one of the reasons deputy marshals like this show so much is that we see Cogburn, not only going after outlaws, but demonstrating two of our other duties in the Marshals—serving papers—“you can’t serve papers on a rat, baby sister” and transporting prisoners.

There is something supremely sad about a person who has lost their freedom. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no bleeding heart. I was glad to put outlaws in jail. But even after nearly thirty years, I still got a little chill when the jail door slid shut behind me and didn’t quite draw a full breath until I was back outside.

            I already touched on having to spend a few weeks working at the jail when I was a rookie police officer. I hated it, but it taught me a great deal about human behavior.  There is something about that odor of confinement—Lysol, urine and despair. To me, old bread smells like the inside of jail. I’ve picked up so many inmate lunches from jail kitchens that the smell of a bologna sandwich still makes me think of long van trips with a load of chained prisoners. 

old US Marshals cells in Ketchikan, AK

            Not all jail food is bad. Ardmore, Oklahoma served some of the best beans and cornbread I have ever eaten.  In the early nineties, I spent nearly two weeks in the Lamar County jail in Purvis, Mississippi, guarding three ‘lifers’ who were witnesses in a Dixie Mafia trial in Hattiesburg. Back then the jail had no sworn officer on duty at night, with responsibility turned over to a “Key Man”.  I gained several pounds during that assignment because the lady down the street, who did all the cooking, made us platters of good old Southern fried food every night. We played cards with the trustees, had pushup contests, and listened to stories—that I have since borrowed in some of my books. I remember one of the prisoners we were guarding told how he’d gotten into a bloody fight in Angola State Prison over a certain library book that a couple of other inmates wanted. Ah, the power of books.

In Adventure novels, it’s rare that the protagonist simply goes out to assassinate the fugitive—though I’ll admit this happens a little more frequently in my Thrillers that it did in my Westerns. Usually, the bad guy pushes the good guy’s hand, forcing some higher level of violence. Often, it’s an increased anxiety about going to prison that forces a showdown.

There is a paradigm that every deputy marshal is shown early in their training. Think of the mindset of the two parties during an arrest. The deputy (or officer, or sheriff, etc.) is at the highest level of anxiety leading up to the actual contact. The arrestee’s anxiety level might be extremely high at the time of arrest, but it goes up even further the closer he or she gets to the prison gates while the deputies' level of apprehension goes down. This is a dangerous time, and I’d bet it was doubly dangerous back in the day when lawmen were transporting on horseback and in prisoner wagon.

Years ago, my partner and I arrested a man on a federal parole violation of some white-collar crimes. He was a successful real estate salesman who’d done something to violate—I think maybe a DUI— triggering us to show up at his door at zero dark thirty and cart him off to prison. Federal parole has been abolished, but there were still a few like this guy who were on parole at the time of the new law and were grandfathered in. A parole violator went straight back to prison without a court hearing. Do not pass go. Do not collet two hundred bucks. This guy was kind of heavy set and a plodding Baby Huey type. He answered the door in his robe and seemed resigned to the fact that we were going to come for him sooner or later.  He is, in fact one of two people I ever arrested who I allowed to give their family a goodbye hug. Such a thing is generally just asking for trouble—but that’s a subject of another essay.  

            The prisoner was talkative and seemed to be a genuinely nice guy so we bought him breakfast at McDonalds and had ourselves a good chat on the two-hour drive to the Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville. About fifteen minutes from the gate, I glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed our ‘nice’ prisoner was beginning to look like a deviled toad. His eyes had gone dark and his countenance was seething and angry.  I asked him if he was okay. He answered me in short gasps, as if he was holding his breath. “I’ve gotten soft since I’ve been out,” he said. “Have to put back on my prison face if I want to survive.”

            In basic training to be deputy marshals, we handcuff each other and spend time behind bars role-playing as prisoners. Not sure if they still do it, but when I went through, we also strip-searched each other—not so much, I think, to teach us about searching—but to demonstrate how intrusive such an act is and how the prisoner being searched feels at that moment. A little empathy is never a bad thing in a lawdog—and as a writer, its imperative.  

Lack of freedom—whether its being handcuffed, searched, or imprisoned— changes people. If you’re writing about an outlaw on the run or someone whose wrongly imprisoned, confinement has consequences and those consequences inform the character.

Prisoners and their behavior is fascinating stuff. I'm sure I’ll write a little more on this in the future, but for now, I need to take mi esposa to dinner.

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published ten novels, six of them Westerns (several as a ghost writer and two under his pen name, Mark Henry).   

TIME OF ATTACK fourth in his USA Today Bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series, is the newest release from Kensington February of 2014. 

Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com 

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor

THE TIES THAT BIND: Buddy Movies, Buddy Books and Just Plain Buddies--- By Marc Cameron

Allowing for obvious dissimilarities, if my bride and I were to play in a remake of Lethal Weapon, she’d be the Danny Glover character and I’d be Mel Gibson.  She’s the rational, sane one and I’m…well…not.

The sort of devotion that made Woodrow Call carry Augustus McCrae’s body all the way back to Texas, doesn’t spring up out of nowhere—and the hardship and adventure that builds that kind of relationship makes for a great story.

A quick review of  my novels will tell you I love to write about the bond of strong friendship—and I’m blessed to have incredible friends on whom to base the stories.  Over the years, I have been fortunate to work with some of the finest men and women on the planet, often under austere and dangerous conditions.

At US Marshals HQ, just before I retired

The U.S. Marshals training academy is a tough endeavor. There’s a certain amount of constitutional law, intensive interview training, and other practical exercises designed to emulate the real world of federal law enforcement.  But the physical stuff is what weeds people out. There’s a heck of a lot of running, fighting, shooting, weight lifting… more fighting, and grass-drills that are affectionately known as “Marshals’ Beach”—where the instructors sit in deck chairs with zinc oxide on their noses while Basic Deputies do hours of calisthenics. When my class went through a couple of decades ago, we had a defensive tactics instructor named Bob Natzke. The man was a martial arts legend and seemed to enjoy pitting us against one another in full-contact fights. Incredibly fit, he expected all of us to be as well, leading us through hours of exercise he liked to call “push and puke.” One morning, while the class endured seven slooooooow pushups, stretched over an hour and a half (that’s right, I said “7”), Mr. Natske scuttled back and forth between us, himself in pushup position, screaming in our faces as we trembled in various stages of up and down, about how we were all bound to be stabbed to death on the street if we didn’t get our crap together. I once saw a deputy drop her tray of food in the cafeteria when someone jokingly said, “Here comes Mr. Natske.” He retired soon after I graduated. But the cadre of deputy marshals in our class shares a common bond because of the blood and sweat that guy got out of us. He made us better and safer deputies. We love him for it and wouldn’t trade the nightmare for anything.

My friend, Gladys on right, stuffing the guy in a patrol car

People who’ve served in the military know even better than I, but there is a bond between those who work together under hardship and danger. I’ve written a couple of essays about scrapping. The men and women who were involved with me in making those arrests and fighting the worst of those bad guys will always be my brothers and sisters.  I still keep in touch with one of my captains from the police department where I started thirty years ago. She was my sergeant when I was a rookie, and took me under her wing. We fought some mean folks over the years, side by side, and I grew to trust her with my life. We once arrested a guy who was so disturbed he’d followed the Biblical admonition to pluck his own eye out because it offended him. He’d broken a ketchup bottle in a café and was threatening the patrons with the jagged glass when we rolled up. There happened to be a photographer nearby while we were wrestling the guy down. I don’t remember it being all that fun, but in the picture, we looked like we were having a grand old time. I have the photo from the newspaper in my scrapbook.

            Fights, wrecks, midnight surveillances, protracted fugitive hunts for evil men, horrible bosses  all add to the bond. Old buds never meet after a long absence and grab each other in the backslapping, brotherhood handshake to say: “Man, remember when we had to walk through that field of posies?” No, we want to reminisce about the time we walked barefoot over broken glass—as a team, with a common objective.

Me and Ty, in younger days...

            My friend Ty Cunningham, a ninth degree black belt in jujitsu, helps me work through most every fight in my books. We’ve been friends for twenty years and every time I see him, I can’t help but remember the rough adventures we’ve had together. We’ve camped in fifty-below weather, tracked bad outlaws and even had a run in with a mama grizzly. There has never been a time that he didn’t have my back. I once found myself in a bit of a jam with a couple of outlaw biker types at a nearby lake. We were locked in a little staring match and I seriously thought things might go to guns. Ty had been at the other end of the park, playing catch with his sons but apparently saw what was happening. I was not in a position to turn around, but could tell by the look in the bikers’ eyes that Ty had covered the distance in a flash and now stood behind me, ready to follow me into whatever scrap I’d gotten myself into. There were no questions, only instant resolve—and friendship.

            So, when I write about partners like Trap O’Shannon and Clay Madsen in my Westerns or Jericho Quinn and Jacques Thibodaux in my Thrillers, I know from where I speak. There is a synergy that comes from two strong people working together, completely devoted to each other. There are a couple of people I know I could call, even if I was wrong, who would come a runnin’, with no questions asked. And those people know I would do the same for them. That’s the sort of friendship I like to give the buddies in my books.

My bride and I share that same relationship.  We’ve been through all sorts of hellacious adventures over the last thirty years. Poverty, on the job injuries, long months of separation, the death of a child, cancer, the struggles associated with raising three kids—all just add to the glue. 

Like Danny Glover’s character felt about Mel Gibson, my wife wasn’t too fond of me when we first met. It took us a while to get there, but she came around to my quirky ways. I hope she knows by now that if some bad guy ever puts a bomb under her toilet, I’d stay right there with her like Mel did for Danny.  And, if I ever get blood poisoning and have to get my leg cut off and then ask her to take my body back to Texas to be buried, I have no doubt that she'll just saddle her mule and head south.  You see, we’re just that kind of friends.

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He's published ten novels, six of them Westerns (several as a ghost writer and two under his pen name, Mark Henry).   

TIME OF ATTACK fourth in his USA Today Bestselling Jericho Quinn Thriller series, is the newest release from Kensington February of 2014. 

Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com 

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor

THE POINTY END OF POINT-OF-VIEW ---by Marc Cameron

My child bride taught me early in our married life that she and I had two distinctly different ways of looking at things. Much of that had to do with the fact that I was raised in Texas and she grew up in Alberta. I’m the eldest, born when my twenty-year-old parents had been married about nine months and fifteen minutes. She’s a surprise baby that came along when her father was fifty.

She was, and is, a mystery to me.  That’s what makes things interesting.

As a fledgling patrol officer, I saw early on that people’s backstory has a lot to do with how they react in any given situation—a truth I try to carry over in my writing.  

As I’ve said before, coppers love to tell war stories. If you’d indulge me, I think this one illustrates my point…

One slow summer Sunday on midnight shift—when I was about twenty-three—I fell in behind a beater pickup truck that was going over the posted limit. It was around three in the morning—the hour when only cops, newspaper delivery folks and bad guys are out and about—so there weren’t many other vehicles on the street.

Well, this son of a gun refused to pull over—even with my cosmically powerful blue and reds flashing in his rearview mirror.  Even a yelp from my siren didn’t faze him.  He didn’t really run, he just kept the old truck steady at around forty-five in the thirty-zone.

This could not be tolerated. 

Thinking he was likely DWI, I informed dispatch of the situation. There was a long pause before the sweet dispatcher, who was having some marriage problems at the time and a little addled, came back and sheepishly asked:

“320, does that happen to be a red Ford..?”

Turned out, the guy had called in several minutes before with a medical emergency and thought I was his escort to the hospital.

He bailed out of the truck when we got to the ER, waving me up to help him. Could I please help him carry his girlfriend inside? She’d overdosed on something, he just didn’t know what.

When he opened the passenger door, the top half of a brunette slinkyed out in a naked backbend along with a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps. Lilywhite arms sprawled over her head like she was doing the ‘wave’ upside down. 

You just never know what’s going to fall out of a strange truck at three in the morning, so I said a little prayer of relief when I discovered the top half was still connected to the bottom half.

I grabbed her under her arms and gave her roughneck boyfriend the legs and nether regions—which weren’t even covered by so much as a footy sock.

Trying not to gawk, I was watching where I stepped when she woke up. She looked up at this strange copper cradling her in his arms and went the closest thing to berserk I have ever witnessed. I hung on for dear life, trying not to touch any exposed bits that would give her cause to file a complaint—while she spat and clawed and spun and did everything but vomit pea soup in my face. After about five seconds of gyration, she passed out. She woke up again when we put her on the gurney inside, and thrashed so hard, the ER doc thought she might break her own arms if he used the restraints. So, four of us held her down, for her own good, one on each arm, one on each leg, while they tried to figure out what was wrong with her.

Each time she woke up, she screamed and kicked and fought, knocking a nurse to the ground. I adjusted my grip on her shoulder so I didn’t hurt her, and she took the opportunity to twist her neck around and try to sink her teeth into my arm.  We tried to cover her with a sheet but it just slid to the floor.  I was impressed by how hard everyone worked to keep her from injuring herself.

Inside the bright lights of the ER it was easier to see what she looked like.

She was maybe twenty-five, about five-four and weighed in at around a hundred and thirty. Young and farm-girl sturdy, she might have been attractive with a shower and a little less alcohol. The soles of her feet were black from going barefoot, her knees were skinned and her fingernails were dirty. I began to imagine she’d been working in the garden while she drank the Schnapps.

What she lacked in cleanliness, she made up for with brute, crazy-woman strength. Several times, I thought she might wrench away from me, and I was in my prime. She seemed imbued with that sort of fearsome strength that allows mothers to lift tractors off trapped children.

The most striking thing about her, apart from the briar-rose tattoo, was the web of scar tissue across her chest and one side of her ribs. It looked as though she’d gone through the windshield in a bad car accident. 

If you’d asked me when I was twenty-one what I’d think about fighting a naked girl, I’d have lied and said that the notion was abhorrent. But that’s because I’d never done it before.

Turns out it really was.

Her parents came in a few minutes later. Since I was the primary officer, I handed off my post at a shoulder and elbow and went out front to what I could learn.

When the girl’s mother saw me, her knees buckled.  There was a momentary flash of fire in her eyes, and for a minute I thought she might come unglued on me too. Finally, she calmed down enough to talk.

It seems that I bore a near perfect resemblance to the girl’s ex—who had tied her to a bed and carved away at her chest with a straight razor to get his jollies…

One of the other officers poked his head out of the exam room and said the girl had calmed down and went right to sleep after I left.

Guess I have that effect on people.

The episode drove home to me that everyone has a backstory—often unknown to us—and that backstory colors everything they do. I have no doubt that if that young woman would have had a weapon in that situation I would have had to shoot her or risk getting shot myself.

When I write, I try to keep in mind that POV isn’t just whose voice happens to be telling the story. It’s the stuff that can add mystery to a marriage or make a terrified woman want to kill the guy who’s trying to save her life. 

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He has published nine novels, six of them Westerns (several as a ghost writer and two under his pen name, Mark Henry).  His present Jericho Quinn series—NATIONAL SECURITY, ACT OF TERROR and STATE OF EMERGENCY (available now)— features an adventure motorcyclist, Air Force OSI agent and renaissance man who spends his days sorting out his life and kicking terrorist butt.   Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com  

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor 

WORKING GIRLS: The Cost of Doing Business in The Oldest Profession--by Marc Cameron

My bride’s eyes peer over a page from my manuscript—on fire, as they are wont to be when she wants to burn a hole in me.

“I’m left to wonder here,” she says, her head wagging, “how you know so much about prostitutes…” 

The truth is, over the years I have dealt with a fair number of hookers on a professional basis—my profession, not theirs. I thought I’d step away from tracking for a bit and talk about working girls. For these purposes, I’ll steer clear of the word ‘whore’. It just sounds too mean. I make liberal use of it in my fiction though because, well, that is the real world.

At least one of these poor souls figures into nearly every book I write, Western or Thriller—misguided things with hearts of gold, redheaded saloon madams who take up with marshals, evil wenches, aging consumptives, downtrodden whelps, tattooed Yakuza girls (in my present manuscript)—and informants.

My very first bona fide snitch was a girl we arrested working the local truck stop.  I was relatively new on the PD, still with my field-training officer on midnight shift. Since I was a rookie, I fingerprinted every arrest while my FTO stood around and tried to pick up the cute dispatchers. I mean no disrespect to womanhood here, but there is a reason the poor things that work truck stops are called lot lizards. This was 1984 and no one thought to wear latex gloves but I’d wager I went through ten gallons of Phisohex.

Early on, during my save-the-world period

Fingerprinting a person is a somewhat intimate affair. You stand hip to hip and basically hold hands for a few minutes.  I tend to make small talk to ease the bad guy’s tension. When I was a twenty-two year old rookie and printing hookers, I talked to ease my own. That first one, I’ll call her Sammie, chatted about how she was maybe going to school one day, the Pontiac Firebird she wished she could afford, and how a guy from Abilene beat the snot out of her the night before. She could have been cute if she hadn't been so haggard and world-weary from drugs and whatever other demons weighed her down. It occurred to me while I held her skinned knuckles and rolled her bruised fingers in ink, that this was one of the few moments in her recent life that she felt safe. I went home after my shift ended early that morning, scrubbed my hands until they were raw, kissed the baby and held my sweet young bride for a long time….

A few months after I was cut loose from my training officer and by myself, I heard Sammie's voice on the CB radio, working the Petro truck lot near I-20. It took me a while but I finally spotted the rear end of her cutoff jeans hustling down the ladder of a sleeper cab on the back row. I had nothing to charge her with, but we talked awhile and she gave me information on a trucker who had a trash sack full of weed—as much to get me off her back as for any reward. She had an awful, tuberculin-sounding cough and kept spitting into a rag she held wadded in her fist. I remember wondering about the men who hired her that night, something I based a character on later.

Ours was a lucrative relationship. I gave her money and she gave me what I wanted: information on crime—and inspiration for my writing.

Working girls taught me a great deal about human nature. I wrote a scene just yesterday where my protagonist has to gain physical control of a hooker before her client, who he wants to interrogate, comes to the room. The thing about prostitutes is that the experienced ones aren’t easily intimidated.   They’ve been smacked more than once—and by men who know how to smack.  

Mounted Patrol with Max the wonder horse 

             In many ways, they remind me of mules. Apologies to horse lovers—I am fond of them myself, but years of horse shoeing and horse training have shown me that you can generally buffalo a horse. Goad it a bit with your thumb, cluck a little and say: “Move over” to coax it to step aside. Stick your thumb in a mule's ribs and it will, more often than not, look at you as if to say, “Nice thumb you got there, but I’m happy where I’m at. And by the way, I weigh 900 pounds so you, sir, must provide a reason if you want this ass to move.”

And so it is with prostitutes.

They know we won’t shoot them unless they have a weapon. They’re pretty sure we would be laughed off the planet if we pepper-sprayed or Tased a semi-compliant female.  Lay hands on one as you would a passive aggressive male arrestee and many will just dare you use more force than you should. I really hate fighting half-naked women—really, really hate it—but that’s an entire essay in and of itself. Thankfully, most don’t fight.  

They do, however make great informants. Men get chatty when they’re…with women. Considering the other things she gets paid for, accepting money in exchange for information is a pretty sweet deal.

Earlier this week I had a four-hour dinner and research meeting with a couple of detectives in the southern part of Japan. When I asked if they used informants, one piped right up and said: “Of course. I find prostitutes make the best.” My Japanese is rusty but I knew exactly what he meant. 

Not all the hookers I’ve dealt with have been drug addicts—but most are or become so later to dull the pain.  I’ve met a few of the high-end types around Dallas and NYC who appear to consider it a business and wouldn’t touch a drug.  One I know started out as an exotic dancer but told me she turned to being a call girl because she didn’t have to be around all the drugs. She was attractive, witty and looked like a college coed with the prettiest little diamond set in the center of her front tooth—but even she had this sort of detached look about her that I see in virtually every one I’ve been around. I don’t know, maybe once they figure out they're not going to get beaten up at each particular encounter, they practice thinking of other things while they work, like in that song Zip from Pal Joey.

What I do know is that working girls can make nuanced and layered characters in traditional Westerns and contemporary Thrillers if we just dig deep into what makes each individual one tick. Suppose you could say I have a soft spot for hookers. I'd never turn my back on one. Many would cut you and not think twice about it--but even those are interesting.

In HARD ROAD TO HEAVEN, one of my Mark Henry Westerns, the protagonists rescue a hooker in the mountains of Idaho who is being savagely beaten by her boss. She takes a few licks at her tormentor after the heroes are done with him, and then packs her grip before he wakes up. One of the protagonists, a softhearted Texan, gives her some money, thinking he might ‘save’ her. He’s saddened when she tells him she can’t quit yet and plans to go work another logging camp while she still has her looks. She says something like: “I’m already livin’ in and outta Hell. I’d just like to make enough money to buy a few nice things before I go there for good.”

I based her on my first informant.

Over a couple of years I paid Sammie a few hundred bucks in twenty-five dollar increments. That was, she said, her “usual rate”. It also happened to be the price of a tiny bag of Meth.
During that same period, I arrested her a half dozen times, took her to the hospital twice, did the paperwork to get Child Services to take her kid and investigated two rape cases where she was the victim—one where I found her tied up, naked in her old beater car. Each time, we talked about her getting out of the business and maybe going back to school or getting that Firebird she always wanted.

Sammie disappeared shortly after that last rape. As far as I know, no one ever heard from her again. I’d like to think she moved away, went to school and bought a Pontiac—but that’s a fantasy. Truck stop Johns can be a mighty rough crowd.

She was not really a bad girl, just a sad girl--and, though she never did know it, a muse.

Marc Cameron is a retired Chief Deputy US Marshal and 29-year law enforcement veteran. His short stories have appeared in BOYS’ LIFE Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post. He has published nine novels, six of them Westerns (several as a ghost writer and two under his pen name, Mark Henry).  His present Jericho Quinn series—NATIONAL SECURITY, ACT OF TERROR and STATE OF EMERGENCY (available in April 2013)— features an adventure motorcyclist, Air Force OSI agent and renaissance man who spends his days sorting out his life and kicking terrorist butt.   Marc lives in Alaska with his beautiful bride and BMW motorcycle.

Visit him at:

www.marccameronbooks.com

http://www.facebook.com/MarcCameronAuthor