Taggart
As the sun peeked over the tip of the mountain, casting an orange glow off all the snow, Taggart excused himself and made his way to the cruiser while the two detectives from Towanda walked through the crime scene with the sheriff. He closed the door behind him, placed his hat on the passenger seat, and ran his hands through short blond hair—tight on the sides and top as stipulated by the Pennsylvania State Police handbook.
He watched as the paramedics laid Johnny Knolls in a black body bag and zipped up the plastic. He glimpsed the dead man’s hand. His left hand. A wedding band gleamed in the morning sunlight.
Taggart peered down at his own wedding ring and thought about his wife and two girls. They were growing up fast. Emily was eleven. Jackie had just turned thirteen. Both girls were beautiful like their mother, but the lights of his life had become increasingly more and more of a drunken blur. He’d been stuck in second shift for years now and never got to see the girls. He left the house for work when they were still at school, and by the time he woke up in the morning, they were back in class.
How in the hell did I get to this?
A beer or two at home after work soon became four or five beers with the boys at Moriarty’s Pub. But after his drinking crew started to settle down with wives and kids, Taggart soon found himself drinking alone on a barstool with enough Jack and Cokes to make him so numb he couldn’t feel his feet. After getting drunk and belligerent one too many times, he found himself banned from Moriarty’s, then Fergie’s, then a few more neighborhood bars, until he ended up drinking alone in his car with a bottle nestled between his legs, listening to a Phillies or Eagles game. Another place he liked drinking was at the movie theater, hunched down in the dark, sipping his vodka uninterrupted for a two-hour stretch. He didn’t care what movie was being projected onto the screen—all the action and dialogue served as a diversion.
He could barely remember how and why exactly the hard drinking had started. Chalk it up to his genes—his father and mother, both raging alcoholics. Growing up, he swore it would never happen to him, the everyday drinking. But it did, just like it did with his two older brothers, two hard-drinking Philly cops. For him and his brothers, all three apples didn’t fall far from the tree—they landed right down by the trunk, as a matter of fact.
Drinking wasn’t fun anymore. It was just drinking. Most mornings he couldn’t remember coming home the night before. Birthdays, holidays, and special occasions were even worse. Most were vague memories, because the better parts of them were spent sneaking off to the bedroom or the den to dig into his secret stashes—water bottles filled with vodka. When he looked at pictures that were snapped on Christmas mornings or during Thanksgiving dinners, Taggart wouldn’t remember a thing about that day. He hated looking at his glassy-eyed expression in photographs. He would have a half smile on his fat, bloated face, sneering at the camera like some kind of playground pervert. Those pictures made him sick to his stomach, so he tried his best to avoid family photo ops if he could help it.
The wife didn’t know the extent of his drinking. She wasn’t dumb but had never been able to see all the signs. Or if she did, she suppressed the awareness deep down inside her. Taggart was a stoic, stone-faced drunk. He was a hands-off dad. Always had been. That’s the way he’d been raised. He felt like an outsider most of the time around the three girls. They did everything together. Always laughing and carrying on. Doing art projects or cooking together. They were a close-knit little group, and he hated that about them. He would just sit in his chair watching baseball and drinking beer. The wife would keep an eye on the number of beers he would consume, so his little trick was to fill the can half full of vodka from one of the bottles he kept hidden around the house—he could have two cans of a beer/vodka cocktail and get good and blasted. Taggart didn’t go to the park with the girls or shop at the mall with them or do whatever else they were doing. When he wasn’t working, he stayed to himself and stewed. The joke around the house was that he was moodier than a girl. Ha fucking ha.
The shit hit the fan five years ago when he got drunk on the job and popped a supervisor in the mouth. Miserable prick deserved it, but it had cost Taggart his badge in Philly. Taggart got lucky—they didn’t press any charges and dismissed him from the department instead. He came clean to his wife about the drinking and vowed to change his ways. He gave her all the empty promises she wanted to hear and even threw in the token tears of regret and sincerity. Taggart entered into a treatment program and stayed sober for six months. He went to his AA meetings, held the hands of other addicts, and recited the same garbage along with them, week after week. Then he moved the family to Towanda to get a fresh start and joined the state troopers’ office on a probationary status. Taggart had felt clarity for the first time in twenty years, but that didn’t last long. The stress of a job he hated and a marriage that wasn’t working—or at least one he wasn’t working on—made it too easy to turn back to the bottle and crawl inside.
Taggart dug into his pocket and felt the chip he carried everywhere with him. He took it out and rolled the bronze-colored coin between his fingers. He read the inscription on the front: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE. UNITY. SERVICE. RECOVERY. Taggart looked at the six-month chip probably a dozen times a day. It was a reminder, all right.
Living a goddamn lie.
He flipped the chip over and examined the engraving on the other side: EXPECT MIRACLES.
Still waiting for mine. Christ. A headful of AA and a bellyful of booze.
Taggart had managed to hide his drinking from his fellow officers and supervisors pretty well over the years. If they suspected anything, they didn’t let on about it. He kept to his own business and did his job. But tonight he’d crossed the line. He shot a man dead while under the influence. He was pretty sure that his life, which was pretty much crap anyway, wasn’t going to survive this particular fuckup. He had put his career, his family, and his home at stake. The fact was that this mess was probably going to take him down. Part of him always expected that something like this would happen—surprised it didn’t happen sooner. When you cross the line so many times, eventually you’re going to find yourself looking back at some great regret. And lo and behold, here it was.
All these thoughts racing through his head had his heart thudding in his chest, making it difficult to breathe, and sweat rolled down his back by the buckets. He felt the panic setting in.
Hold yourself together, Bill. Maybe you can walk away from this. Just stay the course.
Taggart reached under his seat and found one of his old friends. Hutch this time. The flask felt half full. That was good. His coffee was gone, though. Nothing to mix it with.
The hell with it. Just need to stabilize.
He poured a straight shot into a Styrofoam cup and drank it down before he could talk himself out of it. The familiar slow burn in his stomach felt good. The sweet numbing in his head would soon follow.
Taggart was pouring a second round when the passenger door opened and the cold wrapped around him. The sheriff stood there staring down at him. A gust of wind brought a sprinkling of snowflakes into the cruiser that settled on the dashboard and seats.
Taggart capped the flask and held the cup to his lips.
“You don’t want to do that, son,” Lester said softly.
Taggart stared out his windshield. “You’re wrong about that.”
Lester removed Taggart’s hat from the passenger seat and sat down. He closed the door, cleared his throat, and joined Taggart’s gaze out the windshield. They sat in silence for a few moments. The steady strobe of the ambulance lights rolled across their faces every other second.
The drink stayed in Taggart’s hand.
“The bottle is a tough son of a bitch. Known many a man that found themselves in the bottom of one. It can grab you by the throat, squeeze like hell, and not let go. Quitting is hard, but it can be done, son,” Lester offered—no judgment in his voice.
Taggart lowered the cup to his lap. “Maybe. Tried that once and failed, though.”
“Not many get it right the first time. Can always try it again.”
“I wish it was that easy.”
“Not a single part of me believes that it’s easy, son. I feel blessed that I don’t have that kind of thing hanging over my head.”
Taggart nodded and sighed out loud. “I’ve been a public servant for almost twenty-five years. Right out of high school,” he said. “Growing up, I never wanted to get into law. I wanted to go to college. Do something with my brain. Always fancied myself being an architect. Loved buildings and design.” He glanced over at the sheriff to see if the man was smirking at his story—he wasn’t.
“But I come from a family of cops. Father, older brothers, uncles, cousins. Everybody. A bunch of blue bloods. The old man didn’t want to spring for college, and I didn’t have it in me to follow my heart, so I did what everybody expected of me. Guess I always take the easy way out.”
“Being a cop ain’t easy. I can vouch for that.”
Taggart watched as one of the ambulances pulled away from the trailer and headed for the city.
“Started as a beat cop in Philly. Let me tell you, that’s one tough town. The scum you arrest assume you’re a racist pig or a fascist, and the people you vowed to protect don’t give a shit about you until something happens to them. Then they just blame you for not being there to stop it.” He stared down into his drink. “And the pay’s not worth squat. You know that.”
Lester nodded.
“And I got stuck. Didn’t have what it took to make detective. My super hated me because he hated my old man. Guess I turned out to be a chip off the old block. Had an incident in Philly, so I joined the state troopers’ office. Thought that would be a better way to go.”
He really wanted to drink his vodka.
“Same mess, different uniform?” Lester asked, half smiling.
Taggart looked at him for a second, then back to his drink.
“My wife wanted more out of life than to be married to a cop. Sometimes I think she prays that I get taken down in the line of duty. She gets a payout and off the hook with one bullet.”
Lester nodded. “The badge is a bit sexier before the vows.”
“Got that right. Everything seemed to go sideways on me after I got married.”
“I’d say that marriage is a tougher job than law enforcement. The good with the bad. Wouldn’t trade a day of it, though.”
“I want out.” Taggart’s words just hung there. He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “I did the right thing back there.” It was more of a question than a statement. He opened his eyes and glanced over at the sheriff.
Lester reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the pack of Salems. He offered one to Taggart, and they both lit up.
“Son, you saw a situation and reacted. A man you didn’t know had a rifle aimed point-blank at me. I knew Johnny Knolls. If you hadn’t shown up, I’d be one more body getting zipped up in a black bag out there.” Lester took off his hat and rubbed his head. “Let me ask you: If you had to do it over again, would you pull that trigger?”
Taggart thought about this for a moment. He tried digging deep inside himself. He wasn’t ever very comfortable sharing with the AA crowd, but the sheriff had him dead to rights.
“If you can’t trust your gut, you got nothing,” Lester said, and handed Taggart back his hat. “So?”
Taggart took the hat and put it on. “I’d do it again.”
Lester nodded. “Then I owe you my life.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
“Got one last question for you, then. What do you plan on doing with that drink in your hand?” Lester motioned to the cup gripped in Taggart’s fist.
Taggart glanced down at the cup. “‘One day at a time’ is what they say.”
“Sounds about right. Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Lester offered.
Taggart smiled at the comment. He cracked open the door and tossed out his drink.
“I ain’t done needing your help, Officer Taggart. I got a deputy with a hair trigger, and the two Knolls brothers are more than likely gonna want to take matters into their own hands. We need to find the Bedford boy before there’s more blood spilled.”
Taggart shook his head. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Officer Taggart, if you didn’t make a mistake out there earlier, don’t make one now.”
Lester stepped out of the patrol car, still sucking on his cigarette. Through the frosted windshield, Taggart watched him talk to the detectives, then looked down at his lifeline. He shoved the flask back under the seat and stepped out of his car.
