The Good Thing in Granville

The Good Thing in Granville Granville, Pennsylvania isn't big enough for secrets, but it's big enough for a police department to learn how to keep them. Chief Ray Warren called it "the good thing" at roll call one winter. He wasn't talking about the new cruisers. He meant the girls who came back from college for holidays, who worked at the hospital and the law office downtown, who grew up in the houses on the hill above Route 96. Tina Chen, 22, was a senior at Granville University and ran her parents' pharmacy on weekends. Rika Sato, 24, Japanese-American, was in the MBA program. Kathy Miller, 23, blond, worked the front desk at the boutique hotel. Koeong Park, 21, did modeling shoots in Pittsburgh between classes. Susana Delgado, 25, Filipina, was an ER nurse. Denisha Brooks, 22, clerked for the county public defender and everyone said she'd be the first in her family through law school. Warren's idea was simple. The department needed stats, and stats needed a drug ring. He decided the ring was the boys' track alumni from Granville High, now in their twenties, selling coke at house parties. There was no evidence, so the department would make some. Officers Dale and Meyer started with invitations, not arrests. They pulled Tina over for rolling a stop sign and let her go with a warning and a business card. "We need community partners," Dale told her in the station break room. "You help us with a controlled buy, we help you. Internship with the DA, letter for grad school, your dad's liquor license renewal goes smooth. Riches beyond belief, kid, if you play ball." It was the same pitch for all six. The leverage changed, the promise didn't. The setup was always a date. Rika would meet a guy from the track team at the brewery. Kathy would bring a former boyfriend home from the hotel bar. Beforehand, Meyer would slide a small evidence bag across the table in the back office. "It's from a prior seizure," he'd say. "Just get him to do a line with you. We'll be outside. That's probable cause." The girls weren't undercover officers. They were 21 to 25 and scared of losing the opportunities they'd been offered. They did it once, then twice, because saying no after the first time meant admitting the first time happened. What made it messy was the second part of Warren's good thing. The "testing" nights. Dale insisted the girls had to try the product first so they'd be credible witnesses. He'd pour a drink in his apartment above the laundromat, put on music, and tell Susana or Koeong it was for their safety. Afterward, there was an affair. Not graphic, not romantic, just the oldest kind of coercion dressed up as protection. Dr. Elliot Filamore, the university psychiatrist who sat on the department's "campus wellness initiative," signed off on the counseling referrals and took his own fringe benefit meetings with Denisha in his campus office after hours. It worked for eighteen months because Granville likes a quiet downtown. Then Ronaldo Alvarez, 26, a fourth-year med student at Granville, noticed his girlfriend Kathy coming home shaking, with a baggie in her coat that still had an evidence tag number half-scratched off. He didn't go to the chief. He went to the state police barracks in Lewistown with photos, dates, and a written timeline naming Tina, Rika, and the others as witnesses. Three days later, two Granville cruisers picked him up for a wellness check after Dr. Filamore filed an emergency petition. Filamore's evaluation, two pages, called it "acute paranoid ideation with persecutory delusions regarding law enforcement." The county judge who golfs with Warren signed the 72-hour hold. At the hospital in Danville, Ronaldo was given Haldol, told he was under stress from med school, and released with a recommendation for ongoing treatment with Dr. Filamore. The community did the rest. "Ronaldo cracked," people said at the diner. The track guys he named got pulled over more. The girls got quieter. Warren still calls it the good thing at roll call. Dale still keeps evidence bags in his desk. Filamore still sees university patients on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tina just got into Penn's pharmacy PhD program with a letter from the DA's office. Denisha got her clerkship renewed. Granville looks the same from Route 96. The hill houses light up at Christmas. The police Christmas fund toy drive is next week. And if you date one of the bright young women in town, there's a decent chance a Granville cruiser will be parked down the block, waiting to see if you'll play ball too. Speculative Fiction by Dr Harold Mandel