Hero To Zero 2nd edition Read online

  LARRY MORAVEC GREW UP IN a rural part of the county. Every day he would board the bus and begin the long ride to the schools he attended. Every day the bus passed the house of a deputy sheriff whom Larry idolized. He would frequently daydream about what it would be like to be a deputy and patrol the entire county.

  As Larry grew older, he noticed the different cars that the deputy would use for work. First, a patrol car—a police package cruiser decked out with light bar, sirens, spotlights, and a fresh, clean paint job. He could see the shotgun rack holding a tactical shotgun, and extra antennas on the trunk and behind the light bar. The car looked awesome, and he imagined himself as the driver heading to a robbery in progress, headed out to make a difference. Later, the deputy had a K-9 truck, and, much later, the unmarked vehicle of an administrator. Larry knew one thing from the time he was a little boy: he wanted to know what it would be like to make a difference and be like that deputy.

  Larry graduated high school in the middle of his class. He was one of those guys who had a natural knack for blending in. Everyone liked him, for the most part, and yet when you asked them his name, no one could remember it. In high school, this made him feel disliked or perhaps just tolerated by his peers. No one could seem to remember Larry, and yet he had a gift for making people trust him immediately. That gift would turn out to be an amazing asset.

  Larry later said that his parents had raised him always to be direct and honest. They emphasized strongly to him, “When you have a problem, confront it head on—don’t hide from it and just hope it will go away.” Larry took that advice to heart, and it served him well for most of his life.

  One day Larry was talking to a guy he had just met at a family party. The man asked him what he planned to do with his life now that he had graduated high school. Larry expressed his lifelong desire to be a cop. He was still too young actually to become a cop, but he was an adult, and could do other things in the field. The guy listened more intently than perhaps Larry realized. Larry did not know it, but the stranger was actually an undercover narcotics officer.

  He sized Larry up and watched how well he communicated with other people at the party. He quickly noticed Larry had an amazing gift with people. They were instantly put at ease with his genuine manner and his habit of being direct and honest.

  A couple of days later, the undercover cop contacted Larry and asked him if he was serious about the comment he’d made about wanting to be a cop. Larry replied he was, but he was not yet twenty-one and he would have to wait a few more years before he could even apply for any cop job.

  The narcotics officer offered him the chance to act as a CI, or confidential informant. He would go undercover, acting as a police agent, and infiltrate local drug rings. Larry would be given an alias and wear a wire. He would make undercover buys as the agent directed him.

  It was an opportunity that would scare the hell out of most people. Larry thought it over for about a second-and-a-half and said, “Sure, I’m in—when do we start?” The veteran officer smiled; he knew that Larry would be a one-in-a-million CI.

  Larry became “Bill,”—and Bill racked up an unbelievable number of arrests for the narcotics strike force. He had a gift for always being in the right place at the right time.

  A few years passed, and Larry was old enough now to enter law enforcement through the front door. He applied and was accepted as a correctional officer by his local sheriff’s department.

  He started working his way up the food chain as soon as he arrived, paying his dues in the jail, working shitty assignments without complaining. Soon he was out on the road, driving that patrol car he had dreamed about every day as a young boy. It was his dream come true.

  He was finally where he wanted to be. He was married to a beautiful young woman and had the job and the life he had dreamed of. He bought a house and started to build his version of the American dream. One night while Larry was at work, a friend called him. The friend sounded a little weird, and so Larry, being direct as he always was, asked, “What’s wrong?”

  The friend paused; he didn’t know how to tell Larry what he had noticed on his way home from work. The friend was a cop too, and lived in the same neighborhood as Larry.

  On his way home, as he turned the corner onto the street they both lived on, the friend thought he saw the garage door at Larry’s house closing, and he thought he saw a police car in the garage. Larry was a deputy sheriff, and the car his friend saw was clearly a regular police car.

  Larry loved his wife, and she loved him. They had been married barely long enough to be out of the honeymoon phase. He thought it over and decided his friend was playing a mean prank on him, so he blew it off.

  When Larry came home that morning, he looked around the house and found nothing out of place. His wife greeted him like always, and they talked about his night. Larry watched her carefully and later admitted that he noticed a distance between them—something in the way she looked away that was barely noticeable, and yet definitely there.

  A couple of nights passed, and again Larry’s cop friend called and told him, “Hey, man, I am not kidding—there’s a fucking cop car in your garage. I parked a ways off and watched as the car pulled in and the garage door closed.”

  Larry said, “Thanks. I’ll look into it.”

  Every cop has been on these calls. You feel for the people who are betrayed, you feel their hurt and loss. You just pray it never happens to you. Larry thought it over. He had to see with his own eyes what the hell was going on at his home when he had gone to work.

  He asked his sergeant if he could leave the area to which he was assigned to make a quick trip home. He told his sergeant that his wife had been very sick and that he had tried to call her and couldn’t reach her. He just wanted to check and make sure that she was alright, and would be right back. The calls were slow that night, so the sergeant gave him the okay to head home. Larry said thanks, and was on his way.

  He really hoped that he would arrive at the house and find out that his friend had been playing a prank, but in his gut, he remembered the distance in his wife’s eyes and the change in how it felt when she hugged him in the morning, when he arrived home after work.

  The drive home was usually very long when he came home in the mornings, tired and ready to go to sleep. Tonight, however, the drive was over faster than he realized. He arrived in his neighborhood and parked a couple of houses away from his own. Cop tactics were kicking in.

  He got out of the car and then thought it over. He went back and took off his gun belt and put it in the trunk. He really hoped that he wouldn’t find his wife with another man, but if he did, he didn’t want to leave himself the opportunity to make a bad situation much worse.

  Larry sneaked into his own house, quietly slipping down the hall to the master bedroom, and peered through the crack in the door. His heart sank in his chest and he felt sick. There was his beautiful bride, naked and asleep with a man Larry had formerly thought of as a friend.

  A fellow cop had been fucking his wife and now they were both asleep in Larry’s house and in Larry’s bed. Larry said that he didn’t remember how long he sat there staring at the scene in disbelief.

  Sometimes it’s like that on a crime scene as well: you get out and look at it and your mind finds that it is just too horrible to grasp. It takes you time to process it and understand what you are seeing. Your mind shuts down for a minute, time stops, and you stare, trying to make what you are seeing fit into your world, the world you left just moments ago. That world is now torn away and reality stares back, unblinking and brutal.

  Larry said he remembered entering the room and grabbing the former friend and fellow cop. He picked him up off the bed and began to give the man the beating of his life. He said he didn’t remember hearing his wife screaming at him, and barely felt her slaps and punches while she tried to defend her lover.

  Larry was hell-bent on making sure this motherfucker never forgot the night he was caught in bed with Larry’s wife. La
rry said he didn’t remember when the cops pulled up to his house. He thinks his wife must have called 911, but he isn’t sure. All he remembered was pounding the naked cop’s head into the cement outside the house over and over, and yelling at him, “What now, bitch?”

  Larry was still in shock moments later when another cop grabbed him and pulled him off of the bloody and naked pile of shit. He had no idea that it was a cop who had grabbed him, and he punched the cop in the face, knocking him on his ass. A few moments later, several cops grabbed him and restrained him. Paramedics were called for the wounded naked man Larry had beaten into submission.

  Reality hit Larry hard. He was put on administrative leave for two weeks. The ex-friend Larry caught in bed with his wife was put on administrative leave as well, but for only two days. He was back at work and basically given a reprimand, a slight slap on the wrist, and told not to do that again, bad boy (wink, wink).

  The other cop was married as well, and had a newborn baby girl waiting at home. Apparently that didn’t matter to him either. He left his wife and young child.

  Larry was brought back after his administrative leave and investigation and told by his chief, “You would have been better off killing the son of a bitch.” He was then fired on the spot and walked to the front door of the police department. Larry’s entire life went to shit in very short order.

  However, the story isn’t over yet—not by a long shot. The piece-of-shit cop Larry caught in his house got a call one night from his estranged wife. She was a dispatcher for the local police department. The whispers in the hallways at work, the shame and the grief, had been too much. She had been drinking heavily and wanted him to come home and work things out. She said they had a child together and they needed to put her needs first. The devastated and drunk wife said to her cheating husband, “Come home now, or I’ll kill myself.”

  His reply? “Don’t talk about it, bitch. Do it.”

  So she did, shooting herself in the head and ending the misery he’d caused.

  Even more fucked up than this is that the cheating cop married Larry’s cheating wife and told his daughter that his new wife was her real mother. To this day, the child has no idea her real mother died the way she did, or why.

  Larry fell long and hard himself. He quickly fell into a drunken stupor, and then rekindled his old contacts in the narcotics world. In no time at all he was knee-deep in alcohol and cocaine, perhaps making his own attempt at suicide. He said that he was in a very dark place. Sitting at home alone, watching recordings of his wedding day over and over, getting drunk and staying as high as he could.

  Looking back now, Larry said he realizes he would have continued on that way till he died. However, a close friend came over to the house and went medieval on his ass. He pulled down all of the old wedding pictures Larry had left on the walls, grabbed the recordings of the wedding, and threw them all away.

  The friend said “This shit ends right here, right now! You got fucked over, it’s true, but it is time to man up and deal with it.” He was in Larry’s face, screaming at him trying to wake him up.

  Larry said that one moment saved his life. He would never again be a cop, but he realized he could survive this. He decided to try to repair his shattered life and move on.

  Reality can be incredibly brutal. Larry fell hard and barely survived the betrayal of his wife and her fucked-up lover.

  SOMETIMES YOU NEVER REALLY KNOW who you are working with, or, for that matter, sleeping with. Chad Hansen was a reserve officer with the sheriff’s department. He had wanted to be a deputy sheriff for as long as he could remember. He had tested for the job and scored low. He just could not seem to get the subtle ins and outs of what it took to be a cop. Still, he didn’t give up. He volunteered in his off time as a reserve officer, and listened to every deputy he rode with. He asked a lot of questions and tried to understand why the officers did what they did. He noticed that each one had a different style, different method of doing things, and he hoped to learn from them. During the day he was a sheet-metal worker, and at night a reserve deputy. It took him several years, but eventually he did get hired, and in no time at all he was out on the road, handling calls and living his dream.

  After Chad was hired as a deputy, he had more confidence and felt better about himself. It had been a long and hard effort to get through the hiring process, but he had finally made it. He saw everything in his life as an obstacle to overcome—a challenge to be accepted and then defeated.

  One of Chad’s passions was weightlifting, and in particular bodybuilding. He ate a very strict diet and knew exactly how many grams of protein, carbohydrates, and fats he ate. He was obsessed with his diet and working out. His obsession paid off, and he had an amazing physique. He was a small guy, maybe 5’6,” but he was powerfully built, and weighed nearly 190 lbs. He was very proud of the body that he had built, and had his uniforms tailored to show off his muscular physique.

  One day while working out in the gym, Chad noticed a female bodybuilder. She’d been coming in regularly, and they started to talk about programs, strict diets, and their goals. Chad introduced himself, and said that he worked for the sheriff’s department.

  The female bodybuilder was instantly interested in him. She asked all kinds of questions about the process to get hired as a cop and what it took to do the job. She introduced herself as Randi Gibbs and told him that she, too, wanted to work in law enforcement.

  Chad and Randi decided to meet after their workouts and started to go out to eat at a health food restaurant they both often frequented. They had a lot in common, and immediately hit it off.

  Chad could not believe his good fortune. He was in the job he loved, and now had a girlfriend who was interested in the same hobbies and lifestyle. This was a huge change from his recently dissolved marriage. His previous wife was not into fitness, hated cops, and had recently become addicted to meth. He knew he had to end that relationship to make his life’s goals a reality. Now it seemed to Chad like everything was finally falling into place.

  Chad and Randi decided to move into an apartment together. At first it was just to share expenses. Randi had recently gone through a divorce as well, and had no desire to get back into another relationship. Chad was cool with that. He just liked having her around. He liked taking care of her, and had suggested that she apply at the sheriff’s department the next time they had openings. He would let her go out as a ride along with him so that she could see what it was like to be a deputy sheriff.

  Chad really liked helping Randi and taking care of her. In their relationship, he was the caregiver, and she was more detached and aloof—not talking much, and keeping Chad at a distance. Chad, as usual, took this a challenge, and pursued her even more diligently. Eventually she decided she had nothing to lose, and they actually started dating and sleeping together.

  Everyone at work knew when this occurred, because Chad was so proud that he had landed this amazingly beautiful woman that he could not stop bragging about her. Every single day we heard about Randi this and Randi that…blah, blah, blah.

  When he started bragging about their sex life, however, we all stopped and listened.

  Chad said he was surprised when she totally took over that aspect of the relationship. He did what she wanted and when. He described her as fierce and demanding, and said that at first he was a little intimidated by her. I have to admit we were all envious when he said she had an almost daily habit of taking his handcuffs out and securing him to their bed before she fucked his brains out. He said she was incredibly fit, and would leave him bruised and worn out before she was done with him. We all stared into space as we tried to imagine this. Randi was hot as hell, and we envied the muscle-bound deputy.

  Randi was eventually able to secure a position at the jail as a correctional officer. She was strong and fit, and not the least bit intimidated by any of the inmates. Often when a call went out for help from another officer in a fight with an inmate, she would be the first to respond and engage
the inmate, soundly kicking his ass. She was as proud of her physicality as Chad was of his.

  They both worked out with an intensity that few of us could match, each of them lifting and working out after work, and eating a diet most of us would gag on. The health food was not tasty, but it did have some amazing results. They were very fit.

  Chad made a point of bragging even louder about how much more sexually dominant Randi had become since she was working in the jail. He said that after being in a fight, she would be especially demanding. One time he even took off his shirt and body armor to show us the bruises on his chest and shoulders from her knees as she rode him. He was quite proud, and we were all very envious. At least for a while.

  Roy Calhoon was a mean and nasty guy when he was sober. When he was drinking, no one wanted to be around him. One night, Roy Calhoon was higher than usual. He had been drinking heavily all day and had scored some cocaine from a friend of his. He was feeling pretty good before the cocaine; after he snorted it, he said he didn’t remember much of what happened.

  What he didn’t remember was that he went on a spree of breaking into houses and apartments and tried to rape two women. One was able to escape, and called the police. The second woman wasn’t able to escape.

  Roy raped her repeatedly and brutally. He beat her up badly and spent several hours torturing her sexually. Eventually she, too, escaped after he passed out, and she called the police. She was a bloody mess when the police arrived.

  The previous victim was able to identify him as her attacker as well. Roy was arrested and charged with both incidents. Roy was booked into jail and was looking at a long stay in both the county jail and the state prison for aggravated rape.

  He said he had no memory of the incident, but his apprehension at the scene of the second rape, covered in the victim’s blood, left no doubts as to his guilt. He was booked into our jail by the arresting officers.