On a cold Tuesday afternoon in November 2019, the Special Victims unit of the Big Loft, VA police force broke a case ranging ten years with three suspects all involved in copying the serial rape pattern of the uncle that didn't get caught before he died. At last their family reign of terror was over, and 26 women and girls finally got the start of getting justice for themselves and their families.
Captain Garrison and his unit were heralded and praised all over Virginia – but he did not neglect to thank all those that had helped his unit.
“He never asks for credit and never gets enough credit for what he does with his division, but I want to take the moment to thank Captain Henry Fitzhugh Lee and the entire cold case division for their assistance on cracking this case.”
Certain people groaned across Big Loft and Lofton County, as they were tired of hearing of Captain Lee's exploits – generally, the elite were terrified of him and wished for a way to put him down. But, the everyday people in Big Loft loved their quiet hometown hero, returned from 28 years in the military (counting his years at West Point) to serve them every way he could. Bonus points for him looking so much like the uncle Virginia tended to worship anyhow, although he was yet in his middle forties, so not quite a match for the local Confederate statuary.
Captain Lee, true to form, was not at the press conference, nor would be seen in public that day – he had never left his quiet office in a corner of the second floor at police headquarters, where he would work full-time until taking up a new position in January.
And that was what Captain Garrison, in a private meeting with Commissioner Winfred Scott, wanted to talk about when the cameras had gone away.
Owing to several bad things that had happened back in July 2019, Commissioner Scott had been the sixth man in a line to hold the office of commissioner – but owing to the badness of the bad things and the swift way they had rolled out, the commissioner still held the office he had come into the force on: police chief. He thus combined the two offices, and since a lot of people still knew him as the chief, that was what people who actually liked him still called him.
“Thanks for extending your workday to see me, Chief,” Captain Garrison had said when he arrived in the fourth-floor office.
“Not a problem,” Commissioner Scott said. “When I came in as chief I said I would have an open-door policy to the captains, and here I am.”
Captain Garrison, as a unit captain and not a division captain, had not been in on the infamous “Captain's Bawl-out” that had rocked the force when Commissioner Scott had caught three division captains “accidentally” leaking information about a key legal settlement. Captain Garrison was not on that particular wavelength anyway; he was devoted to Special Victims and to the police force, and he agreed with all the reforms Commissioner Scott had implemented because of the terrible things that had happened from July through September. Thus, the two men were still on good terms and could speak candidly and openly.
“I've come to talk with you about Captain Lee,” Captain Garrison said. “Whatever we do with the budget cuts next year, we've got to get the cold case division off the cut list.”
“I'm listening, Captain.”
“I don't think the folks at HR are paying enough attention to what is going on because they are so mad at Captain Lee coming in here this January and figuring out by July that two-thirds of the coldness of his cold cases was coming from right here in this office while Commissioner Thomas was here. They are so angry Captain Lee snatched down two-thirds of their comfortable nest before July was out and has gotten up to 90 percent or more now. They can't find any fault in him personally, and they can't get rid of him because you've put him over rebuilding our disgraced Blue Ridge precinct.
“But they want him and his division gone just for spite, not understanding how much help his division is to the entire force. First of all, the man came in here a celebrated officer in the Judge Advocate General core: in him you have an investigator and a prosecutor and a jurist rolled up into one, and so he knows how to work a case from beginning to end.
“Second of all, Lee has reproduced himself – he has trained five lieutenants and six officers in his division's reserve. Those six officers work elsewhere also and are taking their skills with them, so every day, the department is getting more help based on that. Now that the division's caseload is down a little after the Battler case, Lee usually can spare a lieutenant or two also at need, and that helps us all.
“Third of all, when this tentative settlement comes through – and although no one I know has leaked it, I know the politics around those police brutality settlements and the robust way the Black community is insisting on its rights – I know our Whites-only policy is going to have to disappear. When it does, so are a goodly number of your most experienced officers. I've been here 30 years, and I know what a point of pride it has been to many of us to have something conserved for just White men and a few White women of our choosing. I also know that it will be another decade before anybody new of any hue is in a position to actually be running things, and I'll be gone by then.
“But not everyone does math like that, and not everyone understands that it is more important to have as robust a police force as possible than to have an all-White force. The combination of reaction to what has to happen for that settlement to be good with what has already happened since July and the budget cuts is going to deplete the force in ways that are going to leave us starved for officers who can do the higher-level police work that is necessary in a city going through what Big Loft is going through.”
“Which is why we have to retain Lee through at least 2020, Commissioner, and we're not going to be able to do it by sending the people he has trained and invested in out the door. I can't say that I know him all that well, but I have read his record up and down. Lee will not stay where his people are disregarded. Special Forces found that out the hard way when he switched over to JAG mid-career – there's not a lot of info available, but a few vets were willing to tell me a few generals messed up and cost some men in Lee's Unit 6 their lives. He was gone after the year it took him to handle a few last missions and pass the bar at the same time.”
“Yikes,” said Commissioner Scott. “Sounds like the kind of thing he would pull off.”
“It will take that same Colonel Lee all of three months to put together a Blue Ridge precinct that is functional and then leave it if he is no longer invested in the force – changing his title from interim to permanent will make absolutely no difference to him. If he lacks in any ability, it is enduring corrupt treatment of his people.”
“Oh, I know that,” Commissioner Scott said. “Captain Hamilton from Tinyville did the assist representing the county on Commissioner Thomas's arrest since nobody else was up. Commissioner Thomas messed up and started shooting at Captain Hamilton – and you know what happened next. I am in this chair because Henry Fitzhugh Lee has absolutely no patience at all for those who try to harm those working with him.
“I've talked with Captain Lee about the matter at hand – don't think I haven't let him know I'm doing all I can! He and I both are making the same arguments you are, but the hatred for both of us is strong. It will take more than us to convince the union and the association and those even back of them not to spite Captain Lee by putting out his division. They know about his one weak spot.
“I like to think that in that same three months, however, that Captain Lee will invest in the precinct he has to rebuild. You don't know him, but I do; he is cool to the touch, but he has another weak spot: a great, caring heart. He has reproduced himself in ability because the people around him want to learn from and follow him: they feel it.
“Not only that: he is already invested in the majority of the men there. The day after he took over, everybody expected he was going to demand guns and badges and put people on the track to firing. Instead he gave everybody I hadn't put on the track to firing a chance to prove themselves to him and convince him they should keep their jobs – and, they did well in concert with the FBI on keeping the folks at the Great Ridgeline Memorial safe from the domestic terrorist threats against them. Their discipline was perfect, for they modeled themselves after their new commander, who went above and beyond to show them what he expected and demanded.”
“He is a Lee of the old cut to the bone,” Captain Garrison said, “and maybe you are right about him already having invested. Yet why would you take the chance, Chief? Again: it's only going to take him three months to get them together if he has already made that much progress. There's practically nothing for that precinct to be doing out there through the winter – I mean, half of the precinct was burned to the ground in the Ridgeline Fire, and nothing ever happens in the other half.”
[That would be true only until through the end of 2019, but Captain Garrison had no way of knowing that in November.]
“I'm telling you, Chief: he will finish up tidily and be gone by April if the trouble-makers-that-be layoff his people – some of the force's best – just for spite. We will miss out on Lee not only being available to fill the terrible investigative gaps we are about to have, but also on him training new investigators that we can use into the future.”
Commissioner Scott sighed.
“How many people can you get to go on the record to agree, Captain Garrison?”
“Plenty, sir.”
“Go rally them, Captain Garrison.”
“That's all I needed to hear, Chief – thank you!”
Captain Garrison left, and Commissioner Scott contemplated the conversation. Indeed he had not thought through the situation as deeply as the captain, but the captain had a point about Captain Lee: retaining him long into 2020 was by no means guaranteed. He was about to retire as colonel from the Army Reserve after 24 years of service, and he was about to get married to Maggie Thornton, the commissioner's former secretary who, because she had been brought in under Commissioner Thomas, was unceremoniously pushed out just a week and half before.
Captain Lee had planned that Ms. Thornton would be out by the beginning of December, but he had been infuriated at how her taking time off after a car accident had led to her being laid off and never coming back at the beginning of November. He had been in a smoldering rage when he had talked with the commissioner about it, and only because Ms. Thornton had convinced him that it was better all around that she was out had he calmed down by the next day.
Nobody had repented of anything and Captain Lee forgot and forgave nothing … pile on that the needless layoffs of officers he had spent a year grooming, and indeed he might head out the door in the spring to enjoy a long honeymoon with his bride.
The flip side of it was the possibility that he could stay and build an entire precinct into a juggernaut of good police officers who were also good investigators, and also provide a relatively safe place for new Black officers who would be coming onto the force. Captain Lee hated the Confederate legacy he looked like, and could be counted on to insist on decent treatment to whoever was in his precinct.
Commissioner Scott picked up the phone. Captain Lee had made his argument to save his division, Captain Garrison was going to rally him some help, and Commissioner Scott had made his arguments, but there was still a bit more to do. More could be done to deplete the opposition against the cold case division … those who lived in glass houses needed to stop throwing stones at the force's best officers. The commissioner decided to pitch a couple of well-placed pebbles back from his powerful position to add to the effort. It was a slim chance either way, but …
It worked.