Blood Secrets: Chronicles of a Crime Scene Reconstructionist by Ann Rule Page A

the way.
    I arrested him for possession with intent to sell, then packed him in the back of the car and we headed to the station. In we walked, withthe judge carrying all this dope, a big grin across his face. I booked the dealer, filled out the evidence cards, and typed up my report. Emerson waited until I finished, then left.
    “Nice work,” he said on his way out.
    I had won over the judge at last . . . at least until he got subpoenaed in the case and was accused by the dope dealer’s defense attorney of breaching the separation of the judicial and executive branches of government. The case was dismissed because of it, which understandably infuriated Emerson. It frustrated me, too, to think of the dealer back out on the street, but there was nothing either of us could do about it.
    A few days later, Jim Shade told me Emerson’s true motive for the ride-along: The judge had set me up, sure that I was crooked. Lieutenant Shade had defended me, just as he had in the $8.00 incident, when rapist Robert Thornton tried to get me fired. “Englert’s not dirty,” he assured Judge Emerson. “He’s just got a nose for narcotics and a sixth sense for suspicious cars.”
    But here’s what neither Emerson nor Shade knew: I wasn’t a dope cop myself, but I was doing an exemplary job for them—turning loads of drugs over to them and filing flawless reports—because what I wanted more than anything was to join their ranks.
    I was at my desk one day, filing yet another report on a drug bust I had made, when the phone rang.
    “Englert?”
    “Speaking.”
    “This is Leon Emerson.”
    What now? I thought.
    “Listen,” he said. “I owe you an apology.”
    That was all it took. In the years that followed, Judge Emerson became one of my closest friends. The better I got to know him, themore I admired his dedication. He had taken time out of his own schedule to check up on me, not to be a jerk but because he cared about justice and honesty in the courtroom.
    But if you had predicted back on Imperial Highway in 1964 that the stern-faced judge in the passenger seat would become one of my best buddies, bucking hay with me under the glaring sun on my Oregon farm during weekend visits in the years to come, I would have said you were as high as that driver in the 1959 Ford Fairlane.
Going Undercover
    I kept busting drug users with Emerson’s blessing and eventually made a good enough impression to get assigned to narcotics. In 1966, to my delight, I became an undercover agent in Downey.
    In many ways, undercover work was the antithesis of what I had done as a patrolman. You don’t go into an office every morning. You don’t wear a uniform. You don’t worry about keeping your hair short or staying clean-shaven. Your job is to convince criminals that you’re one of them.
    I still remember what I wore on my first day undercover: a grubby baseball cap, a goatee, a rumpled short-sleeved golf shirt, and—taking a page from old Robert Thornton’s book—glasses with big, black frames. The lenses were just clear glass, but they were so thick and heavy that they fooled the bad guys, who figured there was no way I could be a cop. Not with eyesight that pathetic. When a guy I had never met asked if I was on the level, my contacts would dismiss his doubts casually. “That dude?” they would ask incredulously. “The guy’s practically blind.” For many years I kept those glasses hanging in my lab to remind me of all the frightening places and white-knuckle predicaments they helped me scrape through.
    People often raise a skeptical eyebrow when I swear that in all the years I bought drugs I never sampled them, but it’s true. I am a master at faking it, though. When a dealer cocks a gun against your temple and threatens to kill you unless you do a line of coke to prove you’re not a narc, you get a strong incentive to learn the art of simulated snorting.
    “Hey, man,” I used to say, “I’m just in it for the money. You can’t be