Crown's Law

©Copyright 2006, Wolf Wootan

Published by Wolf Wootan on Smashwords in
January 2011

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Friday, April 14, 1995

Dana Point, CA

Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD)
Homicide Investigator Sergeant Sam Crown had completed a witness
interview in Laguna Niguel and was on the I-5 freeway heading south
toward the sheriff’s San Clemente substation when he heard the call
on his radio. There was a hostage situation in a house in Dana
Point and the on-scene cops were calling for SWAT. The off-ramp for
Dana Point Harbor was about a mile ahead. Sam glanced at the clock
on the dashboard of his department Crown Victoria and noted that it
was 4:01 P.M.

This is none of my business, really. I should
go type up my report, zap it to headquarters in Santa Ana, and
spend the weekend at the beach house, just as I planned.

He listened to the radio chatter as he
drove. It sounded like a bad one
¾
the result of a domestic disturbance call.

“What the hell,” he said under his breath.
“Wouldn’t hurt to take a look.”

Had he ignored the call, his life probably
would have turned out differently. Instead, he zoomed onto the
off-ramp and headed down to Pacific Coast Highway—PCH to the locals
and into Dana Point, heading back north toward Copper Lantern, the
street where the standoff was going down. It wasn’t one of his
better decisions, but it was typical. He was known as “Crazy Crown”
by most of Orange County’s law enforcement community—the “Dirty
Harry” of OCSD.

***

He parked behind a Sheriff’s black-and-white
and stepped out onto the pavement. A uniformed deputy started
walking toward him to shoo him away. Sam flashed his badge and the
cop let him pass. The place was a madhouse—police cars, TV vans,
rubbernecks, a paramedics vehicle. The cops were trying to
establish a perimeter, pushing TV reporters and sightseers back
away from the action.

Sam made his way to a police cruiser with
three men standing behind it—two in uniform, one in a rumpled tan
suit. The man in the suit scowled in Sam’s direction.

“Crown! What the hell are you doing here?” he
hissed.

“I could ask you the same thing, Jastro,”
replied Sam with a shrug. “I was just passing by and heard the call
for SWAT. What’s going on?”

“The best we can put together by talking to
neighbors is that a Mrs. Culvert and her 8-year-old daughter live
here. They—the neighbors—think that her ex-husband is in there
causing all this hell,” grumbled Jastro.

“Domestic dispute, eh? How come you need
SWAT? Just go knock on the door and calm the SOB down,” laughed
Sam.

Jastro glared at Sam and said, “That’s what
the first two uniforms did when they got here. The asshole shot
three times through the door. They were lucky they weren’t
hit!”

Sam glanced around and counted at least 20
deputies—there were probably more. Dana Point contracted their
policing from OCSD.

“Have you talked to the fucker?” asked Sam as
he popped a piece of gum in his mouth. The eternal nicotine urge
was upon him again, even though he hadn’t smoked in over 20
years.

“No. He won’t answer the damned phone. I have
a hostage negotiator on the way, but I doubt if it will help. I’ll
let SWAT take care of him when they get here. I’m not risking any
of these cops’ lives.”

“He could hurt the woman and kid badly before
SWAT gets here. You’ve got enough men here to storm the friggin’
Bastille! Just go in and get the asshole!” exclaimed Sam, annoyed
at Jastro’s reluctance to act.

“I’m in charge here, Sergeant Crown! Why
don’t you just go about your business? This is not a homicide
investigation!” fumed Jastro.

“Not yet. Wait a few more minutes and it will
be.”

“I’m following the book on this,” replied
Jastro.

“It’s your funeral. Probably theirs, too,”
murmured Sam.

Sam shrugged and turned to leave when he
heard the noise from inside the house. It sounded like a child
wailing.

“Daddy! Stop hurting Mommy! Please!
Stop!”

“Shut up, Sally! Get over there!” A man’s
bellowing voice.

Sam turned and peered intently at the house,
listening, chewing his gum. There was a large picture window to the
right of the front door—Sam’s right. Two smaller windows were on
the other side of the door. It was a small house—most on this
street were—but the yard was well cared for and the light blue
paint covering the wooden exterior wasn’t peeling or faded. The
white trim around the windows and white flower boxes filled with
multi-colored blooms gave the house a friendly, homey look. Sam
glanced at Jastro, knowing he wouldn’t do anything.

“You can’t wait any longer, Jastro!” Sam spat
out, getting angry now. “Things are getting out of hand in
there!”

“SWAT is only ten minutes away now,” shrugged
Jastro as he listened to his handheld radio, not able to look Sam
in the eye.

There was more screaming from the house, then
a gunshot.

“Mommy, Mommy! What did you do to Mommy?” The
child’s voice, wailing like a banshee.

“Shit! That does it! I’m going in there,
Jastro!” yelled Sam. “You’ve stood around here with your head up
your ass and let that bastard kill someone!”

The screaming child did not bring the
horrible images of dying children in ’Nam to Sam’s brain—he no
longer suffered that agony. Instead, he went straight to rage,
wanting to hurt someone—cure the problem.

He walked over to a deputy he knew and said,
“Jim, let me borrow your windbreaker. I don’t want you guys to
shoot me when I come back out of there!”

Jim’s dark blue windbreaker had the word
“POLICE” on its back in large white letters. Sam took off his
sports coat and laid it on the hood of a car and donned the
windbreaker. All the cops there knew—or knew of—Sergeant Sam
“Crazy” Crown. He knew they were all watching in anticipation,
wondering what he was going to do. Jastro approached Sam,
fuming.

“You can’t go in there, Crown! That’s an
order!” he shouted, his finger in Sam’s face. “I don’t need any of
your fucking Dirty Harry shit here today!”

Sam looked quietly into Jastro’s eyes, then
said, “I should have gone in earlier. You should have done
something earlier. Stick your order up your ass!” growled Sam as he
drew his Smith & Wesson .40 caliber and pulled the slide back,
then let it go, snapping a cartridge into the firing chamber. He
put it back into his shoulder rig—he wanted his hands free when he
entered the house.

“I’ll have your badge for this, Crown!”

“Maybe. If that asshole shoots that kid,
they’ll pin your badge on your ass! Get out of my way!”

As Sam walked across the lawn toward the
porch, a patrol cop named Mary Klink ran over to Sam and touched
his arm.

“Sarge! I’ll go in with you! Cover you!” she
panted.

“No, Mary! That’ll just get you in trouble
with Jastro.”

“I don’t care at this point,” she replied. He
stared at her, saw that she was serious—willing to face Jastro’s
wrath.

“OK, then. You can help me, if you insist. I
don’t want you going in with me though. See that flower pot over
there? Get it, and when I signal you, throw it through that window
on the far left. I’m going in through the picture window, and
hopefully your toss will distract him for a second or two while I
get my bearings.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to do this, Mary.
Jastro can cause you some grief just for throwing the pot.”

“Screw Jastro!” she said, then she crouched
and dashed to the other side of the walkway, grabbing the flower
pot on the way. She knelt down behind the white porch railing and
looked in Sam’s direction. The child was still screaming.

Sam eased onto the porch and picked up a
wooden rocker that sat on the porch. He nodded at Mary. She stood
and threw the pot as he threw the rocker through the plate glass
window. He went in right behind it.

Inside the house, Norman Culvert—enraged,
drunk, and high on drugs—was standing at his wife’s feet, peering
down at her bleeding body, when the flower pot came crashing
through the living room window, about six feet from where he was
standing. He was startled, so he snapped a shot in that direction,
hitting a CD player on a table against the far wall. The child,
Sally Culvert, was cowering behind a couch covered in a bright
floral print—now spattered with her mother’s blood—crying, trying
to catch her breath between sobs.

Sam jumped through the dining room window and
landed on his feet, but slipped on the glass-covered hardwood floor
and smashed into the knotty pine dining room table. As Sam steadied
himself against the table, he saw Culvert shoot at the sound of the
flower pot smashing into the house. Then the drug-crazed man turned
toward him.

As Culvert finished his turn and raised his
arm, pointing his gun at Sam, Sam spun left to face him but lost
his footing again on the glass shards and slipped to his right knee
as a slug whistled over his head, missing him by scant inches. Sam
drew his weapon in a smooth, fluid motion unmatched by most
shooters. It was “cocked and locked”—safety on, hammer cocked—so
his thumb flipped the safety off as his finger squeezed the trigger
and fired a shot into the middle of the man’s chest. The force of
the slug knocked Culvert backwards and he fell to the floor on his
back, his weapon flying across the room.

Sam stood and strode over to the man and
checked his pulse. He was dead. Then Sam heard the woman moan—he
had assumed that she was dead. He knelt beside her and checked the
pulse in her neck, finding a weak one. If he got the paramedics in
here fast enough she might make it!

The child, Sally, ran from behind the couch,
still sobbing, and Sam snatched her into his arms and rushed to the
front door. He opened it and went out onto the porch.

“It’s OK, Sally,” he cooed to her. “It’s
OK.”

Then he yelled, “Paramedics! The woman is
still alive! Hurry, before she bleeds out!”

He crossed the lawn and approached Jastro as
four paramedics rushed into the house with their equipment. Deputy
Mary Klink appeared and took Sally from Sam. Sam knew that TV
cameras and long-range digital cameras were recording the incident
for posterity.

“Where are the CPS people?” Sam asked. “This
kid needs immediate help!”

Jastro—shuffling from one foot to the
other—replied, “They must be around here somewhere. I followed
procedures! Klink, see if you can find them!”

“You’re really on top of things, Jastro!” Sam
said. “You can cancel SWAT. That asshole won’t be causing any more
trouble. The woman still has a trace of a pulse, but I don’t know
if she’ll make it. She certainly wouldn’t have if we had waited any
longer. I’ll be leaving now.”

“The hell you will!” snapped Jastro. “We have
an officer-involved shooting here! Yet another one for you! Not
even mentioning that you disobeyed a direct order! I’ll take your
gun pending an investigation!”

Sam moved closer to Jastro and said softly,
“Screw you, Jastro! You’re on TV, you know! Why don’t you pull
yourself together and figure out a way to take credit for how well
you handled things here. Tell Internal Investigations I’ll be at
the San Clemente substation for about the next hour, then I’ll be
at my parents’ house on Beach Road in Capo Beach. They have the
address on file. Otherwise, they can wait until I get in on
Monday.”

With that, he spun around and walked in the
direction of the car where he had left his jacket. He gave the
windbreaker back to the cop who had loaned it to him, then put on
his jacket. He saw the press and the TV reporters poised like a
pack of hyenas between him and his car. He looked skyward and saw
several TV choppers hovering. As he scanned the hyena pack again,
he spotted Chandra Claudet (she pronounced it Claw-day) and her
camera crew.

Good!
he
thought.
A friend among the vultures! I’ll
probably need a friend for this one!

He made his way toward the yellow tape,
knowing he had to run the gauntlet to get to his car.

Chandra Claudet was a beautiful woman in her
middle thirties with black hair, dark brown eyes, and soft features
with skin the color of coffee with cream. She was 5' 8" with D-cup
breasts, and long, shapely legs. She worked “breaking stories” in
Orange County for L.A.’s Channel 5 News, and Sam had bedded her
more than once.