CRIME WAVE: In my role here as roving reporter for The Passing Parade, I recently interviewed Detective Sergeant Halloran of our happy little burg’s elite detective squad, if you can call four guys and a police dog a squad. Sgt. Halloran is a cheery soul, which belies his skill as an investigator, and he is one of the few members of our local gendarmerie who is not currently suing City Hall for one thing or another. Suing City Hall is one of our police department’s more benign pastimes, quite unlike their habit of turning police dogs loose in school playgrounds and then picking off the chunkier kids with high-powered rifles as they try to climb the fences to get away from the dogs. No one remembers why the police and the politicians so actively dislike each other here, but they do and the antagonism is just something the rest of us have to live with. I’ve heard that the reason may be the lack of good grafting opportunities here in our happy little burg, but that would be sheer speculation on my part.

But I did not go to police headquarters to discuss the problems of police peculation, but rather the crime wave that is currently striking fear in the hearts of our populace from the mountain to the prairie to the ocean white with homes now that hurricane season is upon us. Who, I asked, is behind this current wave of banditry and what steps are the police taking to protect us from the malefactors?
“Well, it is a bit difficult to answer your question, Sgt. Halloran replied. “We know who the troublemakers are, of course, it’s just that arresting them poses a bit of a problem.”
“How so,” I asked, sure that I’d caught the good sergeant in the middle of a cover-up of police incompetence.
“Well, it’s just that very few police officers have any real experience arresting zombies, you see,” he said.

I must confess that this news surprised me; I hadn’t known that zombies and other manifestations of the undead were such a vital threat to the lives and property of their erstwhile fellow citizens. Sgt. Halloran went on to explain that fighting the zombie crime wave was now the department’s number two priority, after opening a Dunkin Donut franchise in the cellar of City Hall, and that most of the hoodlums were the local veterans of the War of 1812, who wanted all the stuff they saw on television but didn’t want to work to get those things. “It’s a shame, really,” Sgt. Halloran said, “if you give it some thought. The VA does nothing for them at all, so they think they’re getting the shaft, especially if you take a look at the good deal the veterans of the Second Seminole War got. So they figure they’re entitled to steal socks out of driers and to scare kids and the like. It’s just their way of getting even, I think. It’s a crying shame, if you ask me,” he said, shaking his head in that heavy, world-weary way that experienced cops have.
“I guess so,” I said.