“Keep doing what you’re doing and you might just be that guy,” Magic replied.

Martin was grinning ear to ear. This squadron was awesome. He couldn’t wait for his next flight.

“Now go make some popcorn!” Magic barked.

Sean Baxter

The Truth is in the Details

Hwy 315

West of Clayton, Texas

8 August 2010

0130L

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Trooper Sean Baxter had only been working nights for two weeks, but he hated it. As he droned down the empty four lane county highway, he cursed himself for volunteering to work the county roads. Weeknights in East Texas were usually pretty boring. No one stayed out past midnight on weekdays, and when they did, they were usually just drunken rednecks that were impossible to deal with. Not that tasing drunken rednecks wasn’t fun, but he hoped it wouldn’t be the highlight of his career.

Sean Baxter had joined the Texas State Troopers to become a Texas Ranger. Son of a Secret Service Agent killed in the line of duty, Baxter had grown up with the dream of continuing the family business. But with budget cutbacks and the civilian sector struggling under a recession when he graduated college two years prior, the Secret Service just wasn’t hiring.

Despite having moved around following his dad’s assignments most of his young life, Baxter considered himself a Texan. So it was only natural that he’d want to become a Texas Ranger when the Feds weren’t hiring, and since the Rangers required the rank of Trooper II with Department of Public Safety State Troopers, Baxter’s only option was to start as a Trooper.

And so he found himself at fifty-five miles per hour on a desolate county road in the wee hours of the morning on a hot August night. It wasn’t the action-packed job of protecting the President or chasing down counterfeiters he had hoped for. Instead, he was relegated to handing out speeding tickets and beating down drunks. Aside from the night transition, it was still law enforcement and he still loved it. Protecting and serving was his calling.

As Baxter continued down the featureless highway in his standard-issue black and white Crown Victoria, another sedan pulled out in front of him off a dirt road and accelerated. Baxter tapped the brakes to avoid overrunning the car and perked up. Another drunk?

Baxter paced the car at a safe distance. It wasn’t swerving or driving recklessly. His left taillight was out, but other than that, the driver hadn’t committed any major violations. The car just appeared to be out later than everyone else.

Baxter’s father was killed when Baxter was a young teen, but he had always talked to him about being a good investigator. “The truth is always in the details,” he had said. His dad told him countless stories of doing protection details or doing investigations in which the tiniest detail had been the difference between a case going cold and an arrest and conviction being made. The Academy had honed those skills, and for the time being, the details were bothering him. What was a car doing out here at this hour with a busted tail light?