Hero To Zero 2nd edition Read Online Free PDF Page A

did he know them , he knew their families and associates. He was very aware of the people around him and the non-verbal communication they exchanged.
    I tried to learn as much from him as I could. I was always asking questions, trying to see what he saw, hear what he heard. It seemed I could never quite understand how he grasped so well what was going on from the smallest and most insignificant details. Every call with him was an education.
    I tried to keep up with him one night as he chased down, on foot, a rapist who had just broken into a house and raped a woman. Webster arrived at the scene as the guy took off on a bicycle. Webster was already out of his car, walking the area, looking for the guy. Webster saw him and sprinted off on foot after him, quickly closing the gap and tackling the suspect, knocking him off his bike and slamming him into the ground.
    It was pretty cool to see his enthusiasm. Even more amazing, I later found out that he had sprinted after the rapist piece of shit on a damaged knee. He wore a knee brace every day at work and never complained.
    Webster hated to lose in court as much as he hated to lose on the streets. He had a very high record of convictions in the courts, and the judges admired his ability to close a case.
    I personally had a district court judge tell me while he was signing a search warrant for me that he thought very highly of Webster. He asked me if Webster was involved in the incident I was working on, for which he was signing the warrant. I told him that he wasn’t. The judge said that was unfortunate, as he liked seeing him in his court. He described Webster as “ballsy” and the best cop he had ever known—which is very high praise from a sitting district court judge.
    One night I was sitting with Webster in a parking lot, parked side by side and I asked him about a narcotics case he’d lost in court. It rarely happened, and he was pissed. He told me all about it and then said, “But that’s okay, in the end they got theirs.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He laughed and made me promise not to tell. I said of course I wouldn’t tell. He smiled and told me that he’d gone to the suspect’s house while off duty and slashed their recently purchased tires on their jacked-up 4x4 truck. The tires were hugely oversized and very expensive. He Webster said, “No one gets one over on me, ever.” He said, “ What the courts won’t take care of, we will. We are cops and we keep the shitbags in line, no matter what.” He then smiled and drove away.
    Another incident occurred when Webster was on a call with one of his friends in the department. The other cop was training a new guy we called “Skidmark.” All three were sent to a child-abuse call, and when they arrived, they found that the man had indeed sexually abused this young child.
    There is a special place in every cop’s heart for child abusers; it is a dark place you don’t want to visit. The rules start to break down there. Anger seeps in at the inadequacies of the system, and it becomes harder and harder to follow what the rest of the world sees as the right or correct thing to do.
    That night, the two veteran cops lost it, and beat the abusive suspect up a bit. Not a lot, but more than the self-righteous Skidmark could live with. He turned them in to the department’s internal affairs unit. They were investigated and given time off without pay after having been found to be in the wrong on the incident.
    It isn’t pretty, but it happens. All cops have been there. Webster’s street-cred went up with his fellow cops for caring enough about the abused child to lose it on the suspect and beat his ass. Meanwhile, Skidmark had sealed his fate as on the department as a rat and a snitch.
    Webster lived larger than life when off duty. Cops don’t make much money, but he often went on Caribbean cruises with his wife and kids. They owned a new motor home and a new boat, and had recently purchased a new home on the