Another specialty position gets posted. It’s one you are intensely interested in. Nearing the end of your career, you’ve accomplished about everything any LEO would want to. You managed through the police academy with a high degree of competency in all categories. You survived a painful injury and surgery was successful enough to get you right into the field with minimal delay.
You narrowly missed being killed at the beginning of your fledgling career, your inexperience put you in a bad position, your luck got you out. You cut your teeth on patrol related incidents and first responder type crimes. You sacrificed your own finances to get advanced training and spent inordinate time away from the family. Somehow your marriage survived the first half of your career with shift work and plenty of missed children’s activities.
The last half of your career was spent in detective work and you’ve built an excellent reputation across all aspects of the criminal justice system. You survived being shot at, attacked with knives and hand to hand fighting. Through it all, luck and prior planning have been a theme. You’ve buried a few friends, who happened to be co workers. It’s time to plan the last chapter of a reasonably decent career.
The position is a newly created cold case homicide investigator. The task.....review all the unsolved homicides in the Troop and select the most promising ones for resolution. The improvement of DNA analysis has made cold case work an extremely interesting endeavor. Never before available testing of evidence that has been warehoused for many years has now become available. All that needs to be done is resubmission to the lab. This coupled with the review of reports has yielded good results. Smaller and smaller samples are being accepted. There is even talk of evidence from “touch” DNA. Microscopic skin cells left behind by the suspect on clothing has been used to solve cases.
You are being recruited to bring this program online. There is just one problem. You asked to work out of your home station. The Captain refuses. It’s his baby and it’s going to be based out of Troop Headquarters where he can keep tabs on it. Troop Headquarters is an hour more drive and effectively makes an eight hour day into a ten hour day.
At home, your oldest son is planning to be married.....to his pregnant girlfriend. Your daughter is finishing up college and your youngest son is traveling around to baseball showcases for college recruitment. It’s a busy time at home. You’ve recently been talking about spending more time with the family and everyone has been happy about that.
There is another guy interested also. He happens to be based out of Troop Headquarters. You are starting to recognize a familiar theme. Do you put yourself first....or your family?