And So It Begins
Part Seventy-Eight
Patrick
Redding was a sixteen-year veteran of the Port Charles Police Department.
He was what other cops termed ‘a lifer’.
Redding was very content to be a beat cop for the entirety of his stay
with the PCPD.
He
loved walking a beat out among the various neighborhoods.
At just over six feet tall and an ounce or two over the minimum weight
limit, Redding’s long, lanky build was a familiar fixture among the people.
The old ladies of the neighborhood baked sweets to fatten him up.
The old men fondly chided him over his seeming lack of ambition.
It
wasn’t that promotion was an impossibility for Officer Redding.
He had twice been shot in the line of duty. His record of arrests and convictions was among the highest
in the entire state of New York. But
when confronted by the unyielding determination of one Florence Taggert, Redding
had been about as powerless as the greenest rookie on the force.
For
about the fifth time in as many minutes, Redding glanced toward the back of the
station where prisoners were housed before transfer to a more permanent
facility. In violation of every
rule that had been laid down, Florence Taggert was back there ‘visiting’
Port Charles mobster Sonny Corinthos.
Redding
sighed and dropped his head. Things
were bad for him now and in the next few minutes they would definitely only get
worse. Detective Marcus Taggert was
on his way.
Officer
Redding involuntarily flinched when he recalled the outraged roar Detective
Taggert let loose over the phone. Redding
had been forced to jerk the phone away from his ear or risk a major loss of
hearing. He’d tried – in vain
– to explain to the detective that his mother refused to acknowledge
Redding’s authority and simply swept blithely by him.
The veteran cop’s additional attempts to point out that Mrs. Taggert
had apparently made her way through three other checkpoints before reaching him
also fell on deaf ears. Still,
Redding considered that he would rather face a hundred Marcus Taggerts than go
up against just one Florence Taggert again.
The
electronic hum of the security doors as they opened gave Redding barely enough
time to scramble back to his post at the desk.
Before he could blurt out his hastily prepared explanation, Marcus
stalked impatiently past.
“Detective!”
Redding awkwardly waved an official-looking ledger.
“You need to sign…” His
voice trailed off. If the irate
glare Marcus Taggert leveled his way was any indicator of the muscular
detective’s mood, then Redding wouldn’t push the issue.
“Never mind.”