Hero To Zero 2nd edition Read Online Free Page B

installed hidden cameras. He knew that someone was stealing from him, he just didn’t know who or how.
    Ray was caught red-handed. The pharmacist reported the theft immediately. Ray ended up losing everything. His career, retirement, respect—all gone.
    The people we worked with were surprised, shocked. They could not believe that Ray had done the theft. I met with Billy Webster’s ex-girlfriend later and she said, “I told you they were both dropping pain pills like they were candy.”
    She was right. Everything she told me had been true. Webster would go down in flames as well a few months later, but for a different and unrelated incident.

 
     

     
     
     
    AS AMAZING AS RAY FOSSUM was as a cop, Billy Webster was even more so. I met him one day after he had just been assigned his first tour on the narcotics strike force. I was riding as an observer with a cop I knew, trying to see if I wanted to transition from the Military Police Corps to the civilian side of the house. Billy was friends with the cop I was riding with.
    We were leaving the jail after he finished booking a suspect and were crossing the parking lot, when Webster pulled up in an unmarked car. Smiling his million-dollar smile, he started laughing, making us jump to the side as he pulled up fast, stopping hard, tires screeching. I was instantly pissed off, having no idea who this metrosexual-looking crazy man was who was trying to run us over.
    He said, “Hey, what’s up?” to the cop I was with. I was glaring at him as they talked, and he said to the cop, “What’s this guy’s fucking problem?” Then to me, “Hey, we got a fucking problem here?” I didn’t answer.
    The other cop explained I was a ride-along, and then he told me that Billy was an undercover cop. We continued to stare at each other. I was, as I still am, stubborn as hell, and when I get mad, I’m even more so. Finally I walked away, heading back to the patrol car while the two friends talked.
    Later, the cop I was riding with explained that Billy was the single most amazing cop he had ever worked with. He said that Billy had an uncanny knack for knowing what was going on in the streets. He said that it was eerie the way Webster could locate people who were on the run or hiding from the cops, and that he’d been sent to the narcotics strike force “early,” meaning he was sent ahead of the normal time frame in which a cop was considered able to contribute to the unit.
    I wouldn’t see Webster again for some time. Four years passed, and I ended up working for the same department as Webster and Fossum. I’d spent some time in the sheriff’s department and decided it wasn’t for me. I had tested at the police department while working at the sheriffs department and finally been hired. I was in training, and my training officer was introducing me to the other officers in the department.
    We were leaving the jail, and there was the amazing Billy Webster. He’d just left the strike force. It was his turn to rotate out and back to patrol. Webster was fatter, straining the buttons on his old uniform shirts, and out of touch with the patrol side of the streets. Narcotics is a whole other world, and he’d specialized in it.
    He had a drunk driver he was booking and was obviously nervous about what to do with the suspect. He asked my training officer if he would like to have his “new” rookie take the DUI for the experience. My trainer immediately saw through this ploy and said, “Nope. You catch it, you clean it”—meaning “You caught him, the work is yours to do.”
    He commented on the excess weight Webster had gained and the way his buttons were barely containing his newly acquired pot gut. They exchanged “fuck-yous” and we departed.
    I would run into Webster occasionally after I completed training, as our shifts overlapped and we worked the same area. He was every bit as streetwise as I’d been told. He knew everyone on every call in the inner city, and not only