Hi, I’m Ben Dougherty, pronounced “Dock-ur-tee.” I’m a detective with the Penns River, Pennsylvania police department. Detective Sergeant, actually, though the rank was kind of forced on me and I can live without it. Oh, and don’t call me “Ben” or “Bennie” or “Benjy” unless you’ve known me from birth. I’m “Doc.”
Penns River is about twenty miles up the Allegheny River from The Point in Pittsburgh. The economic renaissance that made The Burgh a medical and financial hub managed to miss Penns River and its neighbors, but we keep plugging away. This isn’t some American Rust situation, where things just get more and more hopeless and wedding receptions have Port-A-Johns. People here aren’t overcome with despair, though they are a little cynical.
What’s a typical day for me? That’s the thing about being a cop: we don’t have “typical” days. As detective sergeant, I can assume I’ll have paperwork to do, reports to read, and my own cases to work, but how much of each, or what kinds of cases? There’s no way to know what might come in, or become important, in any given day.
One evening last February, I was hanging out with my friend and the retired chief here, Stush Napierkowski, drinking beer and talking about that night’s high school wrestling match (Penns River won again. WPIAL champs ten-plus years running) when I got a call to tell me one of our cops shot and killed a guy. Black cop. White guy, who had used racial slurs. Later we found out the dead guy was a white supremacist and his fellow travelers from five states around are coming to town for the funeral and whatever else they can think up. Oh, and there’s a major snowstorm. And, before I forget, the local casino is having a poker tournament where a million dollars in cash will be on the gaming floor. Not to mention the shooting of an officer.
The funeral, casino event, cop shooting, and snowstorm were all on a Sunday – my day off – when I’d planned to watch a basketball game with my father.
A lot of people think big cities get all the bizarre calls, but when’s the last time some big city cop dealt with
• A man stealing heavy construction equipment out of his own front yard.
• Meth cookers stealing small flags from neighbors to cover the lab windows.
• A man shot through both butt cheeks at the conclusion of an argument over who ate the last of the chocolate chip cookies at a house across town.
Never a dull moment in Penns River, but I was born here and passed on several lucrative job offers to come back after I got out of the Army. It’s not perfect, and there are things I wish I could change, but I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
White Out, A Penns River Crime Mystery #7
Genre: Police Procedural
Release: July 2022
Purchase Link
It’s been a tough winter in Penns River and things aren’t getting any better. A major snowstorm looms as a police officer shoots and kills a man after a bar fight. There are four complicating factors:
1. No weapon is found on the dead man.
2. The cop is Black; the victim is white.
3. The victim is not just white; he’s a white supremacist.
4. A national leader of the movement wants to use Penns River to set an example and create a martyr for the cause.
Fellow travelers from several neighboring states converge on the town for the funeral as an even bigger snowstorm roars in with them.
While the Penns River police try to keep the lid on, the Allegheny Casino holds a poker tornament. One hundred players each put up $10,000 in cash. The winner walks away with all of it. In cash. The situation is fraught enough without the local cops having to answer every call as if it might be the start of a riot.
Meanwhile, business as usual goes on. Domestic calls still require attention. Traffic accidents increase in the snow. The police department is in transition as older officers leave, their slots filled by either new officers fresh out of the academy, or those who followed the new chief to Penns River from Boston and have big-city attitudes about small town situations.
Detective Ben “Doc” Dougherty is still getting used to his sergeant’s stripes as he’s pulled into the streets for riot duty and must confront the idea some of his peers may be more sympathetic to the incoming agitators than they are to some of those they swore to protect and serve.
The weekend will stretch the department to its breaking point as events converge to a violent conclusion.
About the author
White Out is Dana King’s seventh Penns River novel. He also writes the Nick Forte private investigator novels, two of which earned Shamus Award nominations from the Private Eye Writers of America. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, most recently The Eviction of Hope. You can get to know him better on his website (danakingauthor.com), blog (danaking.blogspot.com), Facebook page (dana.king.735), or Twitter (@DanaKingAuthor).
All comments are welcomed.