“Nice to meet you,” Meghan said shyly.
Stivick reluctantly took his eyes off of her and turned back to Jake. “Did your little girl sleep through all the commotion?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” Jake asked. “A freakin’ bomb wouldn’t wake Caydee up if she doesn’t want to wake up. Some of the best advice we were given was to not make any attempt to be quiet around her when she’s sleeping. It pays off.”
“Hmmm,” Stivick said thoughtfully. “My wife and I weren’t given that advice. Now we have a couple of pre-teens who wake up whenever a mouse farts.”
“That’s a bummer,” Jake said lightly. “But it is good to have some anecdotal evidence to support the hypothesis.”
“Uh ... right,” Stivick said slowly. “Anyway, we got Phil and Dana in custody, as I’m sure you saw on the camera. Not sure what we should charge them with though.”
“What are those things they were slingshotting all over the property?” Jake asked.
“Dirty diapers,” Stivick said.
Jake’s eyes widened. “Dirty diapers?”
The sergeant nodded. “Dirty disposable diapers, to be exact.”
“I see,” Jake said. “And why are these hippies using a slingshot to shoot dirty disposable diapers over our fence at three-thirty in the fucking morning? What did we ever do to them?”
“You use disposable diapers for your baby,” Stivick said simply. “Do you remember that interview you gave a few months back where the reporter asked you if you used cloth diapers to help protect the environment?”
“Yes,” Jake said. “And I said, ‘fuck the environment’. I was kind of joking about that. I honestly didn’t think that reporter would actually print that statement. And it was quite out of context.”
“Well, Phil and Dana took it very seriously when they read that,” Stivick said. “They decided to teach you and Laura a lesson.”
“By doing the very thing that they are protesting?” asked Laura incredulously. “They’re mad about disposable diapers messing up the environment so they litter our property with disposable diapers to show their anger? That makes no sense at all.”
Stivick shrugged. “These people are not rocket scientists,” he said. “In their minds, they were asking how you liked it. And they also were not planning on getting caught. They knew you had a camera and a motion detector on the gate, but they were quite surprised to find that you had them on the approach to the gate as well.”
“Where did they even get the diapers?” Jake asked. “They don’t have a baby, do they?”
“They got them from the dumpster behind the KinderCare in SLO,” Stivick said. “At least that’s what they told Cartwright and Brooke. They said it took them almost a month to gather that many. And I’m here to tell you, those things are rank. I almost puked when I looked in the bag.”
“Disgusting,” Laura said.
“That’s where I used to work,” Meghan added. “And come to think of it, I did see that van hanging around the area the last few weeks I was there.”
“You should smell the inside of that van,” Stivick said.
“No thank you,” Meghan said with a wince of disgust. “Cleaning a baby’s booty is one thing. Dealing with month old diapers is something else entirely.”
“You got that right, hon,” Stivick said. “In any case, this is far from a first offense for Phil and Dana. They’ve been arrested for egging SLO city hall, for breaking into the chicken farm outside of Paso Robles so they could free the chickens, and are routinely caught vandalizing the fence at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant. They have a particular hatred for the nuclear plant.”
“Are they married, or what?” asked Laura.
“Not really,” Stivick said. “California is not a common law state. They belong together though.”
“What happens now?” asked Jake. “Are they under arrest?”
“Well, that kind of depends on how you want to play this,” Stivick said. “There are several things we can charge them with, all misdemeanors, but, since they are misdemeanors that occurred in the presence of Cartwright and Brooke, we can charge them and you won’t have to make a citizen’s arrest and go through all the bullshit that entails. The question is, do you want us to arrest them and charge them?”
“What would you charge them with?” Jake asked.
“Trespassing would be the first thing,” Stivick said. “You have signs at the property line stating that this is private property and that trespassing is forbidden. They disregarded those signs and acted in a manner that implies they intended to trespass. As for the diapers themselves, we could probably get the DA to agree that malicious mischief is applicable. I’m not sure that vandalism would actually hold up here. And then there’s always illegal dumping. Shooting soiled diapers over a fence onto private property that is not a designated waste management site certainly meets the elements of illegal dumping.”
“I see,” Jake said. “And what kind of punishment would they receive for this act?”
Stivick shrugged. “They would definitely get hit with a hefty fine,” he said. “They would likely be ordered to pay restitution to you for whatever it costs to clean up the mess. And, with their priors, if you get the right judge and he or she is in a particularly bad mood on the day of sentencing, they might even get thirty days or so—although they would undoubtedly be allowed to serve it on the weekends only, and would probably get at least half of the time off as long as they weren’t total assholes inside the jail.”
“Hmm,” Jake said thoughtfully. “Hardly seems worth the time and effort.”
“I don’t know,” Stivick said. “It might teach them a lesson. And a fine will certainly hit them where they live. They both receive disability payments from social security as their primary means of income.”
“What kind of disability?” Jake asked. “They looked pretty fuckin’ healthy when they were slinging dirty diapers around with an oversized slingshot.”
Stivick shrugged again. “Who knows?”
“I don’t want to send people on a disability pension to jail,” Laura said.
“Yeah, me either,” Jake said. “When the reporters get wind of that, imagine how they would twist it. It’s just like when that bible thumper’s kid put acid in my hot tub. They would just make it seem like a harmless prank that I overreacted to.”
“Acid in your hot tub?” Stivick asked. He had not heard that story. “You mean ... like the burning acid, not the tripping acid?”
“The burning acid,” Jake confirmed. “He snuck in our back yard and poured five gallons of it into the hot tub. The amount you’re supposed to use is about half a cup. I caught him doing it and he wanted to fight. He was a big kid, six foot plus, football player. I punched him a few times before I even realized it was a kid. The media had a field day with it.”
“Wow,” Stivick said. “The diapers don’t quite rise to the level of acid in the tub—you could make an argument for attempted murder or at least attempted mayhem for that—but I get where you’re coming from. Phil and Dana aren’t exactly beloved around SLO county, but you’re more fun to sling innuendo about.”
“Don’t I know it,” Jake said. “How about they just clean up the mess they made, go away, promise to stay the hell away from us, and we don’t press any charges? Would that work?”
Stivick nodded thoughtfully. “We can probably persuade them that that is in their best interests,” he said.
“I want every last one of those diapers picked up and taken away,” Jake said. “And I want it done right now.”
“Okay,” Stivick said.
“Oh, and one other thing,” he added.
“What’s that?” Stivick asked.
“I want the slingshot and the frame.”
“You do?”
“I do,” Jake confirmed. “In the first place, it’ll keep them from using it again.”
“Okay, I can see that,” Stivick said.