It was a routine patrol on a late summer morning. Finn was alone in his car; cruising the streets with his eyes out for traffic violations and for the usual trouble makers. It was with the latter in mind that he swung around Graystone Park. Located away from the center of town, it was a one of the favorite settings for nefarious activities of all sorts.

School would start in another week, reducing one source of mischief to a more manageable level. With that thought fresh, the uniformed officer took note of two young boys huddled in conversation with a suspected drug dealer. The kids looked to be eleven or so, the sort no one would pay any attention to. Their innocent appearance was perfect for running the dealer’s errands, picking up money and delivering the goods.

Finn watched from a distance. The dealer left the park in one direction and the youngsters in another. The policeman got ahead of them and parked. Stepping out of his vehicle, he pretended to be interested in the registration plates of a car adjacent to the sidewalk the kids were traversing. When they reached his position, he collared the two of them and had them in the back of his cruiser in less than 30 seconds.

The lack of obscene invective told him that the boys were probably not working for the dealer. The scumbag was only checking them out for whatever use they might be. At the least, he would want to be on speaking terms with potential future customers. Still, there was no harm in making sure.

The youngsters looked the way they do when they’re trying not to appear frightened. Their faces showed no expression. It was their wide eyes and pallor that gave them away. Finn, in the driver’s seat, twisted around to face his captives.

“What were you doing with that guy in the park?” the policeman asked them sharply.

“What guy?” the brown haired boy said. “Nothing,” the blond replied at the same moment, giving the lie to his friend’s remark.

The officer fixed his gaze on the brown haired boy. “The one I saw the two of you with,” he said accusingly. “What were you talking to him about?”

“Nothing,” the kid said, deciding to try his chum’s line.

“I saw your mouth moving. You were saying something.”

“Leonard just said hello to us, that’s all.”

“If you know his name, you must know he’s a drug dealer.”

Now the boys’ fear was clearly apparent. There was a chorus of denial, a fugue, as each repeatedly disavowed having that knowledge with overlapping variations on the theme. Finn waited for their song to run its course. He just stared at them until they realized that the excessive length of their protestations was weakening their believability. Silence followed a ragged ending.

“What are your names? Where do you live? Who are your parents? Where do they work?” Finn interrogated, restarting the cacophony. The officer raised his voice, “One at a time.”

“You first,” he said to the blonde, “and if you tell me one lie, I’m taking the both of you to the station.”

*****

After gathering information from the youngsters, Finn made both boys show him the contents of their pockets. The blonde boy, Eric, had a house key and had related that his divorced mother worked out of town.

“I’ll have to search your rooms,” the officer told the youngsters. “We’ll start with Eric’s.”

Tem minutes later, they drew up in front of the Nichols house. Finn escorted the boys to the front door. “Open up,” he told Eric. The youth never thought to question the authority of the policeman. He did as he was told and led the man upstairs to his bedroom.

“I have to search you boys first,” the fellow informed the kids. “Strip down to your shorts.” He seated himself on Eric’s bed and patted the spaces to his left and right. “You put your stuff here, and you there,” he ordered them. “Shoes and socks up here too.”

The boys looked uncomfortable, then looked at each other, but they did it. Finn figured there would be less fuss with the two of them being together. Unspoken mutual support would make them feel less vulnerable, less humiliated. The officer made a show of looking for drugs, turning everything inside out and feeling the hems.

“OK, off with the briefs,” he commanded. Here, there was a delay while the kids considered compliance. “Unless you want me to just check inside for myself.”

That did the trick and they pealed them down. No little packets dropped out. Not that Finn was expecting any.

“Is this your desk?” the man asked Eric, unnecessarily.

“Yeah,” the youngster admitted.

Finn went over to it. It had a long, shallow drawer above the knee hole and three deeper, narrow drawers, to the right. “Open the bottom drawer,” he ordered.

When the boy came over to do that, the man put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. He left it there while the kid bent to do as he was told, stooping with him as though to look into the revealed compartment. With his left hand, the officer moved the youngster’s possessions around. The other hand seemed to move absentmindedly over the lad’s back.

Similar attitudes and motions accompanied a search of the other drawers of the desk and those of Eric’s bureau. “What’s that door? A closet?” he demanded to know.

“Yeah,” the youth said.

Finn opened the closet door and pushed the hanging garments to one side. Apparently seeing something on the floor behind the trousers and coats, he got down on his knees. “What’s in this box?” he asked, his tone at once, suspicious and triumphant.

Eric came forward to see what it was the policeman was indicating. “It’s old toys and games I don’t use anymore.”

“Uh huh.” The man sounded like an unbeliever. “Get in here and show me.”

The boy knelt down and crawled in beside the fellow. He folded back the cardboard flaps. The officer crept further in, ostensibly, for a better look. “Take everything out of there,” he told the kid.

While Eric was thus occupied, Finn took the opportunity to run both hands over the boy’s body. If the kid took exception he didn’t say so. The officer wondered why he was doing all this to the lad. It was stupid and he knew it.

What he really wanted was to hold the youth in his arms, kiss and touch his body, talk to the lad about whatever interested him, get inside his mind. Although he would never have used such a word, it was intimacy the big, burly policeman craved. The idea of fucking the youngster would have appalled him. Eric was too small for that. Giving the boy an orgasm with his own hands would be good. Accepting one from the kid would be all right too.

Instead, the only way he could see to have the smallest part of what he desired was this abuse of authority. It was not unlike when he was that age with the priest. They both knew it was wrong. Finn never told anyone about that, not until there was a chance of using it to mitigate his own punishment.

*****

It had been stupid to involve two kids. With one, it would have been his word against Eric’s. And maybe Eric would have kept quiet, like Finn had done for so long. But the other boy told his parents what had happened and Eric had corroborated his story

As it was, he could only plead a moment of weakness. He apologized profusely for the pain he had caused the boys and their parents. He knew because he had been abused as a child himself. He couldn’t understand why he had done such a terrible thing, he said.

Character witnesses were prepared to testify to his unblemished record on the force, how he was a good family man and churchgoer. A psychologist was ready to explain how the stress of police work could build up to the point where such an uncharacteristic behavior could occur. His wife and adult children stood by him.

The prosecutor concurred and offered the policeman a deal. This was in order to spare the boys from having to testify, he said. Finn would plead guilty to one count of child molestation and accept a one year sentence, suspended, probation for a period of three years during which he would have no unsupervised contact with children, a course of psychiatric treatment, pay the cost of therapy for both boys and stay away from the victims and their families. His record would be expunged upon successful completion of the probationary period and his pension rights would then be restored.