1
I waited some more. I went up to the entrance, and the officer told me to go back and wait in my car. I went back and waited some more. Then the other officer I had first encountered came back, trudging purposefully across the lush lawn of the circle framing the entrance; I thought he was bringing my license, but he wasn't; he wanted to take my vehicle registration card to copy as well! He assured me they would be returned.
More waiting. The guard with the patrol van moved it; he parked next to my car, then got out, lounged against his van; his squawk box chattered; it was a beautiful day: just comfortably warm, blue skies with puffy clouds, dry air, a rarity in early September in the Hudson Valley. I was wasting it.
Another guard, and a sergeant (white shirt, shoulder stripes), sauntered up to the guard's van--on the other side from me. They chatted good-naturedly about baseball to each other; I think it was about the Yankees.
The guard with the van told me: "They've called the State Police. It depends on what they decide before you get your license back."
I still wasn't panicked, I'm not sure why. The calm of someone who knew he was innocent?
Then, out came the guard who had taken my license and registration, followed by the Watch Commander and several other guards.
The Watch Commander questioned me again. This time, I figured I'd better come clean. I told him about the book, about wanting a cover image for it. I also told him where to find the book: at smashwords.com. And I told him, "I'll just have to buy an image on the web, a generic prison picture."
Finally, the State Police arrived. At first, a detective, in casual clothes, asked the same questions, while a uniformed cop took notes.
Then he told me why they considered taking pictures such a serious matter. This was a major "facility" and there were a lot of men inside, as well as all the correctional officers (one doesn't call them guards in the prison biz); it could be a terrorist target. He said this with total conviction.
When I think of this, it sounds ludicrous, but he was serious. Then he asked: "Are you a terrorist?" He was grinning as if it was a joke, but he meant it. Then he asked, could he be sure there was no terrorist paraphernalia in the car? When I assured him, he asked, "Will you let me search it?"
There was nothing in that car--I thought--that was at all suspicious. "Sure. Go ahead." I opened the trunk. It was empty. The detective rummaged through the shopping bags (cloth) and sweater on the back seat, the cast-aside shirt on the front seat. The detective checked the pockets in the sweater. Nothing.
He then went through the glove compartment. Suddenly he held up a small, resealable plastic bag. "What's this?"
Maybe, what saved me was that I was genuinely surprised. The bag had about ten marijuana seeds in the bottom, and as the State Trooper remarked disdainfully, "some residue." Really, at that moment, I didn't know where it had come from. I had only gotten the car in December. It had been years since I'd tried (unsuccessfully) to seed marijuana along people's forest margins, the only reason I might have had for carrying some in my car..
He asked me if they were mine. Truthfully, several friends had offered me seeds, so I said: "A friend of mine must have put it in there!" I was genuinely bewildered.
"No friend of mine would do that," remarked the Trooper.
Well, it turns out that the police--and the "correctional officers"--were much more concerned with discovering whether or not I was a terrorist. The detective asked, politely, if I would submit to a search of my person.
