It’s after midnight at the sheriff’s office when the lieutenant gets a call that a fugitive, wanted for murder and armed robbery, is visiting his old girlfriend. The lieutenant looks around for backup.

There are two possibilities-an investigator studying a case file, and a deputy coroner sipping stale coffee. "Let’s go," the lieutenant says to both men, while heading out the back door. "We got places to go and people to see. This guy’s a bad dude; shoots people just for the fun of it."

Twenty minutes later the sheriff’s car turns onto a gravel road and stops about 100 yards from the house. The three men creep up toward the house hoping to surprise their man.

There are no lights on inside the shingled house, but a near-full moon lights up the countryside. There’s no vehicle anywhere in sight. The lieutenant walks back to the patrol car and drives it off the road and behind a clump of bushes.

"We’ll wait it out," says the lieutenant. It’s 3:00 a.m. As time wears on the deputies get restless. They swap jokes, laugh, and carry on-but always with an eye toward the gravel road.

"How about if I go for pizza and Coke?" the deputy coroner asks. The lieutenant puts his finger to his lips. "Shush. Nobody goes anywhere."

Three men sitting on the ground side-by-side under the moonlight-almost asleep in the pre-dawn quiet. The deputy coroner, about to die of boredom, suddenly lets out a blood-curdling yell and fires two shots into the ground.

The lieutenant and the investigator jump nearly out of their skins. Believing it to be an ambush, they grab their weapons, dive for cover, and start looking for the shooter.

The deputy coroner can’t stop laughing. But he’s the only one laughing. The lieutenant’s report makes no mention of gunfire, but the deputy coroner is never again asked along as backup.