One Glance from Shiva

My name is Jerry Peterman, Detective Jerry Peterman, retired. I’m not a writer, but I write this memoir. So now you know I’m not dead...yet.

The first time I died, or almost, was in ‘95. Drive-by. I was undercover and shaking down a crackhead when same crips drove past and started shooting. A damned bullet grazed my neck. The second time was in ‘99 and put me in a coma for almost two weeks. Another drug bust this time on a crackhouse and one of the sons of bitches came out with an AK. After that, my wife Meredith begged for us to relocate.

In the fall of 2000, Meredith, our 9 year old son Sam, and I came down to Cary, North Carolina. I took up a position with Cary PD, and that’s where I would ride out my last 6 years before retirement. I was 59 years old.

I rode around in a ‘78 Chevy Impala, dark brown, with my partner, Stephen Pinko. Pinko or Pink, for short, is a fine detective, Durham native, black fellow, goes by the book.

A pig-faced man crossed over Dynasty Drive and onto the Black Creek section of the forest off Cary Parkway. By pig-faced, I mean he had a face like a pig. He was out of shape and he crossed the street as if in a hurry to disappear into the woods. He was dressed for a leisurely walk. His hair was greasy. He had on a faded, dirty, forest green polo shirt and khaki pants and nondescript brown shoes.

Pink and I watched him do his thing. “Shady ass,” Pink said. I watched as the pig-faced man was absorbed by the greenery, then shifted my focus to a neon green, or chartreuse colored caterpillar crawling across the windshield, its feet suction cups like dildo bottoms.

“Not sure what he’s up to,” I said. “Maybe someone’ll find out. Or maybe they won’t.”

Down Evans road there was a little old white southern house with a porch and another house behind it and the whole property just looked wrong. At 3 a.m. you would hear dark, I mean really dark — satanic — rap music. I’ve got murder on my mind, I’ve got murder on my mind. Horrorcore. A couple guys with dreadlocks pulled up in a black Acura one night around midnight while Pinko and I were watching the place. These guys pulled a young black girl — nine or so, same age as my son — out of the back seat and dragged her into the house. Instinctively, I reached for my pistol and was ready to jump out of the car. Pinko held me back saying not enough cause, no warrant. I didn’t give a fuck. I walked up to the door and knocked and when the guy opened the door I stabbed him in the throat with my open hand. Pinko came over running with his glock out and I went in and found the second guy ready to abuse to the young girl and I stabbed him in the neck with my open hand two, severing his windpipe.

The girl trembled in Pink’s arms and the guys were in the floor one twitching and the other still. I wiped my hand with a handkerchief and Pink glared at me over the girl’s shoulder shaking his head.

“There’s scumbags everywhere,” I told Pink later. “Someone’s gotta line ‘em all up, knock down a few of the bad ones.” Pink looked out the window on the driver’s side. “Shiva loves all demons and gods. But I’m no Shiva.” He looked at me then.

In the 80’s I spent time with the Aboriginal people of the Australian outback. I was mentored by a shaman there and I learned how to track animals by purely mental means. In other words, there’s a field of thought I learned to tap into, and I even got to where I could remotely view other people’s dreams. Later on in my world travels, I learned a striking art inspired by the movement of a crane and that’s how I became able to kill with my bare hands.

On a rainy evening in May, I had Pink over to my place.

“Holy shit,” he said when he came in. I was playing the didgeridoo and wearing some traditional aboriginal garb. “I don’t believe that." He hadn’t seen me like that before. When I play the didgeridoo I get visions. That night wouldn’t end up being your average rainy North Carolina night in May.

At around nine, Pink’s wife Bobby called to tell him their son Devon didn’t come home after playing at a friend’s house after school. Normally he would ride his bike on the Black Creek greenway trail and be home by seven, but tonight he didn’t. Pink went into the living room and made a few calls to some of the guys at the station and I continued my didgeridooing and began to have visions.

There was the bog. A black bog off Aviation Boulevard with bodies. The bodies of young people. Kids. The pig-faced man. Someone would find out. Find out what he’s been up to. Horrorcore rap music at 3 a..m…murder on my mind. The chartreuse caterpillar.

I should really hire a ghostwriter. I don’t know how to write this memoir.

Suddenly I saw Pink’s son, Devon, in the clutches of the pig-faced man. I knew where they were, generally, but there wasn’t much time. We jumped into the impala.

Out on the Black Creek greenway off Dynasty Drive, Pink and I followed a trail that appeared to me in my mind’s eye as a purple path. In other words, if I closed my eyes just enough, a purple path appeared before me and this would lead us to Pink’s son.

We crossed over the creek and suddenly heard a cry for help. Devon! Pink called out. We sprinted toward the voice and when the pig-faced man heard us coming he tried to run but pink tackled his ass and put him in a full Nelson.

“You all right man?” I asked Devon. He was shaken, but ok, and didn’t appear to have been abused.

“Different when it’s your own, ain’t it Pink? You want to cut his throat?”

“I’ll just hold him,” he said.

The pig-faced man struggled in the full Nelson, and he was in his feelings. God, he really did have the face of a pig.

I looked to Devon. “This is the bad guy,” I told him. He looked without nodding. Say hello to the bad guy, I said. Devon said nothing. The pig-faced man was still now. “Devon,” I said, “say bye bye bad guy.”

He said, “Bye bye, bad guy.” And I hit him with a crane strike that penetrated so deep that my fingers wrapped around the back of his trachea and I pulled his windpipe all the way out and held it like a crane might a snake.

Detective Jerry Peterman retired from law enforcement and is now a celebrated true crime author, having won a number of awards including a Pullitzer prize for excellence in writing.