Call Me Shelly (2): In Shelly’s Shadows

It's Friday afternoon, August 5th, 1994.

For the regular folks, all those nine-to-fivers working for the weekend, it's going to be a great night of leisure, perfect for tennis or golf or maybe a cold beer by the river.

For others around town, the workday is just getting started.

Just look at them now with their dead, tired eyes scattered out in every direction in duplexes, family homes, and trailer parks.

Bartenders and blackjack dealers, waitresses and hotel staff, nurses and police officers, they all revive themselves slowly and sit carefully upright again.

coffee mug in hand, maybe a smoldering cigarette dangling between pinched lips.

You know the drill.

Run your fingers through your hair, stand in hot shower, rinse, repeat.

Here we go again.

Another unsung night of serving.

Serving drinks, serving food, serving papers, serving the public.

One police officer just coming on duty that late afternoon is Officer Cliff Emmert.

Cliff Emmert has been dealt a different kind of assignment today, and it's about to take him all over town.

His superiors have instructed him to visit the gaming locations in town.

Bars, motels, anywhere Shelly Juleson's employer operates.

Places where Shelly and her FALF friends work, can drink, and play.

Places she's been, places she might be found.

The assignment itself is straightforward and above ground.

On paper, it's called investigating.

But a good investigator intuitively hears the underlying goal, the secret mission, so to speak.

And Emmert's mission is a type of quest, a quest to catch a feeling, a sense of Shelley's world.

Officer Emmert's unspoken marching orders sound more like this.

Swoop in there under the neon and ask questions.

Talk to Shelley's friends, enemies, co-workers.

Snoop around in the slick shadows and talk to the little jack corners and the blackjack corners.