Characters

Reed Garrett Dixon was born just after midnight under a muggy and moonless sky in the back seat of a 1962 Ford Galaxie on a rural blacktop thirty-five miles short of the nearest hospital in Tupelo Mississippi. He was raised by an adoptive family on a farm in central Arkansas. After graduating from Johnson County Consolidated High School in 1986 he left for Marine Boot camp in San Diego and served with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Iraq earning a Bronze Star Medal for Valor. After his four year enlistment was completed he moved to Oklahoma City, graduating the 22 week police academy in Summer 1991.

Summer Theissen-Dixon is an Oklahoma City native and graduate of the prestigious Pinecrest Academy, (’89) and Central Oklahoma University where she earned a degree in History. She is the middle of three children and oldest daughter. One of the “popular” girls in school and the self-proclaimed favorite at home she is accustomed to using her charm and smile to get what she wants. She rarely heard the word “no” growing up and lives her life intending to remain a stranger to the expression. Her dreams of a marriage to a knight in shining armor with a white picket-fence and flowers in the garden marriage and family are challenged by the realities of life with a police officer.

Randy Berkely graduated the Oklahoma City Police Academy in December 1990. He married his wife Melanie the year after they graduated high school. Both are the only romantic partner the other has known. He is a faithful and dedicated husband and father to his three children and avoids the station house raillery and drunken choir practices enjoyed by many of his peers, preferring to be at home with his wife. Though he is known for his clean, wholesome vernacular and conduct, his reputation among his peers is that he is an aggressive, rock-solid cop who can be trusted in the most difficult of circumstances.

Leroy Jerome Ritter was born at Oklahoma Memorial Hospital and raised five miles away in the traditionally all-black community of Durland Heights. He joined the Navy after graduating Roosevelt High School in 1982. He served on the U.S.S. New Jersey off the coast of Beirut and took part in the shelling of antiaircraft batteries after the U.S. Marine barracks bombing in October 1983, during which he earned a Navy Commendation Medal for his leadership in action. On December 24th of that year, two hours before being entertained on board by Bob Hope, he learned that his older brother had been killed in a drive-by shooting four blocks from his family home. After his enlistment he worked as a bank teller before joining the Oklahoma City Police Department. He graduated the academy with Reed Dixon and Jon Faucett in the summer of 1991 having overcome an undiagnosed struggle with dyslexia. In spite of harassment and pressure from childhood friends, Ritter requested to be assigned to serve the community in which he was raised. He married the only daughter of the police department’s first black deputy chief and had a son, Leroy Jerome Ritter, III. They call him Trey.

“Trey” Ritter was four years old and with his mother and her boyfriend in Dallas Texas the night his father died. It was supposed to be his daddy’s weekend visitation. He is the grandson of the Oklahoma City Police Department’s first black Deputy Chief, Henry Grant and grew up knowing three different men as stepdad. He did not know about the folded U.S. flag and picture of his father in uniform until he found them in his mom’s attic the summer before his senior year at Edmond High School. He joined the U.S. Army after high school and had a tattoo of his dad’s name and police badge inked onto his right thigh along with a rabbit’s foot one night in Germany. In October 2012 he was on a patrol in Logar Province, Afghanistan and was severely wounded by an Improvised Explosive Device. The blast took his right leg at the hip, his right arm below the elbow, and the sight in his right eye. He also suffered partial, permanent hearing loss and massive facial and upper torso wounds. He is a recovering alcoholic and a frequent spokesman on Veterans Issues.

Another faithfully dedicated family man, Jon Faucett graduated the police academy with Reed Dixon and Leroy Ritter and was assigned as a two-man unit with the latter. Mostly bark and little bite, Faucett plays himself off as a real Rico-Suave ladies man with a larkish, frat-boy attitude in spite of the fact that he could never be unfaithful to his wife. Though he has attended a few choir practices and will have a periodic drink with his colleagues, he is most comfortable at home with his wife watching some variation of sports involving the University of Oklahoma where in the early 2000’s he would send both of his kids and most of his money.

Willie Lee “Stroker” Maples was born and raised in the Oklahoma City suburb of Bethany and never let the question, “Would a mentally unstable person do this?” keep him from trying something different. Gregarious and outgoing, he barely finished the required three years in patrol before being tapped to work a temporary undercover vice assignment that ended up being a permanent stretch in the department’s Special Projects unit. After an unfortunate prank in which he accidentally misdirected a fax containing a photocopy of his butttocks to the Chief’s office he transferred out of vice to narcotics. There he started dying his naturally black afro various shades and colors depending on how festive he is feeling in the moment, (he prefers neons over earth tones). His most notable characteristic is that he speaks with a laid-back Southern California surfer vibe that, along with his appearance, has caused many of his peers to wonder if the circus is in town and if he is working a case there trying to fit in. He has never been to the ocean nor ventured further west than Colorado his entire life.

Christen Juliana Moore was raised in upstate New York and was her high school class valedictorian. She completed a business degree from Syracuse University and won a full scholarship to the University of Central Oklahoma in order to complete a Masters of Psychology. Goal oriented, tough minded, and carrying a full course load of masters level work, she struggled to avoid debt with no family or support system nearby. She took a job tending bar on nights and weekends at a high-end, upscale gentlemen’s club where she had heard tips were enough to live on. She ended up becoming best friends with one of the dancers who convinced her that while bar tips were good, she could earn more dancing. She bit the bullet and became a dancer while maintaining her commitment to finishing her degree early, store up cash and avoid debt. Her passion is to work with women and youth struggling with addiction.

Dwight Mullinex became an Oklahoma City Police officer in 1975 and worked in uniform patrol until transferring to the airport police unit in 1990. Popular among his peers and humble with citizens, he needs to complete his thirty years on the department. By then his kids would be grown and out of the house and he can retire with his wife to southern Oklahoma and and start a cattle ranch. His quiet, unassuming disposition became a juxtaposition with a nickname he could now laugh at, but would never shake, and the fact that one historic evening he became the central focus of the biggest case Oklahoma City had seen in years.

Roy Marks is a Vietnam veteran and joined the Oklahoma City Police Department in 1973. He has just about seen and done it all on the streets. Marks spent several years as a detective before being promoted and survived two shootings, (1978 and 1985) in which he was wounded once and killed both his assailants. He became a Lieutenant back when most of the officers who work for him were still in grade school and is fiercely loyal to each of them. He is a tough, hard-nosed, “old-school” cop, but carries a paternal affection for his officers to the degree that upper command officers wince and approach with a sense of dread when disciplining those under Marks because they simply don’t want to have to face him.

Russ Milar was a patrolman in a small village in New York for three years prior to joining the Drug Enforcement Agency. He worked extensively in central and south America for years and was peripherally involved in the investigation of Pablo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel in Columbia in the late eighties and early nineties. He is an excellent investigator and laser focused on results and enjoys even more the accolades and promotion that accompany them. He has a machine-like reputation for closing cases and being where the action is. One small, but enormously consequential, decision in a bar one night in Guatemala changed the course of his life and everything he would touch.

Paco Manolo moved to Oklahoma City with his family from Pueblo Colorado as a child and was raised on the northwest side of the city. Working the streets and interacting with the criminal element is second nature to him. He puts off a disarming vibe that netted him tremendous success as a patrol officer, and later, a narcotics investigator. Even those whom he arrests are proud to have been pinched by him. He is quiet and self-contained and keeps conversations at work official and to-the-point allowing few, if any, into his inner sanctum. He does not think in terms of long term ambition, but pours all he has into the cases to which he is presently assigned allowing absolutely nothing to distract him and his mission of closing that case and moving on to the next one.

Terri Hopkins was married for eleven years to a rotten, lying, cheating, bastard of a husband who was a patrol sergeant in the Oklahoma City suburb of Norman. She was already an Administrative Assistant with the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigations when she found she was pregnant with his child after what was supposed to be a inebriate one-night-stand during a statewide investigators conference in 1986. He was married at the time. He divorced his wife to marry her, but recently traded her in for a younger model. Since then, the once strikingly good looking unit-secretary has allowed her bitterness and anger to go unchecked although she still works in offices surrounded by investigators. Most are men who she mostly despises, especially those who swagger past her desk sucking in their stomachs while giving her a smile and a wink. Her life motto is, People Suck, but she really just means men – especially, cops.

Laura Birch is Summer Dixon’s younger sister by three years. She shared the same middle class upbringing as her older sister and brother, but moved to the Charlotte North Carolina upper crust with her insurance executive husband following his latest promotion. Her presence in Summer’s life is proof that blood is thicker than anything.

Emmitt and Lenox have been partnered together in the police department’s homicide unit since the late eighties and have a reputation for closing cases so airtight the district attorney is almost always guaranteed a win. They have earned the highest respect of their peers on the department and most of the brass. Their professionalism and commitment to the truth of every case is tested when it appears one particular case they are working on is going to move in a troublesome and dark direction.

Stephen Blevins and Robert Estes first met while attending the four and a half month long DEA Training Academy just outside of Washington D.C. in 1993. Both had successful assignments elsewhere in the U.S. before reconnecting at the Dallas field office, having been reassigned there due to the heavy flow of narcotics coming up through Mexico along the I-35 corridor. Like many of their peers they have deep respect for local law enforcement and recognize the importance of interagency cooperation. They both endeavor to disassociate from the not-entirely-unfair-or-unearned reputation many federal agents have for having an air of superiority and bulldozing other non-federal agencies in the course of investigations.