A Very Special Reporter’s Notebook

There are plenty of notes stocked up from the last month of high school basketball and swimming. But coming home Tuesday night, I had a bizarre encounter that warrants sharing on its own.

I had just left an especially scintillating girls basketball sectional game¹ and pulled onto the main drag of a small town about half-an-hour east of Indianapolis. About a quarter of a mile in front of me, I saw an Indiana State Trooper pull on to the road and head the same direction I was traveling. So I was careful to keep it at the 25 MPH in-city speed limit, and not punch it too hard once we hit the city limits. In fact, I gave him plenty of space, as he didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.

As I puttered along on the two-lane, county road about six car-lengths behind him, I noticed two cars coming up behind me very quickly. The first, a pickup, didn’t hesitate. They gunned it and flew right around me. I slowed further, as I expected them to duck back in front of me when they saw there was a cop ahead of us. He did slow a bit, but got right up close to the cop.

Interesting and bold, I thought.

Seconds later the second car blew by me. But this time it was another state trooper. Surely he would hit the lights momentarily and pull the pickup over, right?

As I waited for that to happen, a third vehicle approached from behind, again very quickly. And again, it flew right around me. This was a county sheriff SUV.

Something was going on. But none of the three law enforcement vehicles flipped their lights on at any point, nor did they or the mystery pickup sandwiched between them go terribly fast once they got around me. I slowed a bit more just to give myself plenty of time to stop if they did hit the sirens at some point.

After about a half mile, there were lots of brake lights in front of me. The pickup ducked into a farm on our left. The second state trooper and the sheriff also pulled into the farm, but on the opposite side of the grain silo as the pickup. Ahead of me, the first state trooper continued on, but very slowly and with his brake lights on. As I passed the farm, I saw a man jump out of the passenger seat of the pickup and start running towards the equipment shed. Hey, wait a second. That looks like a rifle in one hand and a flashlight in the other. What the hell? And was that a guy from the passenger seat also running towards the shed?

It occurred to me that I might want to get the fuck out of Dodge.

But ahead of me, that first state trooper was doing a three-point-turn in the middle of the road to reverse his course. And, amazingly, there was another unmarked cop that had been in front of him that was turning around as well. Once they got headed back east, they zoomed by me and then I zoomed my ass out of there.

When I figured I was a safe distance away, I just starting laughing and yelled, “Holy shit!” out loud.

Since no sirens or lights were ever engaged, had I stumbled onto a raid of some kind? Was the pickup carrying undercover officers? Perhaps it was a training session, prepping for some big drug bust in the future. Or, as I told one of my college buddies referring to another one of our knucklehead pals who became a cop, were they just cops out f-ing around at an abandoned farm?

I checked the news when I got home and there weren’t any stories about something going down east of Indy. Same for the paper the next day. And again today. Even a Google search for any news from that town shows nothing new.

So I don’t know what the hell was going on. But it sure made the drive home on a bitterly cold night a little more interesting!