To say that Sheriff John Hutchins was Frowntown's favorite person would be a bit of a over statement. He was, however, appreciated by many citizens, and respected by most, even if only because of the badge on his shirt and the ability for violence on his belt. John was well liked enough to get him reelected for the past 4 years, and he felt like he did a pretty good job of keeping Frowntown safe. Not that he found a whole lot of work to do, since there were usually less than ten thousand people in town. Most of his time was spent chasing college kids at night and filling in paperwork during the day.

John had at his command three officers at a time for most day shifts, when he was usually in the office. On weekends he would keep four or five officers on duty, at least while the university was in session, but usually only between 10pm and 3am. All his men (no women worked on the force in Frowntown) had to be able to come in to the "office" from home if they were needed, and they were all expected to carry a gun and a radio, even when they were off duty. Police work in Frowntown wasn't ever just a desk job, and Hutchins' boys were more than happy to strap on that semi-automatic respect generating tool whenever they left the house.

None of them had ever actually had to put a gun to work outside of the holster. It was generally enough to show up at a party and tell whoever answered the door that they were going to jail tonight if the party didn't quiet down, and that would usually be the end of that. The frat houses were far enough away from the rest of town that they didn't really bother anyone, and most of the domestic abuse calls came from far enough outside the town limits that the state cops claimed authority and cleaned up the mess. John spent most of his time handing out speeding tickets and filling in county paperwork.

John had only a couple of truly interesting calls this year - he liked to tell the story of Tim Kenney, the mechanic who just seemed to snap one night. Tim had been a pretty normal guy, raising a little hell as a high school student when John was a beat cop, but eventually settling down and opening up a garage just off Main St. where he worked on trucks. John brought his own truck in there a number of times, whenever it needed suspension work, or broke a transmission mount from bouncing around on the dirt roads up on Bower Mountain.

Tim had just lost it one night last January though, and killed some college kid after a fight about trucks. Both of them were pretty drunk, and it seemed like the college kid was looking for a fight, telling Tim whatever he could think of, just to get a rise out of him. Well, it worked, Tim stuck his knife in the kid's chest, took off for the hills, and disappeared. John had called all his troopers, gotten everyone up on the mountain that night putting up roadblocks and watching for Tim's blazer, but nobody ever saw him again. Two months later some kid put a call into the office that he had run across a big white blazer in the woods, with a body inside.

Turned out that Tim, drunk as he was, had managed to get damn near all the way over the mountain on this skinny little jeep trail. He had slid backwards into a ditch on the left side of the trail and spun his wheels all the way through the snow into the dirt. Looking back at the night and deciding he wanted either liberty or death, he ate the end of a pistol he didn't have a permit for. That poor kid that found him in his truck probably wouldn't ever forget the blood all over the back of that blazer, or the lonliness of the whole scene. Too bad too, that same kid was nice enough to pull over and help direct traffic after some accident a couple months previous. That college kid's parents were pretty happy to know we had found Tim though.