I felt a moment's euphoria after making that rather dire pronouncement. I had done it! I had actually done it! I stood there next to the phone booth for several seconds, not moving—until suddenly the full import of what I had done and said came crashing in on me, like some monstrous tidal wave on a defenseless hermit crab.

I'd committed a felony.

I started to shake.

Then I started walking. Once more, I wasn't thinking very clearly, but this time I was lost in a panic of fear rather than in a swirl of conflicting imperatives. I was, however, thinking clearly enough to know that the authorities (whoever they were) might have been able to trace my phone call somehow. How, I didn't have a clue—I'd been on the phone no more than fifteen seconds—but it seemed wisest to get as far away from that telephone as possible.

I descended the escalator, then wandered aimlessly up and down the vast airport concourse, as paranoid a fellow as you have ever met. I saw security guards mobilizing. Men in uniform were speaking into walkie-talkies all over, as were men not in uniform, and they were all hurrying this way and that, very purposefully. No average visitor to the airport would have realized that anything strange was happening—the activity was quite low-key for all its urgency—but I, of course, had inside information. I was careful as I wandered not to look too closely at any of these security personnel, because I was unreasonably certain that all one of them would have to do would be to look in my eyes and then he would know beyond a doubt that I was the person who had made the telephone call that had started all the quiet uproar.

After about twenty minutes of my furtive meandering, I had to talk to someone. I was going nuts. There was no longer much of a security presence in evidence, but I still felt extremely exposed. I found a pay phone way off down the concourse, dropped in my coin, and dialed up the sister missionaries. Again.

And thus made my second colossal blunder of the evening.

"L.D.S. missionaries," said Sister Roper.

"It's Elder Shunn," I said.

"Oh, good," said Roper. "Has President Tuttle made it there yet?"

"I haven't seen him," I said.

"Are you someplace where you can see the entrance, so you'll know when he gets there?"

"No," I admitted, "I'm not."

"Well, find a place where you can and then call me back." Again, Roper's tone brooked no disobedience.

So I headed back down the concourse to a stand of phones near the front entrance, where I also had a good line of sight to the Customs gate. I dialed the sisters again. "Okay," I said, "I'm in position." (All right, that's probably not exactly what I said, but it does lend a nice caper/espionage/thriller feel to the narrative.)

"Good," said Roper. "Still no sign of the President?"

"None."

"How long until Finn's flight leaves?"

I checked my watch. "Only about five minutes or so."

"Did you call the airline?"

I hesitated. "Uh, yes—yes, I did."

"And what did they say? Are they going to hold the flight?"

"I, uh—I'm not sure. But they're certainly considering it."

"Well, let's hope they come through. Where's Finn right now?"

"I'm not really sure. He's gone through Customs already. He may have boarded by now."

"You're kidding," said Roper in obvious exasperation. "He's gone through Customs?"

"Of course he has." In my own exasperation, I prudently refrained from mentioning that it was only the prudent thing for him to do—after all, he did have a flight to catch.

"Well, is President Tuttle going to be able to talk to him when he gets there?" asked Roper.

Hmm. There was something I had overlooked. Beyond the Customs gate was what is known as a "sterile area." You can only get through the gate if you have a valid passport or visa, plus a plane ticket to the United States. Effectively, this sterile area was American soil. You're only allowed there if you're leaving the country. Even if President Tuttle did make it to the airport before Finn's flight left (an event the probability of which I believed I had raised by at least an order of magnitude), he still wouldn't be able to get through the Customs gate. He wouldn't be able to talk to Elder Finn. "I doubt it," I said.

"Then you're going to have to go clear the way, Elder Shunn," said Roper firmly. "Go to the Customs gate and explain the situation and make sure President Tuttle can get through without any delays when he makes it there."

Like an obedient fool, like a lemming following the rest of the crowd over the cliff, I did what she said.

Now, had I been thinking clearly, I never would have gone near the Customs gate, not with everything else that had happened that evening. But I'll cheerfully admit that I was not in my right mind, breaking the law not being something I made a habit of. Like a lamb on its way to the slaughter, I said goodbye to Sister Roper and then ambled on over to the Customs gate.

By my watch, it was about time for Flight 789 to be jetting off into the friendly skies. Two young women stood behind the Customs gate, which looked more like the admittance gate to an amusement park than anything else, with the kind of turnstiles that count the number of people who pass through. I explained to these two women that I was a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (it seemed necessary, since in my jeans and sweater I probably didn't look much like a missionary), and that one of our other missionaries was quitting his mission early, just running away, and that our . . . well, our clergyman, our minister, was coming to the airport to try to talk the runaway into staying, and would they please let him, the minister, through Customs when he got there so that he could do it—um, talk to the runaway?

Yeah, I know. Highly suspicious. I wouldn't have trusted me either.

The two women looked at each other nervously, then said that they were just closing up for the evening and wouldn't be able to help me. They said I would need to speak to their supervisor, then invited me to wait just inside the gate while one of them went to get him.

After a few moments, we were joined by a tall, bearded fellow with an obnoxious, supercilious attitude. He wore a bright orange windbreaker, and he looked a lot like Stephen King (though Mr. King has always seemed much more personable than this fellow was, gory fiction aside). I repeated my story for the bearded fellow, who very rudely told me that I was an idiot. (He didn't use those words, of course, but his words combined with the tone of his voice said that very clearly.) Then he said I would have to speak to his supervisor.

After a few more moments, we were joined by a gaunt, older woman with nicotine-stained fingers who reminded me a lot of Bette Davis. After listening to my request, she went off in search of someone else for me to speak to.

I was getting pretty nervous by now, I must admit, and I became even more so when a short, balding, middle-aged fellow joined us. He wore a plaid shirt and a tweed jacket with elbow patches, and he looked just like Bob Newhart, but with slightly lighter hair and a neat mustache. He introduced himself thus (though I regret to say that I can't recall his name): "I'm Constable X with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Why don't you come with me so we can talk for a few minutes?"

Now, before we go any farther, I should perhaps clarify a couple of things. First, you should know that, when I phoned in my bomb threat, I never expected that Elder Finn's flight would experience anything more than short delay. I admit that I was thinking no farther ahead than President Tuttle's arrival at the airport (which, as far as I knew as I stood there in the sterile Customs area, still had not occurred), but it still seemed to me that the delay would be relatively insignificant—no more than half an hour, in any event.

Second, I made the call less than half an hour before the flight was due to leave. Where would you have pictured the airplane with less than half an hour until takeoff? My thoughts exactly! The plane was surely on the runway, perhaps taking on luggage, maybe preboarding a few passengers! As it turned out, this was not the case, but I'm sure you can understand my thinking. (And yes, this point will become quite important later on in the story. Persevere!)

It was six straight up as my new friend Constable X led me through the Customs area and into a dim passage away from the corridors leading to the boarding gates. We entered a small but comfortable office a short way down this passage. Farther down the passage I spotted a sign that read: "Calgary Police Department, Airport Precinct."

The constable's office was dim, with dark blue-gray walls. A man was just sitting down at a typewriter stand beside the constable's desk as we entered. This fellow gave me a baleful look and muttered something about how it should have been time for him to be going home, thank me very much. The constable waved me to a chair, then seated himself behind the desk.

I knew I was in trouble.

It was only instinct telling me this, not logic (my higher functions were short-circuited for the time being, as you have seen), but I later reasoned out what my instincts were telling me. Two unlikely events happen within a half-hour of each other—some nut calls in a bomb threat on a flight to Salt Lake City, and some Mormon

missionary shows up at the Customs gate with a cockamamie story about another missionary running away. These incidents aren't related? Yeah, right. That and a nickel won't get you a cup of joe at the donut shop next door to the precinct. Coincidences happen, sure, but this? I was right to be nervous.

"Now, Mister, ah--?" said Constable X.

"Shunn," I said. "Elder Shunn, actually. I'm an ordained minister."

"I see," said the constable. "Now, could you tell me what you told the Customs people out at the gate, please?"

So I rehashed the bit about Finn wanting to leave his mission and so on and so forth. The constable listened attentively, while the man at the typewriter took notes.

"So then," said the constable when I had finished, "you've been in contact with people from your . . . mission?"

I nodded slowly. "Yes, I have."

"And how did you contact them?"

"Well . . . by phone."

"Ah, I see." Constable X stroked his neat little mustache and looked at the desktop. "And you called them from here? From the airport?"

I didn't speak for a moment. "Yes."

"Mm-hmm. And . . . did you make any other calls from the airport here this evening?"

I shook my head with false nonchalance. "No." Then again, more decisively: "No."

The constable pursed his lips. "Perhaps I should inform you that we're currently conducting a criminal investigation here at the airport—a serious criminal investigation. Now, if there were any way you could help us resolve the matter at hand, any information you could give us that would help clarify things, I'm certain that all of us involved would be very grateful, and that the fact that you helped us out would be remembered." He spoke matter-of-factly, never raising his voice. "Now, may I ask again if you made any other phone calls this evening?"

And in a small voice I said: "Yes, I did." Because I knew he knew, and it just didn't seem that there was anything else to do.

"How many?"

"Just one."

He leaned forward, seeming more interested now. "May I ask who you called?"

I sighed. "Western Air Cargo," I said.

"I see. And what did you say to them?"

Somewhat resentful of the careful questioning, I said, "I think you already know what I said to them."

Constable X shook his head. "I need to hear it from you," he said.

I sighed again. "I said, 'There's a bomb in a suitcase on Flight 789.'"

The constable showed neither surprise nor satisfaction. "I see. And is there, in fact, a bomb on that flight?"

"Not as far as I know," I said.

Flight 789 grounded, as pictured on the front page of the Calgary Herald Metro Section, February 24, 1987.

He sighed, apologetically almost, and said: "And now I'm afraid I'm going to have to place you under arrest."

Constable X read me my rights as I sat there in shock. I don't recall the words, but I remember thinking how strange the Miranda-style rights were in Canada. Very much like the rights you hear read in the States, but just different enough to make you feel as if you have fallen into an alternate universe. Very disorienting and Twilight Zone-ish.

(As an aside, a Canadian friend of mine in Brooks, Alberta, once told me the secret of Canadian culture—or the lack thereof. "We borrow everything from the U.S.," he said, "change it just enough to mess it up, and then call it Canadian." This also reminds me of an apocryphal story that someone Canadian once related to me. This person told me that Maclean's—the Canadian analogue to Time or Newsweek, not to be confused with McCall's—once ran a contest to find a Canadian counterpart to the phrase "as American as apple pie." Entrants, of course, were to fill in the blank in the phrase "as Canadian as . . ." The eventual winner? "As Canadian as possible.")

"You're being charged with public mischief," the constable told me when he was through with my rights.

That didn't sound so bad, as criminal charges go. "What does that mean, exactly?" I asked

Constable X put on a pair of reading glasses and opened a book that was on his desk. After searching for a minute or two, he said, "Public mischief is the 'willful and deliberate interference with the lawful use and enjoyment of public or private property valued in excess of one thousand dollars.'"

I had to agree with the appropriateness of the charge. Jet planes no doubt cost a mite more than a thousand smackers. "What sort of a sentence does that carry?" I asked anxiously.

The constable raised his eyebrows. "You know, I couldn't tell you. I've never arrested anyone for public mischief before. You're my first. But I can't imagine that it would be very stiff." Now that the difficult and stigmatic part of the visit—my confession and arrest—was over, he seemed much more friendly, even relaxed, like we were just new pals chatting. "Let me remind you, as it said in your rights, that you don't have to say anything more to me. If you'd like to give a full confession, that's fine, but if you want to wait for a lawyer, then you can do that, too."

I didn't have a lawyer, of course—though I figured the mission could get one—and I certainly didn't want a public defender. "No, I just want to do whatever it takes to get this all over with," I said. "I'll make a confession."

"You're sure?"

I nodded.

"Okay, here's a form." He handed me a pen and a legal-sized sheet of paper. "We're going to ask you to write out everything that led up to the phone call you made. If there's anything you feel you should explain—your state of mind and so forth, including anything you think are mitigating circumstances—then you should feel free to do so. Then you'll have to sign it and one of us will sign as a witness."

Before I started, I asked, "What's going to happen to me from here on out?" It was a question much on my mind.

"Well, I hate to do this," said Constable X, "but I'm afraid we're going to have to lock you up here for a bit when you're through with the confession. Some detectives will come pick you up later this evening and they'll take you downtown, where you'll go in front of a bail magistrate. I don't see any problems there, considering why you seem to have done what you did. Assuming you have someone who can post bail, you should be free before the night is over. Public mischief really can't be a terribly serious crime. I wouldn't worry very much."

Thinking back over the last few years of my life, this may be the reason that I always assume any carefully laid plans in which I am involved will end up not working out. Because that is not at all what happened.

Not that this was entirely Constable X's fault. In retrospect, I find myself fairly certain that he chose to charge me with the seemingly minor crime of public mischief after he had heard my confession as a way of sparing me most of the ordeal that followed. It was a kindness—or rather, an attempted kindness. I just wish he'd been a trifle more familiar with the associated penalties.

It took me about half an hour to fill in both sides of the legal-sized form. I related—in extremely abridged fashion—pretty much the same tale I've been telling you. When I was through, Constable X, somewhat apologetically, led me down the hall and into the airport police precinct. There were half a dozen desks scattered throughout a long, low, fluorescent-lit room, and a dozen or more uniformed cops were lounging around drinking coffee. They watched me balefully as I followed the constable through the precinct room, not hiding their hostility. Contempt was thick in the room, as if they were all angels and I was Satan being led away to the bottomless pit where my Millennial chains awaited.

I was taken to a holding cell and locked in. The door was thick, made of solid metal, and the cell was painted a bilious yellow. It was shaped like a thirty-sixty-ninety triangle, with a bench along the short side and the door and a large window set into the hypotenuse. The window was covered on the outside by a Venetian blind, which was drawn. There was a toilet near the small angle of the cell, opposite the bench. Fortunately, I didn't have to use it; I was acutely conscious of the fact that anyone could pull that blind and peer in at me.

Badly frightened despite the constable's assurances, I stewed there in the cell for forty-five minutes. I was praying that somehow God would get me out of this mess. I probably even promised him that I would never make another bomb threat as long as I lived. (That's a joke, son.)

At about seven-forty-five by my watch, the cell opened and Constable X entered, accompanied by two detectives. One was a man with black hair and a thick mustache, and the other was a blonde woman in her thirties wearing an extremely short and provocative dress beneath her open trenchcoat. She had nice legs, though she wasn't blindingly attractive. Constable X introduced the detectives, then shook my hand, wished me good luck, and left.

The male detective said, "Now, we're going to have to take you out to our precinct for a bit while we do some paperwork on you, and then we'll be taking you downtown for your bail hearing. You'll need to walk between us out to our car. Out of respect for your calling, we're not going to cuff you, but we have to warn you that you are under arrest, and if you try to run we'll have to consider it resisting arrest, and then we will cuff you and charge you with another count. Do you understand?"

I said yes, and we left. We had to run the gauntlet of the hostile precinct room again, but before long we were walking briskly through the dark and empty airport concourse. I stayed squarely between the two detectives, looking straight ahead, while they made small talk back and forth as if I weren't there.

Their car, a brown sedan, was parked in an emergency zone just outside. They let me into the back seat, and before long we were rolling through the night, back toward the city and my night-court appearance.

I didn't discover what was happening with such other players in our story as Elder Finn and President Tuttle until some time later, but for the sake of variety (if nothing else) perhaps we should drop in on them now and see what they were up to while I was being taken into custody.

Call it bad luck, bad timing, bad karma, a bad hair day or whatever, but it seems that President Tuttle and Elder Bruce arrived at the airport just barely not in the nick of time. As they later related it to me, they showed up at a bit past six. After a quick canvass of the nearly empty airport terminal, they approached the Customs gate, which by then was closed down for the evening. They were certain that I would be waiting for them somewhere nearby.

Elder Bruce, who was younger, stronger, more virile (I presume), and had better eyesight, peered into the ill-lit depths of the sterile Customs area and said, "Hey, President. Isn't that Elder Shunn way off down there?"

President Tuttle looked as hard as he could, but saw only a couple of dark figures disappearing through some door or into some side passage. He shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I can't tell."

"Well, I'm pretty sure that was him," said Bruce, "but he's gone now."

Of course, what Bruce saw was most likely me being escorted to the office of Constable X, where I would shortly make my full confession. But the way it seemed to Bruce and Tuttle at the time was that I might be flying the coop again myself. After all, what else would I be doing in the sterile Customs area other than heading off to catch a plane?

I probably gave President Tuttle a fresh gray hair right then and there—and, as I've said, I was destined to give him a whole lot more before the whole affair was ended.

Fairly soon—after a bit of shouting, I think—Tuttle and Bruce managed to attract someone to the Customs gate. Unfortunately, it was my old friend—the surly, bearded Stephen King lookalike in the orange windbreaker. After a hurried explanation of why they needed to get inside the Customs area, the bearded man very rudely told them to forget it.

But President Tuttle wasn't giving up yet. He asked if Beardman would mind relaying a message to Elder Finn—in whatever departure lounge the boy might be, well, lounging—asking him to come out front and chat for a few minutes. Reluctantly, Beardman did as he was asked—and no doubt took great relish in returning to inform Tuttle that Elder Finn had expressed a desire never to see or speak with him again.

Well sir, even this didn't deter President Tuttle a single whit. (Mormons, you know, are notoriously persistent. Kind of like pit bulls.) He and Bruce sauntered innocently away from the Customs gate, and Beardman went back to whatever it was that he did for a living. As soon as the coast was clear, though, Tuttle crept back to the gate and (with difficulty, I can only imagine) climbed over it. He had apparently gotten quite a good distance into the Customs area and was trying to figure out where to go from there when Beardman and a security officer spotted him. Accompanied by Beardman's shouts of "This is a sterile area! This is a sterile area!", the security officer rather roughly escorted President Tuttle back out the Customs gate, with a warning that if he tried anything like that again he would be arrested.

(Um, have I mentioned the Mormon pursuit of a higher law anywhere here before?)

I guess there wasn't much else for Tuttle and Bruce to do at that point but leave the terminal. And that was when they noticed the Aries K assigned to Finn and McKay still parked outside in a fifteen-minute loading zone (without a parking ticket, amazingly enough). That about cinched it up for them; I was long gone as far as they were concerned.

But then again . . . but then again . . .

Why would Finn and I park the car in a fifteen-minute zone if we were both about to fly out? Wouldn't it have made more sense to leave the car in the parking garage and spare the mission the cost of a parking ticket or of a possible impound? The parked car only made sense if I thought I would be returning to it fairly soon, and in that case . . . where the hell was I?

Meanwhile, Elder Snow (in the company of some other elder, of course—gotta stay with that companion!) had returned to our apartment from the interrupted leadership conference to get some dinner. Once President Tuttle had contacted him to see if I was there at the apartment, Snow was able to report that none of my clothes, possessions, or luggage was missing. If I had gone home, then I was certainly traveling light.

Six-thirty came and went, and the Bray family—with whom (and particularly with their delectable daughter Heidi) Elder Finn and I were to have had a d.a. that evening—called the apartment to see where I was. It was then that Snow knew something was very wrong.

He knew I would never have missed that dinner appointment without a damned serious reason. He knew I was in trouble.

Of course, there's quite a difference between knowing that Elder Shunn is in trouble and knowing what to do to help him. Elder Snow called President Tuttle, and suddenly a search by all the missionaries in Calgary was on. The sun had gone down by then, of course—this was winter, and quite far north—and Snow was unreasonably convinced that someone was going to find me dead in a ditch somewhere in the dark.

This all-out search may have seemed reasonable at the time, but by my lights it was exactly the wrong thing to do—as we will see before much longer.

But what of poor Elder Finn? When last I saw him, he was in line at the Customs gate cursing my name to high heaven. What was he doing all this time? Well, as he was sitting in the departure lounge, waiting for his flight to be called and minding his own business, there was a nasty surprise waiting for him just around the corner.

Travel with me to the cockpit of Western Flight 789. The time is 5:35 p.m. We are en route from Edmonton, ten minutes away from a landing at Calgary International Airport, where we will have only a scant ten minutes to take on luggage and a few additional passengers. There are eighty-one passengers already on board.

Suddenly the Calgary tower radios the pilot. "An anonymous caller claims there's a bomb in a suitcase on your plane," says the tower. "Please proceed directly to the emergency runway and evacuate the plane immediately upon landing. Traffic is being diverted to clear your way."

(If you don't see the implications for me yet in this, then stick around for further installments. It's bad.)

Within ten minutes, the plane is on the ground, and only then does the pilot inform the passengers that there has been a bomb threat and they must evacuate. No point in worrying anyone needlessly while the plane is still in the air in case the threat is just a hoax, right?

Well, eventually these eighty-one passengers stumble into the departure lounge, where they and the twenty-nine or so new passengers who were to join them are informed that there will be a delay while the aircraft is searched. This is the first that Finn has heard of the bomb threat—and he is immediately certain, no doubt, that it was my doing. The profanity begins again—no doubt.

Before much longer, the airport police—having just learned that a Mormon missionary is responsible for the bomb hoax and that another missionary is somehow involved, but not yet having my full confession in hand—come looking for Elder Finn.

And they haul him off and grill him mercilessly for the next hour and half, shouting things like "You and your other Mormon friend are in this together, aren't you?!" and "What are you two trying to do, huh?!" and "What's the game here, anyway?!" and generally being mean, vindictive sons of bitches.

This used to provide my only satisfaction when I thought about Elder Finn's part in this whole sorry episode. From my current vantage, I feel as though I used to be every bit as mean and vindictive as those cops.

Of course, there was no other satisfaction for me to be had. When the plane was declared clean and the passengers were at last allowed to reboard, the cops had to let Finn go. They had nothing on him. And the plane with its 109 passengers (one woman was so distraught by the bomb scare that she refused to get back on board) finally left, ninety minutes behind schedule. Only a handful of these passengers made their connecting flights in Salt Lake City.

One of them, of course, was Elder Finn.

I had gotten myself arrested for no reason.

So Finn made it home—the lucky stiff—despite all I did. I say good for him. But where did that leave me?

It probably seems odd that I should name this chapter what I have, in light of the fact that, at this point in our story, I have already confessed my crime. Ah, but something I didn't realize when I made that confession was that I would subsequently be required to confess again and again.

Remember me, by the way? I'm the rather terrified young fellow sitting in the backseat of an unmarked police sedan as two undercover detectives drive me into the city.

But not too far into the city. Before very long, we pulled into a mostly residential suburban development on the outskirts of Calgary—but not an actual suburb, since it was inside the city limits. Calgary doesn't really have any suburbs—or at least it didn't when I was there. It's all alone out on the plains, and it covers a truly staggering amount of square mileage. What in any other metropolitan area would be suburbs are all enclosed within the Calgary city limits, and there's not much of anything—besides farmland and oil fields—beyond. For a city of 750,000, it has an unusually low population density, thanks to its unusually large area.

In a lonely, rather undeveloped part of this pseudo-suburban sprawl stood a small police station—a low, boxy, modern red-brick structure that looked like it should be housing some small high-tech firm out in an industrial park. The front of the building was, of course, accessible to the public, but a high cyclone fence extended out from each side, enclosing a large parking area to the side and in the back. The car pulled to a stop just outside a gate in this fence. The male detective rolled down his window and stuck a card into a slot, and the gate slid smoothly aside. We drove through and the gate closed behind us again.

The detectives took me into the precinct building through a back door. The building seemed mostly deserted, with only dim lights glowing in most of the corridors. They led me past a thick door—made of wood but fitted with an intricate locking mechanism—and into a cramped brick hallway with coarse carpeting on the floor. Several offices were situated here, all in a row, most with open doors—but on the opposite side of the hall was a row of doors that were closed. And locked.

I was permitted to make a phone call before anything else happened. I didn't really want to explain the mess I'd gotten myself into to President Tuttle, but my dread of that was nothing compared to my dread of being jailed—and if I were going to get out of jail that night, then someone would have to travel downtown and post my bail. So I called the mission office.

And I got no answer.

I tried my apartment. No answer. I tried Elder Van Wagoner and his companion. No answer. I tried the sisters. No answer.

It was after eight in the evening. Where were they all?

I had no idea at the time, but now, of course, I know that everyone I tried to call was out hunting for me, afraid they would find my battered and broken body stuffed down behind a dumpster in some alley. I suppose it's flattering that everyone was so worried about me, but their misplaced concern was certainly doing no good for my peace of mind.

When it became clear that I wasn't going to get through to anyone, the detectives unlocked one of the doors opposite the row of offices and sent me into the room beyond.

They had explained that I would be held at their little "suburban" precinct for a short time while they did a little paperwork and arranged a slot for me on the docket at the bail hearing that night. Only a short time, I was assured. Then we would head downtown—to the real jail. Oh, boy. I couldn't wait.

The thing they didn't explain was where exactly I would spend that "short time."

The room they locked me into was no larger than four feet by eight. It contained one chair. It didn't look like a cell—it looked more like a strangely shrunken office, with bland, textured wallpaper and more of that industrial-strength carpet that would take the skin off a rhinoceros if one happened to trip and slide across it—but it sure as hell felt like a cell.

I sat there. And I sat there. And I sat there some more. I waited. I stewed in my own juices. I followed the second hand on my watch on its maddeningly slow sweep around the face of the dial. I counted the holes in the ceiling tiles. And I prayed pretty darn fervently, mostly along the lines of "Get me out of this one and I'll be good for the rest of my life." (For some reason, I only ever seemed to pray fervently when I wanted a quick way out of trouble.)

I also recited aloud the topics covered in all 138 sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. (This is one of the four "standard works" of the Church. The other three are the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price.) Every month, the Calgary mission came up with a new set of scriptural trivia for the missionaries to memorize, and for February it happened to be the topics of each section of the D & C. I also sang the lyrics to a rather jazzy tune I was in the process of composing for my girlfriend Katrina, called "Turn Off the Storm." I wondered if Katrina would still love me now that I was a criminal.

After about half an hour of this stark raving boredom, the cell door opened. The female detective brought in a chair and closed the door behind her. She was still wearing the intensely short dress I'd been so hard-pressed not to notice earlier. (My guess was, she'd been posing undercover as a hooker.) Readying a pad of paper and a pen, she sat down in the chair opposite me. She told me was there to take a verbal confession from me.

This was when I really started to sweat. Not because of the confession, but because I was locked into a tiny room with a woman. Not just any woman, either, but one with killer legs almost one hundred percent on display. I hadn't been alone with a woman for close to six months. To say that this made me uncomfortable would be an understatement. I thought for sure I must be breaking some obscure mission rule just by her being there, regardless of the fact that I had no choice in the matter. (Can you say "unreasonable cultivation of guilt"? Can you say "Mormon legacy"?)

Of course, the detective was totally businesslike throughout my confession. When we were finished, she let me use the telephone again. But once more I couldn't reach anyone I knew. After assuring me that I'd be on my way downtown to the bail hearing soon, the detective gave me my own pad of paper and a pen, asked me if I wouldn't mind writing out yet another confession, and locked me back into the cell.

Well, this new confession kept me busy for a while longer, though I was damned if I could understand why I had to go through this all so many times. (It later turned out to be a way for the cops to check for consistency between separate tellings of my tale—a test to see if I would trip myself up, I guess.) But after a while I finished the new confession and signed it, and the female detective came and took it away, and I used the phone again, and again I got no answer, and then it was back to more waiting.

I was slowly going mad.

Then at about nine-thirty, the door to my cell burst open. An absolutely huge police officer filled the doorway. His nametag read "Officer Wolfe." He had dark hair and a mustache and shining eyes and a wide grin, and he said, loudly enough to shake the roof, "Elder! Looks like you got yourself in a little bit of trouble!"

I knew immediately that this great bear of a police officer was a member of the Church—it was obvious from the familiar way he called me "Elder." But, unwilling by this time to believe that something good might finally be happening to me, I went ahead and asked the dumb question anyway: "You're a member?"

"Of course!" roared this good-humored giant. He seemed to be having a hard time keeping from laughing. "I'm Officer Wolfe. I heard what was going on with you, and I had to come back in make sure you were being taken care of right!" Then his demeanor changed to concern. "How are you holding up?"

"Pretty good, I guess," I said, but my voice betrayed me by quavering—and I started to cry.

Well, Officer Wolfe turned out to be just as cuddly as he looked. He gave me a big hug while I let it all out. Then we talked about things for a few minutes, and Wolfe laughed and laughed. When he found out that no one from the mission knew I was in jail, though, he took me to one of the offices across the hall. "Do you want to call your mission president yourself, or would you rather I did it for you?" he asked.

"I've been trying all evening, and I haven't been able to get him," I said. "But if he's there—yeah, I'd rather have you talk to him first."

Wolfe asked for the president's name, and found his home number in the phone book. I, of course, had not known President Tuttle's home number offhand, or I might have tried it earlier. Wolfe had Tuttle on the phone in short order.

"President," said the officer, relaxing in his chair, "this is Officer Wolfe of the Calgary Police Department calling. Are you missing one of your elders? . . . Well, don't worry. I've got him right here in my office with me. Yes, he's fine . . . but I'm afraid we've got him in custody. . . . Public mischief. . . . Well, it seems he was trying to keep his companion's plane from leaving on schedule so you could get there to talk to the guy—by calling in a bomb threat to the airline. . . ." He couldn't keep the amusement out of his voice. "Pretty creative thinking, wouldn't you say? . . . Yeah, what's going to happen is, he's being taken downtown to the Remand Center pretty soon, and he's going to go up in front of a bail magistrate. There shouldn't be any problem, as long as someone's there who can post bail. . . . Shouldn't be all that serious, no. . . . Mm-hmm . . . Just a second." Wolfe covered the mouthpiece. "Do you want to talk to him?"

I nodded, and Wolfe passed me the phone. "Hello?" I said timidly.

"Elder Shunn," said President Tuttle in a friendly, warm way. "Are you okay?"

"Uh-huh." I managed to say it without starting to cry again.

"Are you scared?"

"Yeah."

"Don't worry about anything. I understand why you did what you did, and it was a good thing you were trying to do. You may have gone about it the wrong way, but I know your heart was in the right place. We're going to get you out of there, don't worry. I'll be downtown for your bail hearing, and I'll bring Elder Snow with me."

"Okay."

"You hang in there, Elder Shunn. You're going to be just fine."

"All right."

I passed the phone back to Officer Wolfe, who spoke with President Tuttle for a bit more, then hung up. Then I had to go back to my cell.

Fortunately, it wasn't long before the detectives came for me again. By now it was pushing ten, and I was plenty worried about making a bail hearing in time. I mean, how late did the things run?

"Don't worry," said the male detective when I asked. "The hearings will still be going on by the time we get there, and for some time after that."

Officer Wolfe was there as the detectives escorted me out of the precinct, wishing me luck. I hated leaving him behind, because I have to admit that I felt safer with him around.

We followed the same drill as before—walk between the detectives, be good, follow instructions, don't bolt, and no cuffs. I climbed into the back seat of the car. The streets were quiet, and it took no more than ten minutes to get downtown. Once there, we drove down a narrow alley behind a gigantic concrete block of a building, at least five stories on a side. We parked near some other police vehicles, then got out of the car. I looked up. We were deep in the alley, and there was only a narrow strip of dark sky high above—five stories high, to be exact. The feeling was claustrophobic. It was like being at the bottom of a canyon cut through rock by a tiny stream over eons of time.

We were finally downtown—that magical destination the name of which people had spoken in reverent tones all evening—that El Dorado, that Xanadu, where everything was going to be made right. At last.

The detectives led me into the building through a heavy door with a small barred window. Inside, the light was dim and buttery. There was a service window to one side, protected by a strong chain-link screen, and beyond that a storage area. The detectives and I both had to fill out papers at the window, and I had to hand over my wallet, my watch, my belt, and all the contents of my pockets to the duty officer there. My cash and change were counted and noted, and then I had to sign the listing of my personal effects. The duty officer sealed them all in a big plastic bag, to which he then clipped a tag. The bag was filed in one of the many rows of pigeonholes behind him.

Then the detectives wished me good luck, and they were gone. Another officer, this one not friendly at all, led me down a couple of dim hallways, then unlocked a whitewashed door that opened into a painfully bright area with a couple of benches, some lounging guards, and a few rooms leading off into who knew where. We went though this area to a barred gate that led into a short row of cells. Through the new gate we went, and then down the row a short distance to a rather large holding cell, maybe twenty feet by twelve, fronted entirely by whitewashed bars.

There were benches attached to the side and back walls of the cell. In the corner was a metal partition, screening a toilet. A light bulb in a mesh cage burned overhead. The walls were dingy white.

There were four or five folks already in the cell. Lovely people—really. Ragged clothing, dirty faces, bad hair, beard stubble, ranging in age from what looked like sixteen to maybe forty. They were all smoking cigarettes. They all looked mean.

And they all looked at me with what seemed to be hostility as I—with my clean clothes, clean nails, clean face, and neat haircut—was locked into the cell with them. I felt like a lamb chucked willy-nilly into a den of hungry wolves.

If I still had any illusions about this being Kansas . . .

Actually, we came to a pretty good accommodation fairly quickly, my fellow jailbirds and I. I'd just sit against the far wall pretending I wasn't there, and everyone else would ignore me.

Hey, it worked for me.

Of course, the first thing that happened when I entered the cell was that someone asked me for a cigarette. I said I didn't have one. Then someone asked me for matches. Again, I said I didn't have any. And the game of "Pretend the Pretty Little Teenager Isn't There" officially began.

As I say, that was fine by me.

I was in a completely alien environment. These were not the kind of people I had ever associated with. I wasn't comfortable around them. I didn't like them, instinctively. I was convinced that if I attracted their attention in any way, I would be in for big trouble—whether as their revenge upon the better-off classes or just out of sport, I don't know. All I know is what my paranoid gut told me. Stay on the bench, keep your head down, don't make eye contact, and for God's sake keep your mouth shut.

I did fine on all counts.

But as the evening progressed, I started going quietly bonkers. I had no wristwatch. I had no way of knowing how much time was passing. The mind plays funny enough tricks with time when you do have clocks available. When there's absolutely no reference point for judging the passage of time, the mind plays tricks that are a thousand times stranger. I suppose it wasn't too bad at first—but it was destined to grow much worse.

As the evening progressed in its maddening way, other arrestees circulated into and out of the cell. One or two guys would be brought in, then a couple would be taken out, then another would be brought in, and that's the way it went. Most of the ones being taken away were going to see the bail magistrate. After they left, they didn't return.

A lot of odd sorts rotated through the cell—the stereotypical aging biker-gang types, surly teenagers, some Southeast Asian hoods, a derelict or three—but not a single one that didn't frighten me, not a single one I would have cared to know. Hell of an attitude for a missionary, I know, but there it is. I just stayed on my bench and tried to be inconspicuous.

The thing most all of these societal cancers asked when first they arrived at the holding cell (and I must say that all these fellows struck me as familiar with the routine—repeat offenders, in other words) was whether anyone had a cigarette. Next they would ask for a match. Cigarettes were fairly common; matches weren't. Folks lit their smokes from other people's butts. Chain-smoking was the order of the day. If every cigarette went out at once, there might never be a way to relight them all. The Little Match Girl would have been named queen of the cell block if only she were unfortunate enough to be hauled in for loitering or vagrancy. Her product was precious, worth more than gold.

Sometime in the middle of this smoke-in, a guard came to the cell door and called my name. My heart leaped. Lots of names had been called since I was locked in, but never mine. This meant I was on my way to the bail hearing! One step closer to freedom!

The guard unlocked the door to let me out, and I followed him back down the corridor. "Where are we going?" I asked optimistically.

"To get you printed and photographed," he said sharply, as if I had no business speaking.

My spirits fell like a cannonball dropped through tissue paper, like a black hole dropped through anything. Only at that moment did it finally hit me that I was criminal. I was a real criminal. I was about to be booked. My fingerprints and mug shots were going into an actual book somewhere, to be filed away with all the rest of the common scum in Calgary. To someone glancing idly through the photos, there would be no distinction. I was one of Them.

With that cheerful thought for accompaniment, I followed the guard into a small divided room with a counter and a sink. On the counter was an ink pad and a fingerprint card. A short cop of late middle age with a sagging face and bristle-cut hair was seated there, waiting. He stood up, moved to the counter so his back was to me, then told me to stand directly behind him. I did, and he told me, rather angrily, to get closer. I did. Rather too much closer, I thought.

"Give me your left hand," said the cop. He raised his left arm a bit, and I put my hand through the gap between it and his body. He grabbed my hand and jerked, yanking me right up against his back, as close as two sardines in a can.

He took a better grip on my hand. With a series of short, sharp, and completely ungentle movements he slammed each of my fingers down on the stamp pad in turn, pounding each one onto the print card between. Pinky to pad, pinky to card, ring finger to pad, ring finger to card, middle finger to pad, and so on: whap! whap! whap! whap! whap! That fast. It was as if I were being handled by a piston-driven machine—one that didn't care if it hurt me.

Then my right hand, same thing, with brute efficiency.

"Okay, wash up," the print man said, pointing to the sink where there was a can of powdered soap. I scrubbed as hard as I could, but before I could get all the ink off, the print man said, "That's long enough," and tossed me a towel.

Then it was around the divider, where a slate was hung around my neck and I was photographed both head-on and from the side.

Then back to the cell, where my fingers were still stained with ink. Unclean hands. I'm damn sure they do that on purpose. Once you've entered a big-city jail, you're marked—and they don't let you forget it.

Time passed in its slippery, liquid way. More guys were hauled out of the cell. Before much longer, I was totally alone. I took advantage of the solitude to use the toilet. It was wonderful—the solitude, not the toilet. Comparatively, at least.

The peace lasted quite a while. But not quite long enough.

After an indeterminate period of non-time, there was a commotion from the end of the corridor. Angry voices. Barked orders. Vile cursing. Scuffling.

It became apparent in fairly short order that the cops were hauling some real bad-ass of a hardcase off to one of the holding cells. The guy sounded like he was on drugs. Violent. This might be interesting, I thought—the same way violence in a movie can be so fascinating.

Because it's not happening to you.

The sounds grew louder, and then the whole entourage came into view, passing my cell. Three cops had hold of a guy who was thrashing around, kicking, and screaming threats and profanity at the top of his lungs. The cops were doing their best to keep him under control—and just barely managing it. "Watch his legs!" shouted one of the cops, and another: "Get that door open! Quick!"

Wait a second, I thought. No, no, no, no, no. They wouldn't do that. No way.

But they would—and they did. The entourage had stopped right in front of me, and a guard was unlocking the door to my cell. It took all of them, but they managed to get their prisoner through the door and then shove him to the center of the cell. The guard shut the door again as fast as he could.

The instant he got his feet under him, the guy turned and slammed himself against the cell door, screaming, arms straining toward the taunting, departing cops.

When it became clear to him that his ranting wasn't getting him anywhere, he turned his back to the corridor. His face swung toward me—and there was still plenty of rage in his eyes.

It looked like he and I were about to become acquainted.

In the days following, as I related my experiences to my fellow missionaries, one question was asked me more than any other. This question was also asked frequently by other returned missionaries back in the days when I still told the story aloud to Mormon friends. The question is this: "Did you teach any D's while you were in jail?"

Stay with me, and I'll try to answer it.

Back in lockup, deep in the bowels of Calgary's Remand Center, my new cellmate was gazing at me rather fiercely. But after a moment he shook his head, muttered something about the expletiving cops, and started to pace. And as he paced, he began to rant—and as he ranted, he began picking up momentum.

He seemed to be about thirty or thirty-five. He was wearing a ripped black T-shirt and a pair of very tight tan corduroy jeans. One of the back pockets had been ripped almost off, and bare white skin glowed through the hole. His hair was dark, medium-long, and greasy, and a scraggly mustache sat like moss on his upper lip. He was bleeding from a couple of cuts on his face and from one on his arm.

His rantings were low but animated, and punctuated by jerks of his arms, as if he were striking at unseen cops, or being jolted by electricity. From what he said, I gathered the following:

He'd been out of prison for only two months. He'd bought his mother a TV for Christmas, from some shady types. That night, the shady types, ten or so of them, claiming my new friend hadn't ever paid them, broke into his mum's house and tried to repo the TV. They apparently jumped my friend—at least, the way he told it—and he retaliated with a length of pipe. And now he was in for assault and battery.

From time to time, he'd direct a rhetorical question at me, like "Is that fair?" or "Who do these cops think they are?" I grunted as appropriate, trying to be as noncommittal as possible, not wanting to be drawn into conversation, wanting only to be left alone, and wishing the guy would siddown and shaddup. He was making me nervous.

Finally he slowed down and got himself under a little more control. He asked me for a cigarette. I said I didn't have one. "Too bad," he said. "Smoking's all there is to do in this hole, besides climbing the walls."

Yelling to one of the guards down the corridor got him some cigarettes and matches, and as he settled down on the opposite bench, smoke in hand, he said, "I've been in prison for ten years, all told. Twenty-nine years old. Finally get out, and now this. I tell you, it's no kind of life. So what are you in for, kid?"

I didn't want this. I didn't want to have anything to do with that vermin sitting across from me, but what could I do but answer? "Public mischief," I said, trying to sound tough.

"What'd you do, piss in a fountain?"

"No, I phoned a bomb threat in on a plane."

He laughed. "No way. That's kind of an expensive practical joke, eh?"

"It wasn't a practical joke."

"Then why'd you do it?"

I considered. I wasn't about to admit to this guy that I was a Mormon missionary. "I had a friend who was trying to leave town, trying to . . . run away from some stuff. I didn't think he should go. I couldn't talk him out of it myself, so I decided to stop his plane so someone else could get there and maybe talk him out of it."

The guy looked at me a little differently from how he had been looking at me a moment before. "Did your friend end up staying?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I got caught before I could find out."

He shook his head. "If I'd been him, I sure would have stayed. Someone did something like that for me, went to jail to keep me from doing something, then I'd sure as hell not do it. I mean, this is the worst place in the world. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemies. Those guys that jumped me? When I get out, I'll hunt 'em down, sure, and they'll know never to mess with me again, but the one thing I won't do is turn 'em in. This is no place for a human being to be."

A criminal with a code? With compassion, even? It was slow, but I started seeing the fellow in a different light.

He told me he'd been married once, between gigs in the pen. He had a five-year-old daughter by her that he had never met. He had tried to see his daughter since getting out, but his ex wouldn't let him. He cried about that, about all the trash he knew his wife was talking to his little girl so she would grow up hating her awful daddy who was just trying to provide for his family the only way he knew how. Then he told me how he was going to straighten up, and how there was a woman out there somewhere, a woman just for him. "I'm going to find her," he told me—I couldn't presume to doubt him—"and when I do I'm going to treat her so good she won't believe what's happening. And she's going to be so damn beautiful that I'll want to cry every time I look at her." And he cried some more.

Hell, I was on the verge of crying myself. I wanted to pull a picture of Katrina out of my wallet to show him my life-affirming woman, but of course my wallet was not there when I reached for it. (What a feeling. Reaching for your wallet and finding it not there. Looking at your watch and finding it not there. Sharp, unpleasant reminders of exactly where you are—the joint—and exactly what kind of caca you've gotten yourself into—deep.) But even as I realized I had no picture of Katrina, I realized that I wouldn't have shown it to him anyway. Somehow, his conception of love and beauty seemed more pure than anything I'd experienced. It would have cheapened his dream, my presumption.

After a bit, he pulled himself together and we talked some more. He said we should get together on the outside, and the idea sounded good to me. He said he'd give me his phone number so we could connect after the bail hearings, and I could even contact his lawyer if I needed one. (The lawyer offer didn't appeal to me—I mean, this guy had done ten years—but the getting-together idea did.) I looked all over for something that could be used for writing down his phone number. I tried a burnt match on a matchbook cover, but it didn't work. This was someone I felt I needed to keep in contact with for some reason.

Then he asked me the big question: "So what do you do, anyway? You some kinda student?"

He'd been straight with me. It was my turn. "You may not believe this," I said, laughing in a self-deprecating way, "but I'm a—well, I'm a Mormon missionary."

"Hey, hey, that's cool," he said, putting his hands up in a warding-off gesture. "You know, whatever works for you and all, eh?"

We were quiet for several moments.

Then suddenly my new friend, whose name I did not know, said, reflectively, "You know, I think about God sometimes. I think He's out there . . ."

A shiver raced over my body, and my training—damn it all—kicked in almost reflexively. The first principle of the first discussion started flowing right out that mouth o' mine: "A lot of people all over the world believe in a Supreme Being. They call Him lots of different things, but God is what most of us call Him. We believe that God--"

And right then, as if on cue, a pair of cops showed up at the cell door, rattling a key in the lock. "What's this?" asked my friend.

"You're outta here," one of the cops said to him. "Bail hearing time."

As they escorted him away, he tried telling me his phone number, but I couldn't hear over the noise of the cops telling him to shut up, and the match wouldn't make a mark anyway. I felt as if something very precious was slipping away from me—as if I had somehow spooked it away by starting in on a gospel lesson when it wasn't appropriate. I tried to get his name, thinking that someone desperately needed to talk to his little girl and let her know that her daddy wasn't all bad, that he had a pretty decent heart in there somewhere, but it wasn't to be. He was dragged away within a few moments, and I was left by myself, feeling suddenly more small and alone than I had felt at any time since my arrest.

A couple of years later, I wrote a short story entitled "Cellmates" about this little experience. The story is about eighty or ninety percent true. It seemed the least I could do, capturing in even a small way a portrait of this friend of mine who showed me the good in even the vilest blackguard's heart—who taught me why Jesus, if there's any truth to the rumors, preferred to hang with the publicans and the sinners. In my story, I gave him the name "Daguerre," meaning, loosely, "of war." In real life, I don't know his name. I like to think he made it out eventually, straightened up, and found that beautiful, loving woman he dreamed about. I sure hope so.

And I also strongly doubt it.

Sometime later, in my misery and solitude, a guard came down the corridor and called, "Shunn!"

"That's me," I said with sudden hope. Now I would finally get out! I'd suffered enough. It was time to be on my way. "No one else here."

The guard, a red-haired, sad-faced fellow, stopped at the door and said, "We just got word. No bail hearing for you until tomorrow. Looks like you're spending the night with us."