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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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