CONIFER – Investigating a reported truck on fire, deputies arrived on Jubilee Trail at midnight to find – a truck on fire. How hot was it? Picture flames roaring out of the pickup’s engine compartment in a macabre V-8 flambe’ while residents of the residence scramble like an Indy pit crew to get every other piece of flammable rolling stock out of the free-fire zone, and you’re getting warm. Assessing the damage after the fact, officers noted a blackened extension cord running from the house to the Cajun-style vehicle. According to the owner, the cooked cord powered what could just be the most effective block heater on the market today. Crack units of the Elk Creek Fire Department arrived to douse the blaze before it spread to a boat parked next to the barbecued baggage-buggy, declaring the incident regrettable, but not criminal, which came as cold comfort to the chef.

EVERGREEN – A Herzman Mesa man phoned JCSO after his libidinous lodger went all “Fatal Attraction.” According to his report, he and his wife had been enjoying pizza and light conversation with some out-of-town friends and, “to be nice,” invited the downstairs tenant to join the fun. Before long, however, the brazen boarder asked him into the kitchen on the thin pretext of fixing her computer, when what she really wanted was a full diagnostic performed on her personal software. Aghast, the landlord rebuffed her so vigorously that she fell on the floor, got mad, started verbally abusing everybody in sight, and had to be escorted out of the house. After thundering around in the basement for a while, she returned with a golf club in one hand and a bone to pick with the complainant’s wife in the other. “It’s a bad time to talk,” she was told, although a few minutes later she got to discuss the situation at length with sheriff’s deputies. Interpreting her demeanor as uncooperative and hostile, officers decided to remove her from the premises. Proving them right, she refused to go under her own steam, forcing officers to more or less carry her, and spent the entire trip to the waiting squad car screaming obscenities back at the house. Once under way, she began making choking noises and collapsed in the back seat. When emergency personnel arrived and pronounced her un-dead, she admitted faking her demise on the mistaken presumption that officers would be compelled to return her lifeless corpse to her apartment. Deputies released the unlucky lover – scorned, but alive – to a responsible party.

Not for the last time, a JCSO deputy was called to investigate a reported shoplifting at Conifer King Soopers. The store’s security officer reported that, about noon, he witnessed a middle-aged woman in a green jacket select items shelves and place them directly into her multi-colored shoulder bag. Suspicious, he followed her as she breezed passed the checkout aisles and headed for freedom. Accosted in the parking lot, she admitted “taking some items.” The woman carried no ID, but identified herself by a snappy, single-word moniker, saying she’d adopted it some years ago to replace a more burdensome three-name designation. As the deputy completed her shoplifting summons, she began to laugh, prompting the officer to remark that she’d picked the wrong store because it’s so well surveilled. “Well,” she responded, “everyone should get caught at least once in their life.”

A local woman was “very upset” and “appalled” while driving north on Evergreen Parkway, but not for any of the normal reasons. She was tooling along near Brookline Road at about 2 p.m. when a white pickup truck approached. It contained two twenty-somethings who were furiously honking, presumably as a courtesy since there was a show coming. Turning to look, she was treated to a young man’s big white butt. That was clearly unacceptable behavior, she told deputies, because “a child could have been exposed to that big white butt.” She demanded to know how the officer planned to proceed. The officer proceeded to telephone the lunar delinquent at home and ask what – besides his big white butt – was up. “She cut us off,” he explained, “so we mooned her.” The deputy advised the lad to keep his cratered keester below the horizon from now on.