I was walking down the sidewalk, late for work as usual. With my man-purse on one shoulder and a snowboard case swinging from the other, I was hoofing it toward my cube. The plan was to wake up early and drop the board off at the UPS Store on my way to work. That didn't really work out. The new plan was to lug the board all the way to my cube then ship it during lunch. As long as it was on the truck by 2pm it would arrive in Florida on time.

I heard a car accelerate behind me then come to a quick stop. I was on a dead-end street so that wasn't quite right. I turned my head and saw a campus police car poorly parked with its driver's side door hanging open. A campus cop was hurrying my way.

"Sir! Excuse me, sir! Can I talk to you for a minute?" He was a good looking guy, young for a cop.

I stopped and turned around slowly. I looked him straight in the eye, cocked my head and said, "Sure, what's going on."

"Were you walking around here with that case on Friday?"

"Yeah, my flight to Colorado left at 7pm, I took the metrolink straight from work. What's up?"

"Can I ask you what's in the case?"

I kind of felt like I was going to get kapped, "Errr... it is a snowboard, I was in Vail all weekend and I'm shipping the board back to its owner today during lunch. Why?"

He shook his head and let out a deep, genuine laugh. It was enough to make me wonder just what the fuck was going on. I had a cop laughing about something that made no sense at 8:30am... So weird.

He said, "Just after 5pm on Friday we got a call from a frantic woman who said she saw a man in an orange coat" - He pointed at my jacket - "struggling with a large camouflage rifle case in the parking garage.

"She said that the man was getting off the elevator and headed toward campus. The captain put the entire force on a manhunt until 8pm. They had me and another officer sitting in the Dean's office that whole time waiting for some psycho to come through the door and shoot the place up."

I picked my jaw up off the ground, "No shit?"

"No shit." He paused, "I know who you are, I mean, I recognize you and that coat. You work here, right?"

"uhhh.... yeah, I work for cardiology in the NWT. You want me to put the board back in my car?"

"No. I'll let everyone know in case someone else freaks out and calls. Just be sure to get rid of that during lunch."

"Can I go?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, have a nice day."

"You too."