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the case, not in matters of the fantastic. Information even from a so-called “reliable witness” is not taken as proof positive until there is actually positive proof. After all, President Jimmy Carter filed an eyewitness account of a UFO sighting with NICAP, 7 which was made public while he was governor of Georgia; and in October of 1973, Ohio Governor John Gilligan also made headlines by reporting having seen a UFO. Many people claim to have spotted the Jersey Devil, including Commodore Stephen Decatur (the famous American naval hero), who insisted that he fired a cannonball at it while at the Hanover Iron Works in 1803; and Joseph Bonaparte, the former king of Spain and brother of Napoleon, saw the creature when he was hunting in the Pine Barrens near Bordentown, New Jersey, where he was living in exile. A couple of years ago, CNN ran footage of a sea monster 8 in Lake Van, Turkey. While these reports, and the thousands more made by less famous witnesses, are fascinating and make a lot of people go “Hmmmmm,” they have not resulted in a change of belief by the masses or a call to action by the authorities.
    For our zombie hunt, we are going to need solid forensic evidence.
    J UST THE F ACTS
     
    Watching the Detectives
     
    Detectives are specialists whose job is more complex and far less glamorous than what you see on TV. Most of them aren’t like Sherlock Holmes, able to recognize the fifty different kinds of dirt by visual observation alone. Nor are they the boneheaded slobs who can’t solve a crime unless a wisecracking private investigator shows them how to use both hands to find their buttocks. They aren’t loose cannons who drive quarter-million-dollar sports cars; they don’t trample on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to solve their crimes; they’re not a pack of cynical hard-drinking womanizers who have noirish internal monologues playing in their heads; and they don’t kick the tar out of suspects just because they can. They also don’t use shtick: no rumpled Columbo trench coats, no lollipops or hand-sewn Italian Kojak suits; no pastel Crockett and Tubbs jackets or cigarette boats.
    Real police detectives are smart, highly trained, deeply experienced investigators who use science, process, and routine to collect evidence, build cases, conduct investigations, form theories, and arrest suspects. Sherlock Holmes, entertaining as he is to read about, would be a freak.
    I’ve always been impressed by the presentation of detectives in the better police procedural books and movies. The gold-standard for these being the 87th Precinct series by the late (and very much missed) Ed McBain. His detectives were workmanlike, dogged, imaginative, and relentless without being obsessive. He also showed that detectives varied from mediocre (Andy Parker of that series) to very, very good (Steve Carella and Meyer Meyer); and they all relied on the use of established process and procedures rather than sudden intuitive leaps.
    “The only true to life portrayal of police that is on today is the HBO series, The Wire ,” says Detective Mike Buben of the Lower Makefield Township Police in Pennsylvania, “Probably due to the fact that the creator is a former police officer from Baltimore.”
    “ Fort Apache, The Bronx 9 ; The New Centurions ; and The Choirboys 10 are hands down the finest motion pictures about street cops out there; realistically portraying all that is both good and bad about police culture,” says Detective Joe McKinney. “The detective’s job, so far as I’ve seen, doesn’t get portrayed with much realism on the big screen.” But he concedes, “On TV, The First 48 did a great job of showing how a case grows and takes shape. Law and Order tends to have too many rich, glamorous suspects to claim any sort of realism, even though they claim to rip their plots straight from the headlines. Real police work is about eighty percent junkies, thieves, and prostitutes, and I think the public would