The Detective in the Dooryard: Reflections of a Maine CopTim Cotton has been a police officer for more than thirty years. The writer in him has always been drawn to the stories of the people he has met along the way. Dealing with the standard issue ne'er do wells as a patrol officer, homicide detective, polygraph examiner, and later as the lieutenant in charge of the criminal investigation division certainly provides an interesting backdrop but more often he writes about the regular folks he encounters,