Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Eleven

“Derek, can you come in here a second?” Tate heard Jesse call as soon as he stepped inside the door from his shift.

Tate took a deep breath and tried to remember everything Bill Fawcett, the Helton chief, had told him before he left that department.

“Stone is a big believer in second chances, because he was a drunk when he came to Paradise,” Fawcett had said. So Tate had laid it on thick in the interview. He thought he’d said all the right things.

But now he knew he was in trouble again. He’d lost it with that Daisy Dyke woman. He saw someone disrespecting him, disrespecting the uniform, and the red mist came down like it always did.

Truth be told, it had happened to Tate for a long time before he ever wore a badge. Any time someone got in his way, got in his face, or told him what to do, he felt the rage well up inside, inflating him, making him ten times stronger than normal.

And then, a few minutes later, he saw the wreckage as if it hadn’t been him who’d done any of it.

He felt like he could do anything at moments like that. It was one reason he became a cop. He figured if he was telling people what to do, then there was less of a chance they’d piss him off. Disobey a cop, Tate thought, and you deserved whatever you got.

But he had to be careful. He knew this was his last chance, here in Paradise. Stone held his career in his hands.

So he plastered an idiot grin on his face and walked into Jesse’s office.

“Hey, Chief, what’s up?”

Tate thought he sounded normal. Stone looked at him for a second that felt like it stretched out much longer. He was so still behind the desk. Like he didn’t want to waste a single motion. Frankly, it creeped Tate out.

But he kept smiling.

“It’s Jesse,” Stone said. “Not ‘Chief.’ Always Jesse.”

“Sorry. I guess I’m kind of a stickler for chain of command.”

Stone seemed to like that. He smiled a little. Then he asked the question Tate had been dreading.

“What happened at the Burton house today?” he asked.

Your dyke friend got too close to a crime scene, Tate wanted to snap, but didn’t. Instead, he played dumb. “What do you mean?”

“I heard you had a run-in with my friend Daisy?”

“Oh, that? She’s a friend of yours? Yeah, I mean, I got a little loud. I was worried about her approaching all the evidence. It’s a lot of stuff and, you know, it’s all part of the case.”

“Is that it?”

“I mean, yeah,” Tate said. “It was nice of her to drop off the food and coffee. Everyone sure liked it.”

Tate wondered if this was possibly playing it too dumb.

“Maybe I was a little overzealous,” he said. “It’s my first day. I might have been trying to make a good impression.”

“Okay,” Stone said.

Tate let that sit there, trying to look pleasant and harmless.

“Tell you what, Derek,” Stone said, after another pause. “I want you to spend some time on foot on your next shift. Just walk around Paradise. Get out of your car and get to know people.”

Tate did his best to look confused. “Okay. I guess.”

“Is that a problem?”

Immediately suspicious. Crap. Tate tried to backtrack. “Well, no, Chief—”

“Jesse.”

“Right, sorry, Jesse. It’s just that I won’t really be able to cover much ground that way.”

“I’m not worried about that. We’ll call you if there’s a problem.”

Tate shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

“I want you to talk to people. Learn who they are,” Stone said. “And they’ll learn who you are, too. In Paradise, that’s important. People need to trust you.”

Tate was doing his best to show his belly and look submissive, but damn, Stone was making it hard. Foot patrol? Like he was some goddamn rookie? He saw red at the edges of his vision again.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. It just slipped out.

“I didn’t say you did.”

Tate muttered something under his breath.

“Pardon?” Stone asked, a little more edge in his voice than Tate would have liked.

Again, he couldn’t stop himself. “I said, you’re kinda acting like it.”

Stone stared at him.

Tate knew all the coded words in the cop world. He knew how to make the right noises for civilian oversight and community engagement and proper use of force so he could avoid a lawsuit. But Stone really seemed to take this crap seriously.

“You need to know people in this town if they’re going to trust your judgment. And I need to trust it, too. This is the job.”

Tate clenched his jaw tight and shoved the anger away.

He shrugged. Nodded.

“I get it. I do.”

“Good. Have a good day.”

Jesse looked back down at his desk. Tate got out of the office as fast as he could.