Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Six

Jesse went over the personnel file of Derek Tate. He felt a little uncomfortable. He hadn’t had as much time with Tate as he’d wanted, and he was, despite what Molly said, very careful about who he allowed to join his team. They were a small department, and they had to work closely together in all kinds of bad situations.

But the mayor, Gary Armistead, had been pushing Jesse to fill the open spots in the roster. “You’ve been bitching about a lack of personnel for as long as you’ve been in the job,” he said. “Now you’re dragging your feet. Just hire someone already.”

Armistead and Jesse did not get along. But, Jesse had to admit, he had a point. The problem was, there was a shortage of police officers — and all first responders — nationally. COVID and the unrest in the cities during the lockdown had hollowed out a lot of the bigger departments as veterans took early retirement or simply quit altogether. Now those cities were luring good cops away from small departments with higher salaries and better benefits. Jesse had lost two new recruits to Boston and New York in the last year.

So when Tate’s application crossed the mayor’s desk, he sent it on to Jesse with a Post-it telling him that this was his next employee.

On paper, Tate looked good. He was young. He’d worked for a couple of bigger departments, starting out in Philadelphia before moving over to the Helton PD.

When Jesse had interviewed him, he’d asked why Tate wanted to leave the bigger cities.

“A couple reasons. I want to have a family someday,” Tate had said. “I want my kids to be able to walk to school safely. That’s the kind of town where I want to live, and I want to be a cop.”

Then he’d taken a deep breath and told Jesse the other reason. “And you’re going to find this out eventually, but I screwed up in Philly,” he’d said. “I got too rough with a civilian. You know how it is. I was new, I was overwhelmed by everything going down around me. And this guy came up behind me, and I swung—”

“And you ended up hurting him.”

“Yeah,” Tate had said.

Jesse had, in fact, seen the incident report in Tate’s file. But like all of these reports, it was light on details, just in case it ever showed up as evidence in court. No police force ever wanted to look too closely into its officers, just from a liability standpoint.

Tate had not been asked to leave Philly — he’d transferred to Helton on his own. But he’d cracked an unarmed civilian in the head, which was definitely against procedure. The guy had escaped with only a concussion and some bruising, according to the report. Maybe there was a lawsuit. Tate’s personnel file didn’t say.

“I screwed up,” Tate said again. “I know that. I didn’t get into this job to hurt people. I want to help them. And I did the wrong thing here. The guy was coming to me for help. He was looking for his kid, a little boy, they’d gotten separated. And I clocked him without thinking about it.”

In most departments, that wouldn’t be enough to get Tate fired. So Jesse wondered what made this different.

He’d asked Tate that same question in the interview.

When he answered, Tate had looked genuinely ashamed. “It was my fault. I didn’t sign up to be a soldier, sir. I did enough of that in the army. I want to look people in the eye. So I chose to go to a smaller PD.”

“Helton was still too big for you?”

Tate shrugged. “Honestly, I think I’d like it better here. I could do better here. This seems like a place where I could make a fresh start. You know what I mean?”

Jesse did. That’s what Paradise had been for him.

Jesse had been a drunk, and it cost him his badge with the LAPD. He’d made mistakes that came back to haunt him. He’d hurt people.

So he could understand wanting to start over.

After the interview, Jesse had decided to take a chance on Tate. Give him a shot at redemption, the same way Paradise had given him one.

He’d changed his life here. He’d made it better. He’d found a family, of sorts, in Molly and Suit and all the other people who’d trusted him. He figured Tate could do the same, if he wanted.

Jesse wanted to give him that chance.

Molly knocked on his door, bringing him out of his thoughts. “The new kid is here. Are they getting younger or are we getting older?”

“Gotta be the first,” Jesse said. “Because we’re just as young and attractive as we’ve ever been.”

Molly gave him a brilliant smile. “Well, at least one of us is.”

“Which one?”

“I think we both know the answer to that.”

Jesse felt a little better for the first time that morning.

“Send him in,” he said. “Let’s start onboarding.”

Derek Tate came into Jesse’s office, his Paradise PD uniform tight and spotless. Jesse wondered if he’d had it tailored. He was a good-looking kid, only a couple of years older than Jesse’s own son, Cole. White. Brown-haired, blue-eyed, gym-built muscle.

He wore a tactical vest under the shirt and the full range of gear on his belt. He creaked just while standing there. Jesse didn’t usually require his people to wear all the toys and tools while on patrol, but he understood Tate was still young. His back and kidneys wouldn’t give him trouble for years.

“Ready to go out and kick ass and take names, Chief,” Tate said, smiling.

Jesse didn’t comment on that. Tate was young. “It’s Jesse,” he said. “We’re not that formal around here.”

“Got it,” Tate said, still smiling. Well, at least someone was happy to be at work, Jesse decided.

“I’m going to need you to get over to the Burton house. Gabe and Suit have been there all night. You’ll relieve them on the line, keep the neighbors and the lookie-loos away.”

Tate frowned for the first time.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” he said quickly. “I mean, I’m not a rookie. I was hoping to get out there and work cases. Really do the job, you know.”

Jesse looked at him for a moment.

“I mean, I’m not complaining, Chief—” Tate said.

“Jesse,” Jesse said. “Always Jesse. And I understand. You want to help. You’re ready to go out and fight the bad guys. That’s fine. But I’m sure you’ve already learned this by now: Ninety percent of police work is showing up and waiting around.”

“Yessir,” Tate said, still looking disappointed.

“Jesse,” Jesse said again. “And don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of chances to do the job. I guarantee it. Because you know what the other ten percent of police work is?”

“What?”

“That’s what happens when the bad guys show up, too.”