Chapter 8

We got up, and dressed in our uniforms, everything but badges. The mayor would hand me mine after he swore me in, and I'd issue Cecelia's after I swore her in. While Cecelia was eating breakfast, and I was emphatically not eating breakfast – I'd as soon drink hydrofluoric acid as eat breakfast – the lady we'd hired to watch Darlia whenever we were both at work showed up. She was a friend of a friend of mine, named Solisha Burns, an old black woman who knew Vernon and Mazie Jefferson. He was a cook at the Hawk House, the only real restaurant in town, though he was down to working just supper – he couldn't work all day anymore.

Solisha had Vern's recommendation, and that was good enough for me. It was good enough for Darlia too, for she loved Vern and trusted him almost like she trusts Cecelia's father. She sat down with Cecelia and Darlia, and ate a bit of Cecelia's scrambled eggs, while I sat on the sofa reading – Jake Page's novel The Knotted Strings. It might have been the wrong book to read just then, for it's set in Santa Fe – and while I'm not a big fan of Santa Fe, it is in New Mexico and I was a long way away. But it was a good book, and I'd worry about homesickness if it hit me.

When Cecelia and Darlia were done it was time to go. We got into the Blazer and headed for the police station. Downtown Red Hawk isn't huge, about four square blocks, but that's where all the government buildings are, naturally. I pulled into the chief's parking slot in back of the building, and used the key I already had to open the door. We walked in, and found the mayor already there, waiting in the investigators' squad room. It was empty – there were only four investigators, and that day, as I knew from the schedule I'd already looked at, two were off. The other two must have been out, though I didn't, just yet, check the board.

The mayor was an oily man named Frank Harris, who ran the tag agency in town – Oklahoma's much more sensible equivalent of New Mexico's Motor Vehicle Department. If you go to the official MVD office in New Mexico you can be there all day. You go to a tag agent in Oklahoma, and if you're there more than half an hour it's unusual. The whole time I'd lived in Red Hawk before, from 1986 to 1990, I'd never had to wait all day to get a driver's license, register a vehicle, or anything else of that sort.

Harris shook my hand, and Cecelia's, though he didn't seem to know really how to deal with the chief's wife in her own police uniform. He finally seemed to give up trying to figure it out, and lifted a piece of paper from one of the investigator's desks. "Are you ready?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Please raise your right hand."

I did.

"I – say your name..."

I repeated after him, an oath not much different from the one I'd sworn back in 1986, and again in 2003 when the chief at the time had roped me into doing some work for him. When I lowered my hand Harris handed me my badge, and I pinned it to my shirt. It wasn't, probably, as straight as it would have been if I'd done it before I put the shirt on, but it would do.

I turned to Cecelia. "Raise your right hand," I said. She did, and I administered the oath to her. When we were done, I took the badge from Harris. I looked at it, noting the number in passing – the shield number, we called it, for Red Hawk's badges had the same big oval shape as the LAPD's. "This isn't just a piece of metal," I said, surprising myself, for I hadn't intended to make a speech. "You'll learn to call it your 'tin, ' but it's more than that. This is a symbol of your authority, and of your responsibility too. And it may become a big gleaming target for the bad guys to shoot at. I wore one like this for two years, and considered it an honor. And I consider it an honor, Officer Carpenter, to issue this badge to you."

"Thank you, Chief," Cecelia said, and it sounded natural, though she'd never called me that before. "I'll wear it in that spirit." And she pinned it to her uniform shirt – doing it better, as she does nearly everything, than I had.

"Well, if y'all are done," Harris broke in, "I'll run along."

"Yeah, we got it under control, Frank," I said, and noticed what seemed to be a bit of distaste cross his face. Well, I wasn't going to pamper his ego by calling him "Mayor" every time I opened my mouth. Red Hawk needed me more than I needed the job – I could have taken the job without a salary and not suffered any, for I've got money coming out of my ears.

I turned away. "Okay, C, let's introduce you to your first training officer."

I led the way to the patrol squad room. It was bigger than the one the investigators used, for the Patrol Division was, as usual, larger than any other part of the department. I stuck my head in, and saw a uniformed officer with sergeant's stripes sitting at the watch commander's desk. "Hey, Sarge," I said, "you got a minute?"

He looked up. "Sure, Chief," he said. "But I better let you know there's a reporter out front, wants to get a couple of pictures and do an interview."