Carved

Twenty-two years ago, when Sheriff Higgins handed me the keys to his office and told me it was mine now, he had only one piece of advice. He said that if I lived long enough to hand the keys to the next man, the dark things I’d seen in that time would begin to bubble up, like newly discovered oil turning the ground black.

Maybe I was arrogant, or too young to think that far ahead, but all I did was smile, thank him for the advice, and offer to cut him a slice of pie. It was raspberry-filled, his favorite. He must have stared at that slice for ten minutes before he took one bite and threw it in the trash.

Back then I thought it was rude of him. My wife had baked that pie for him, and I can tell you it wasn’t the taste that made him react that way. When she asked me later if Higgins had liked it, I had to lie and tell her he’d loved it, had even asked for a second slice. It wasn’t her fault, after all, and she’d worked hard on baking that pie, even more than usual considering its importance.

Now, twenty-two years later, on the day of my own retirement, I’m finding Sheriff Higgins’ advice was both wrong and right. Wrong because I’m not handing my keys over to a man but a woman, Lenore Bachman, the finest officer I’ve had the privilege of working with. But right because I feel them now, and in fact have been feeling them the past few months, ever since I decided to retire.

The dark things. Bubbling up.

Now, I’m wondering what he saw in those raspberries.

I know that more than twenty years on the force just about anywhere has a way of changing a person. This job shows you things you wish you could scrub from your eyes, and if you’re not careful, it can turn you bitter. I’ve talked to officers all over this country, at every level, and behind the hard mask of command presence, if you stare long enough you’ll always find the look of a person trying to forget that one call that still haunts them. The overturned church bus. The father-son hunting trip gone wrong. The nursery school fire. But in a town like San Palmo, a place with as much history as we have, well, let’s just say our nightmares go the extra mile.

All that to say this: of all the cases I’ve worked on, in all my years as sheriff of this town, that day at Sunset Farms is the one that won’t let me go.