Page 71 of Things We Hide from the Light
“No! Why? Someone say I did?”
“You ever get busted for fighting four guys on the playground just because they said your brother was an asshole when they weren’t wrong and your brother was an asshole?” I asked.
“No. I only have sisters.”
“Point is, kid, we all fuck up,” Grave said.
I met Lonnie’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “What matters is how we handle things post-fuckup.”
“Wait.You guysdid all that?”
Grave smirked. “And more.”
“But we learned that raisin’ hell gets old and the consequences of bad decisions last a hell of a long time.” Lucian came to mind. I’d wondered over the years what path he would have followed if he’d had it easier in the beginning. One thing was for sure, he never would have ended up behind bars at seventeen if someone had given him a chance. “That goes for life and women and everything in between.”
“You should be writin’ this down, kid. This shit’s gold,” Grave told our passenger.
After droppingLonnie off at home and calling his father at work, I sprang for sodas at the Pop ’N Stop. I parked in the school zone to scare the shit out of speeders…and to annoy Nolan, who stuck to my ass like glue in his black Tahoe.
Grave took off his KPD cap and rubbed a hand over his bare scalp. “Got a minute?”
That was never a good sign.
“Problem?” There was a reason he hadn’t wanted to have this talk at the station, I guessed.
“Dilton.”
And there was the reason. Tate Dilton had been a rookie patrol cop when I’d taken the helm from longtime chief Wylie Ogden whose decades of good-ol’-boy “leadership” had left a stain on the department.
Dilton was what I labeled a “jock” in the profession. He wanted the adrenaline, the pursuits, the confrontations. He enjoyed showing off his authority. His takedowns were more aggressive than necessary. His citations were lopsided with him coming down harder on people who rubbed him the wrong way personally. He also spent more time in the gym and at the bar than he did at home with his wife and kids.
I just plain didn’t like him.
Clearing out the entire department when I took over hadn’t been an option, so I’d kept him on, invested time trying to mold him into the kind of cop we needed behind the badge. I partnered him with a solid, experienced cop, but training, oversight, and discipline only went so far.
“What about him?” I asked, reaching for my drink so my hands had something to do.
“Had a few issues with him when you were laid up.”
“Such as?”
“He was a dog off the leash while you were on leave. Roughed up Jeremy Trent for public intoxication in the parking lot after the high school football game couple of weeks ago. Unprovoked. In front of the guy’s kid—defensive tackle—who got in Dilton’s face along with half the team. Rightfully so. Things woulda gotten real messy if Harvey and a couple of his biker buddies hadn’t stepped in.”
Fuck.
“Jeremy okay? He press charges?”
“Laughed it off. Paid his fine. Pair of bruised knees and some road rash as souvenir. Didn’t remember a damn thing after sleepin’ it off. But there would have been a hell of a lot more to remember if it had gone any further.”
Jeremy Trent had been captain of the baseball team and beat out Dilton for homecoming king their senior year of high school. They’d had more than a handful of run-ins over the years ever since. Jeremy was an affable guy who worked for the sewer authority and drank too much on the weekends. He thought he and Dilton were friends. But Dilton still seemed to think they were in some kind of competition.
Grave’s mouth was tight as he stared through the windshield.
“What else?”
“Tried to take a traffic stop too far. Real nice Mercedes SUV goin’ just a hair over the speed limit on the highway. Just got passed by a souped-up pickup going about twenty over the limit. Dilton ignores the truck driven by his drinkin’ buddy Titus and pulls over the Mercedes instead. Black driver.”
“Goddammit.”
