Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

He had always liked to imagine it in winter when the clear virtuous cold was antipodal to the hot desperation of Los Angeles. It wasn’t winter when he arrived. It was late June and the narrow streets were dappled by the sunlight shining through the full-foliaged arch of old trees. It wasn’t clean and cold, but it was clean and warm and he liked it.
    He met the town, or as many members of the town as were interested, including most of the police department, in the auditorium of the brick town hall. The Board of Selectmen sat on stage in folding chairs. Jesse stood, while the chairman of the Board of Selectmen introduced him from a lectern, reading into an insensitive microphone from a sheet of paper with his remarks typed out on it.
    “It gives me great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to present Paradise’s new police chief, Jesse Stone.”
    The chairman of the board was named Hasty Hathaway. He wore a pink shirt and a plaid bow tie and a seersucker jacket that appeared too small for him. Jesse wore his dark suit with a white banded-collar shirt and no tie. He wore the short .38 in a black holster in back of his right hip. Hathaway handed Jesse the new badge that said “Paradise Police Department” around the outside, and “Chief” across the center.
    Jesse slipped it into his shirt pocket.
    “As most of you know, Chief Stone comes to us from Los Angeles, California, where he is a ten-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department, serving most recently as a homicide detective. He holds numerous departmental citations, and was once featured in Parade magazine’s list of America’s Top Cops. Chief Stone was selected for this post after an exhaustive search from a field which included a number of very viable candidates. I’d like to thank all the members of the search committee who gave unsparingly of their time, and my thanks also to Lou Burke, who served us so well as interim chief. I know he and all the men, and women, of the Paradise Police Department will continue to serve with the devotion to duty that has marked this department since its inception. Chief Stone, would you care to say a few words?”
    “I’m glad to be here,” Jesse said into the microphone. “Right now, everyone in the room knows more about the town than I do. I’ll need your help. Thank you.”
    He stepped away from the microphone. Hathaway looked as if he were hoping for more. But he rallied.
    “Okay,” he said, “let’s give Chief Stone a round of applause.”
    Everyone clapped. Jesse went upstairs with Hathaway and the town legal counsel, whose name was Abby Taylor, and signed several papers. While he was signing them he noticed that the town counsel was wearing a nice-looking pale yellow suit, with a short skirt.
    Then he went next door to the brick wing where police and fire were housed and sat down in the swivel chair in his new office. Lou Burke came in with a Sig-Sauer nine-millimeter pistol.
    “The one Tommy Carson turned in,” Burke said, “when he got fired.”
    “Thanks,” Jesse said. “I’ve got my own gun.”
    Burke shrugged and put the pistol on the desk.
    “Belongs to the department,” he said. “Goes with the job.”
    Jesse picked up the gun and put it in the right-hand drawer of the desk.
    “Have a seat,” Jesse said. “I might as well start learning.”
    Burke sat. He was a compact man with dark skin and an advanced case of male pattern baldness. What hair remained along the sides of his head was black and cut very close.
    “Is this a first-name department?” Jesse said.
    “Has been.”
    “Good. How you feel about them bringing me in from the outside, Lou?”
    Burke sat quietly for a moment as if thinking about the question.
    “Relieved,” he said finally.
    “You didn’t like being chief?”
    Burke shook his head.
    “Why not?”
    “Pay’s not worth the aggravation,” Burke said.
    “Tell me about the aggravation,” Jesse said.
    “You’re used to a big force,” Burke said. “Big city. Lotta cops, lotta people, you get to keep some distance from the civilians. Here you’re a town employee. Everybody knows everybody. The civilians are in our face twenty-four hours a day. For crissake you have to attend Rotary Club meetings.”
    “Rotary Club?”
    “Yeah. They didn’t mention that to you? Chief of Police here is automatically a member of the Rotary Club, meets every Wednesday at the Paradise Inn.”
    “How’s the food?” Jesse asked.
    “You like chicken pot