“Yes, sir.”
I looked down her transcript, and saw a humbling array of A’s. If chemistry or anthropology or statistics had given her any trouble, there was no evidence of it. There was a minus sign after one of the A’s. “What happened in osteology? That’s not a course in the associate’s program, is it?” She’d need about seventy credits to fulfill the associate requirements, and her transcript displayed a hundred and two.
“No, sir. That’s a basic course in the pre-med program that they let me take. I had the flu and missed a lab practical.”
“Slacker.” I grinned at her and was rewarded with a tiny twitch of the corner of her mouth. “So, with this many credits, you’re not far from your bachelor’s.”
“No, sir.”
“It’d be a shame to let it slide.” I sighed. “And speaking of school, the next session of the state law enforcement academy begins in September. You have any problems with attending that next month?”
“No, sir. That will be fine.”
I leaned back. “The sheriff explained something of our way of doing business?”
“It’s my understanding that if hired, I would start in dispatch, doing office work, general duties like that, then the academy, then rookie assignments.”
“And you’re all right with that?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Not even in dispatch, Ms. Reyes. You’ll spend time observing dispatch during all three shifts. A rotation sort of deal. Your training officer would give you a schedule that takes you through weekends, days, swing, graveyard. It’s a grind. We’ll do that for eight or ten hours a day for two weeks, and toward the end of that time, when you’re familiar with the lingo and the procedures, you’ll be in the chair yourself-with a full-time dispatcher in the room with you at all times.” I hooked my hands behind my head. “Absolute, deep, depressing boredom. That’s what it is, most of the time. We find things to do to keep us sane. Filing, typing, waxing the floor, washing the windows, changing the oil on the cars.” I grinned. “You’ll have to get proficient at all that important stuff.”
“I can do that, sir.”
She seemed so serious that I had to chuckle. “I’m kidding, of course. We don’t want to put our trustees out of work. Anyway, after that, off and on, you’ll be assigned to ride with a deputy. You’ll do a couple of weeks on days first, to learn the community better than you ever thought possible. Every street, every back alley, every county road and two-track. Then we’ll put you in swing and graveyard. Now, I won’t kid you. Some of the road deputies won’t mind a passenger, but I know one or two who will mind, since you’ll be excess baggage, Ms. Reyes. Although you might carry a sheriff’s commission card and a badge, you won’t be certified as a police officer. That comes only after successful completion of the academy and various other qualifications. We cut lots of corners with other things, but not with that.”
“What the sheriff calls the hoops.”
“That’s exactly right. Now tell me…why ever would you want to do all that?”
“It suits me, sir. You’ve been with Sheriff Salcido for seventeen years, sir. You wouldn’t have stayed if there wasn’t something satisfying-something that suits you.”
I smiled at her, and wondered at the same time how much more about us this young lady had researched. I leaned forward and folded my hands on top of her folder. “You know, I’m used to hearing that people want a job as a cop because they want to help people.”
“That’s probably possible sometimes, sir. I’m not sure.”
“Really.” I waited for a handful of seconds for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. “Is there anything about the job that you don’t look forward to?”
“The deep, depressing boredom, sir.” Her eyes twinkled. “I would think that part of the challenge is making sure that doesn’t happen.”
“I wonder…” I started, then paused. “I wonder if you’ve given any thought to some of the other challenges that you’ll face.”
“For example?”
“For example, this is hardly a woman’s world, Ms. Reyes. At the moment, other than the sheriff’s wife who acts as our jail matron, we have one part-time female employee. Gayle Sedillos works relief dispatch from time to time. You know her?”
“Yes, sir. She was one year ahead of me in high school.”
“There you go. So when somebody leaves for greener pastures, she’ll swing in to full-time. She has no ambition or desire to be a road deputy, and at the moment, we don’t have one. Not a single female road deputy. And there are some folks out there who believe there shouldn’t be a single one.”
“I’m sure there are, sir.”
“Is what they think going to matter to you?”
“Only if it prevents me from doing my job, sir. They’re free to think what they like.” Those black eyes didn’t exactly smolder, but they reminded me of Katy Jurado’s expression when she bites her immature boyfriend’s head off in the ‘50’s film classic High Noon.
“It wouldn’t bother you to be the first one to walk into a saloon, looking to break up a bar fight?”
“That would be a good time to request back-up before the fact, sir.”
I laughed gently. “Which we don’t have most of the time.”
“Then I do the best that I can.”
I had no doubt that the combatants would instantly stop fighting at her entrance, probably hold out their wrists and say, “Cuff me…please.”
“Should things work out, when are you available to start? Did Sheriff Salcido ask you about that?”
“He said that would be up to you, sir. But he got the preliminaries out of the way.”
“Meaning…”
From her blouse pocket she drew out a small white card, and the deputy sheriff’s commission carried Eduardo’s signature and yesterday’s date. I examined it, amused. Maybe I should have been irked with the sheriff’s pre-empting my decision, but I’d been in both the military and law enforcement long enough to know that the guy at the top of the chain of command is free to act his conscience.
In this case, I knew what statistics predicted. Estelle Reyes would work for us for a year or so, then either be headhunted away by a better-paying job, or be swept away by a husband. We were a stepping stone on that path for her, but it made no sense not to benefit from her skills while we could.
“How are you with a camera?” Her résumé reported that her high school experiences included membership in the photography club, but what that accomplished was anyone’s guess. Her college transcript included two courses specific to forensic photography.
“It’s one of the tools of the trade,” she said. “I’m comfortable with a camera, sir.”
“Darkroom?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve processed film at school. Only black and white, never color.”
“Which is fine, since we don’t have color facilities. Yet.” I closed her folder and leaned back. “So explain chain of evidence to me.”
“Sir?”
I handed the commission card back to her, worth no more at the moment than such a card given by the sheriff as a courtesy to a county commissioner. It was a long way from that to responding to an incident as a trained, certified police officer. “If you did a ride-along with me today, out at the homicide scene we’ve got going on, what’s the issue with you taking photos? Even if you have a talent that way?”
She hesitated, and I noticed that she didn’t ask, “What homicide scene?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m not a member of the department, sir. If I were to take a photograph that later might be useful in court, and the attorneys could prove that at some time in the process, the photos had been out of the department’s possession, that would be an issue. You couldn’t say beyond any doubt that when the material was out of your possession, the photographic evidence had not been tampered with or altered. The photos could be called into question if that were the case. The chain of evidence would be broken because at some point, the evidence was not in your possession or control.”