The Blue Religion

  Compilation copyright © 2008 by Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

  Introduction copyright © 2008 by Michael Connelly

  “The Blue Religion: An Introduction,” copyright © 2008 by Michael Connelly

  “Skinhead Central,” copyright © 2008 by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Sack o’ Woe,” copyright © 2008 by John Harvey

  “The Drought,” copyright © 2008 by James O. Born

  “Divine Droplets,” copyright © 2008 by WLG Enterprises, Inc.

  “Serial Killer,” copyright © 2008 by Jon L. Breen

  “A Certain Recollection,” copyright © 2008 by John Buentello

  “A Change in His Heart,” copyright © 2008 by Jack Fredrickson

  “The Herald,” copyright © 2008 by Leslie Glass

  “Such a Lucky, Pretty Girl,” copyright © 2008 by Persia Walker

  “Friday Night Luck,” copyright © 2008 by Edward D. Hoch

  “The Fool,” copyright © 2008 by Laurie R. King

  “Burying Mr. Henry,” copyright © 2008 by Polly Nelson

  “Oaths, Ohana, and Everything,” copyright © 2008 by Diana Hansen-Young

  “The Price of Love,” copyright © 2008 by Peter Robinson

  “Contact and Cover,” copyright © 2008 by Greg Rucka

  “Rule Number One,” copyright © 2008 by Bev Vincent

  “What a Wonderful World,” copyright © 2008 by Paul Guyot

  “Winning,” copyright © 2008 by Alafair Burke

  “Father’s Day,” copyright © 2008 by Michael Connelly

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: April 2008

  ISBN: 978-0-316-03201-8

  Contents

  ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

  The Blue Religion: An Introduction

  Skinhead Central

  Sack o’ Woe

  The Drought

  Divine Droplets

  Serial Killer

  A Certain Recollection

  A Change in His Heart

  The Herald

  Such a Lucky, Pretty Girl

  Friday Night Luck

  The Fool

  Burying Mr. Henry

  Oaths, Ohana, and Everything

  The Price of Love

  Contact and Cover

  Rule Number One

  What a Wonderful World

  Winning

  Father’s Day

  About the Authors

  About the Mystery Writers of America

  ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

  FICTION

  The Black Echo

  The Black Ice

  The Concrete Blonde

  The Last Coyote

  The Poet

  Trunk Music

  Blood Work

  Angels Flight

  Void Moon

  A Darkness More than Night

  City of Bones

  Chasing the Dime

  Lost Light

  The Narrows

  The Closers

  The Lincoln Lawyer

  Echo Park

  The Overlook

  NONFICTION

  Crime Beat

  ALSO FROM THE MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

  Death Do Us Part

  (Edited by Harlan Coben)

  The Blue Religion: An Introduction

  A long time ago, when my first book was published, the first review it received classified the novel as a “police procedural.” This classification was news to me. I thought I had simply written a book, a crime novel, if it absolutely needed to be classified. Okay, a mystery, even. Sure, it was about cops and robbers and how the good guys work to catch the bad guys, but I never realized that I had ventured into what was called a “subgenre.” I soon learned that crime fiction is a world of genres and subgenres and even sub-subgenres.

  Nearly twenty years later, I sit here writing the introduction to a book that celebrates one of those subgenres. Welcome to the world of the cop story. Welcome to stories that explore the burden of the badge.

  One note on these stories, however. While this tome and its individual stories will fall under the classification of police procedural, they are anything but explorations of procedure. They are explorations of life. They are explorations of character.

  In my observations of the blue religion as both a journalist and a writer of fiction, I have found that most people who carry badges believe they are part of a misunderstood breed. And I believe they have a point. How are we to weigh the burden of the badge if we do not carry the badge? In these stories, we do it by exploring the many facets of character of those who carry the badge. As you will find, procedure is only window dressing for our true focus. We learn what it is like to corner a murderer, to unmask a hidden killer. We walk the line between justice and revenge. We see what it costs to do the job both right and wrong. We find resolution and redemption.

  There is an adage attributed to Joseph Wambaugh, the great writer of police stories, that informs our effort here. It is as simple as it is true. It holds that the best story about the badge is not about how a cop works on a case. It is about how the case works on the cop. In the subtlety of that distinction is the axiom that gave the writers who are gathered here all they needed.

  I know a detective who works cold cases in Los Angeles. He works out of a windowless office, with his desk pushed up against his partner’s. He has a glass top on his desk. With such a basic setup in almost any other office in the world, one would almost invariably find photos of loved ones — children, wives, families — under the glass top. Smiling faces, reminders of what is good in life. Inspiration to do the job well.

  But not this detective. He slips the photos of dead people under his glass. Photos of murder victims whose killers he still hunts. They are reminders of what is bad in life. Reminders of the job unfinished and inspiration to keep going and to do the job well.

  To me, that gets to the heart of character, not procedure. And that is what this book is all about.

  — Michael Connelly

  Skinhead Central

  By T. Jefferson Parker

  So we moved up here to Spirit Lake in Idaho, where a lot of Jim’s friends had come to live. After forty years in Laguna Beach, it was a shock to walk outside and see only a few houses here and there, some fog hovering over the pond out front, and the endless trees. The quiet too, that was another surprise. There’s always the hiss of wind in the pines, but it’s nothing like all the cars and sirens on PCH. I miss the Ruby’s and the Nordstrom Rack up the freeway. Miss my friends and my children. We talk all the time by phone and e-mail, but it’s not the same as living close by. We have a guest room.

  We’ve had mostly a good life. Our firstborn son died thirteen years ago, and that was the worst thing that’s ever happened to us. His name was James Junior, but he went by JJ. He was a cop, like his father, and was killed in the line of duty. After that, Jim drank himself almost to death, then one day just stopped. He never raised a finger or even his voice at me or the kids. Kept on with the Laguna Beach PD. I had Karen and Ricky to take care of, and I took meds for a year and had counseling. The one thing I learned from grief is that you feel better if you do things for other people instead of dwelling on yourself.

  We’re living Jim’s dream of hardly any people but plenty of trees and fish.

  There’s some skinhe
ads living one lake over, and one of them, Dale, came over the day we moved in last summer and asked if we had work. Big kid, nineteen, tattoos all over his arms and calves, red hair buzzed short, and eyes the color of old ice. Jim said there was no work, but they got to talking woodstoves and if the old Vermont Castings in the living room would need a new vent come fall. Dale took a look and said that unless you want to smoke yourself out, it would. Two days later, Dale helped Jim put one in, and Jim paid him well.

  A couple of days later, I went to dig out my little jewelry bag from the moving box where I’d kind of hidden it, but it was gone. I’d labeled each box with the room it went to, but the movers just put the boxes down wherever — anyway, it was marked “bedroom,” but they put it right there in the living room, where Dale could get at it when I went into town for sandwiches and Jim went outside for a smoke or to pee in the trees, which is something he did a lot of that first month or two. Jim told me I should have carried the jewelry on my person, and he was right. On my person. You know how cops talk. Said he’d go find Dale over in Hayden Lake the next day — skinhead central — what a way to meet the locals.

  But the next morning, this skinny young boy shows up on our front porch, dark bangs almost over his eyes, no shirt, jeans hanging low on his waist and his boxers puffing out. Gigantic sneakers with the laces loose. Twelve or thirteen years old.

  “This yours?” he asked.

  Jim took the jewelry bag — pretty little blue thing with Chinese embroidery on it and black drawstrings — and angled it to the bright morning sun.

  “Hers,” he said. “Hon? What’s missing?”

  I loosened the strings and cupped the bag in my hand and pressed the rings and earrings and bracelets up against one another and the satin. It was mostly costume and semiprecious stones, but I saw the ruby earrings and choker Jim had gotten me one Christmas in Laguna and the string of pearls.

  “The expensive things are here,” I said.

  “You Dale’s brother?” asked Jim.

  “Yep.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jason.”

  “Come on in.”

  “No reason for that.”

  “How are you going to explain this to Dale?”

  “Explain what?”

  And he loped down off the porch steps, landed with a crunch, and picked up his bike.

  “Take care of yourself.”

  “That’s what I do.”

  “We’ve got two cords’ worth of wood and a decent splitter,” said Jim.

  Jason sized up Jim the way young teenagers do, by looking not quite at him for not very long. Like everything about Jim could be covered in a glance.

  “Okay. Saturday.”

  Later I asked Jim why he offered work to Jason when he’d held it back from Dale.

  “I don’t know. Maybe because Jason didn’t ask.”

  THE WAY JJ died was that he and Jim were both working for Laguna PD — unusual for a father and son to work the same department — but everyone was cool with it, and they made the papers a few times because of the human interest. “Father and Son Crime Busters Work Laguna Beat.”

  If you don’t know Laguna, it’s in Orange County, California. It’s known as an artist colony and a tourist town, a place prone to disasters such as floods, earth slides, and wildfires. There had been only one LBPD officer killed in the line of duty before JJ. That was back in the early fifties. His name was Gordon French.

  Anyway, Jim was watch commander the night it happened to JJ, and when the “officer down” call came to dispatch, Jim stayed at his post until he knew who it was.

  When Jim got there, JJ’s cruiser was still parked up on the shoulder of PCH, with the lights flashing. It was a routine traffic stop, and the shooter was out of the car and firing before JJ could draw his gun. JJ’s partner had stayed with him but also called in the plates. They got JJ to South Coast Medical Center but not in time. One of the reasons they built South Coast Medical Center forty-seven years ago was because Gordon French was shot and died for lack of medical care in Laguna. Then they build one, and it’s still too late. Life is full of things like that, things that are true but badly shaped. JJ was twenty-five — would be thirty-eight today if he hadn’t seen that Corolla weaving down the southbound lanes. They caught the shooter and gave him death. He’s in San Quentin. His appeals will take at least six more years. Jim wants to go if they execute him. Me too, and I won’t blink.

  THE NEXT TIME we saw Jason was at the hardware store two days later. I saw his bike leaned against the wall by the door, and I spotted him at the counter as I walked through the screen door that Jim held open for me. He had on a knit beanie and a long-sleeve black T-shirt with some kind of skull pattern, and his pants were still just about sliding off his waist, though you couldn’t see any boxers.

  “Try some ice,” the clerk said cheerfully.

  Jason turned with a bag of something and started past us, his lips fat and black. His cheeks were swelled up behind the sunglasses.

  Jim wheeled and followed Jason out. Through the screen door, I could hear them.

  “Dale do that?”

  “No.”

  Silence then. I saw Jason looking down. And Jim with his fists on his hips and this balanced posture he gets when he’s mad.

  “Then what happened?”

  “Nothing. Get away from me, man.”

  “I can have a word with your brother.”

  “Bad idea.”

  Jason swung his leg over his bike and rolled down the gravel parking lot.

  The next evening, Dale came up our driveway in a black Ram Charger pickup. It was “wine thirty,” as Jim calls it, about six o’clock, which is when we would open a bottle, sit, and watch the osprey try to catch one of the big trout rising in our pond out front.

  The truck pulled up close to the porch, all the way to the logs Jim had staked out to mark the end of the parking pad. Dale was leaning forward in the seat like he was ready to get out, but he didn’t. The window went down, and Dale stared at us, face flushed red, which with his short red hair made him look ready to burst into flames.

  “Dad told me to get over here to apologize for the jewelry, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  “You beat up your brother because he brought it back?”

  “He deserved every bit he got.”

  “A twelve-year-old doesn’t deserve a beating like that,” said Jim.

  “He’s thirteen.”

  “You can’t miss the point much further,” said Jim.

  Dale gunned the truck engine, and I watched the red dust jump away from the ground below the pipe. He was still leaning away from the seat like you would back home in July when your car’s been in the sun and all you’ve got on is a halter or your swimsuit top. But this was Idaho in June at evening time, and it probably wasn’t more than seventy degrees.

  “Get out and show me your back,” said Jim.

  “What about it?”

  “You know what it’s about.”

  “You don’t know shit,” said Dale, pressing his back against the seat. “I deal with things.”

  Then the truck revved and lurched backward. I could see Dale leaning forward in the seat again and his eyes raised to the rearview. He kept a good watch on the driveway behind him as the truck backed out. Most young guys in trucks, they’d have swung an arm out and turned to look directly where they were driving. Maybe braced the arm on the seat. JJ always did that. I liked watching JJ learn to drive because his attention was so pure and undistractible. Dale headed down the road, and the dust rose like it was chasing him.

  “Someone whipped his back,” I said.

  “Dad.”

  “You made some calls.”

  Jim nodded. Cops are curious people. Just because they retire doesn’t mean they stop nosing into things. Jim has a network of friends that stretches all the way across the country, though most of them are in the West. Mostly retired but a few still active. And they grouse and gossip and yap
and yaw like you wouldn’t believe, swap information and stories and contacts and just about anything you can imagine that relates to cops. You want to know something about a guy, someone will know someone who can help. Mostly by Internet but by phone too. Jim calls it the Geezer Enforcement Network.

  “Dale’s father has a nice jacket because he’s a nice guy,” said Jim. “Aggravated assault in a local bar, pled down to disturbing the peace. Probation for assault on his wife. Ten months in county for another assault — a Vietnamese kid, student at Boise — broke his jaw with his fist. There was a child-abuse inquiry raised by the school when Dale showed up for first grade with bruises. Dale got homeschooled after that. Dad’s been clean since ’93. The wife sticks by her man — won’t file, won’t do squat. Tory and Teri Badger. Christ, what a name.”

  I thought about that for a second while the osprey launched himself from a tree.

  “Is Tory an Aryan Brother?”

  “Nobody said that.”

  “Clean for thirteen years,” I said. “Since Jason was born. So, you could say he’s trying.”

  Jim nodded. I did the math in my mind and knew that Jim was doing it too. Clean since 1993. That was the year JJ died. We can’t even think of that year without remembering him. I’m not sure exactly what goes through Jim’s mind, but I know that just the mention of the year takes him right back to that watch commander’s desk on August 20, 1993. I’ll bet he hears the “officer down” call with perfect clarity, every syllable and beat. Me, I think of JJ when he was seven years old, running down the sidewalk to the bus stop with his friends. Or the way he used to comb his hair straight down onto his forehead when he was a boy. To tell you the truth, sometimes I think about him for hours, all twenty-five years of him, whether somebody says “1993” or not.

  That Saturday Jason came back over and split the wood. I watched him off and on from inside as he lined up the logs in the splitter and stood back as the wood cracked and fell into smaller and smaller halves. Twice he stopped and pulled a small blue notebook from the back pocket of his slipping-down jeans and scribbled something with a pen from another pocket. The three of us ate lunch on the porch even though it was getting cold. Jason didn’t say much, and I could tell the lemonade stung his lips. The swelling around his eyes was down, but one was black. He was going to be a freshman come September.