to deliver the terrible news.
He had been supportive when she had applied to go to the police academy. He had been supportive all through the extensive hiring process. It was sometimes very difficult to get hired on in small towns. It was common in a place like Oregon for a police officer’s ultimate goal to be to end up in their hometown, but often they had to start in Portland first while they waited for vacancies.
Pansy had been lucky. And she didn’t take for granted the fact that her connections had probably come into play there.
“Retiring,” she repeated again.
“Yes. And I wanted you to be the first one to know... Besides my wife, of course.”
She frowned. “Are you all right?”
Chief Doering loved this town and it seemed to her that he loved his job, so she couldn’t imagine that he would just leave. If he would, then her instincts needed some work. And she really didn’t think they did.
She was as good a judge of character as anyone. Better.
“I’m okay,” he said. “But I had a bad physical. And the doctor doesn’t really like the look of my heart. I need less stress, basically.”
Less stress than being police chief of Gold Valley? She didn’t say that out loud, but she couldn’t imagine there was police work anywhere else that had less stress. Maybe Mayberry. But then, Barney Fife was a stress and a half all on his own, so maybe not Mayberry.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, realizing then that her internal reaction to it was probably coated in a heavy dose of denial.
That Chief Doering was having health problems was... It was shocking. He didn’t look like the kind of person who would. He was lean and fit, and his wife made tons of baked goods for the department all the time, but he never put on an ounce of fat.
She just didn’t understand that. How a person could do what was supposed to be the right thing and still have problems. Weren’t you supposed to be able to have some kind of control over your physical health? He made them all run like dogs at least once a month in some kind of team building exercise. They were all a lot more fit than they wanted to be because of Chief Doering.
“Yeah,” he said. “But to be honest, my retirement is sufficient and the idea of slowing down isn’t bad.”
Again, she said nothing about the fact that slowing down from a job at GV PD sounded a whole lot like taking up knitting.
“I’m telling you because there’s going to be a vacancy in my position. And I want you to apply.”
“Me?” It was her dream. There was no denying that. Being police chief just like her father, sitting in the same office, having her picture on the wall, that was her dream.
All she had ever wanted since her father died was to find a way to feel like she was serving his memory well. And this... Well, this would be it.
She was twenty-seven. Not impossibly young for the position, maybe. Not here. Except... Impossibly young for the position maybe here. It was difficult to get people to take her seriously as it was.
She had worked for the police department since she was twenty-one. Six years of experience, on top of living here her entire life. She knew the town and the people in it better than most of their neighbors did.
Knew a lot of their secrets, and had taken up the mantle of fostering and protecting them when need be, and gently exposing them when that had to happen.
It was a particular thing, pulling people over and writing tickets in a town this size. Making arrests for disorderly conduct when the guy you were putting in handcuffs tonight turned out to be the son of the woman you needed to get an auto loan from the next day.
And then there were the people who insisted on making it weird when she pulled them over.
Ma’am, have you had anything to drink tonight?
Pansy! Little Pansy Daniels.
Just Officer Daniels, ma’am. Can I see your license and registration?
You know who I am.
Still. I need your license and registration all the same.
I used to teach you Sunday school. Before your parents died.
Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car.
Yeah. There were people who would insist on seeing her as a child forever and ever. People who would think that her eight years’ working for the police