Rafferty stood. "Madam Mayor, members of council. After a national search, I'm pleased to present to you for confirmation, by unanimous recommendation of the selection committee, a twenty-nine-year law enforcement veteran who most recently served as commander of the Office of Professional Standards of the Richmond, Virginia, Police Department, where she was responsible for internal investigations, use-of-force review, and the department's federal consent-decree compliance. She holds a master's degree in public administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her late husband was a son of Fernhill. She already lives here. I'd ask her to come forward. Commander Beatrix Quarterman."
I stood up. My father stood up with me and took my arm, not because he needed to but because he wanted to. We walked to the front of the room together.
I've been asked many times what Marcella Vasbinder's face looked like, and I've never told anybody, because it seemed cruel. But I'll say this much, because it's true and it's what happened. She had gone back to her seat in the fourth row and set the certificate on the chair beside her and was writing something in her folder, and she looked up when Rafferty said "already lives here," with the faint interest of somebody hearing a fact that didn't concern her. Then she saw my father's brown cardigan. Then she saw me. And the color went out of her face the way water goes out of a sink, all at once, from the top down, until she was the same shade as the pale blue blazer, and her pen stopped moving, and her mouth opened a little and stayed that way.
Two seats down from Breedlove, Garrett Kessling did not pale. He went very still, the way a man goes still when he's been in a lot of interview rooms and knows that the first thing that gives you away is moving.
The council confirmed me on a five-to-zero vote. The city clerk, a nervous young man named Dashiell, held the Bible. I put my left hand on it, which was Lorenzo's mother's Bible, which I'd brought from home, and raised my right, and swore to support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of North Carolina, and to faithfully discharge the duties of my office, so help me God. Then Rafferty handed my father the badge, and my father, whose hands shake, pinned it onto my lapel himself on the third try and patted it twice when he was done, the way he used to pat a mailbox after he'd closed the little door.
"There," he said. "Now you're official."
Everybody stood. I made a short speech. I'd written three versions and thrown two away. The one I kept said that I was grateful for the confidence of the council, that I honored Chief Breedlove's service, that I intended to spend my first ninety days listening and reviewing every program and policy of the department with fresh eyes, and that I believed a police department's only real asset was the trust of the people it served, all of them, on every street, in every kind of house. I said that the trust was earned slowly and spent fast, and that I meant to be careful with it. I said I'd been a police officer for twenty-nine years and a widow for three and a newcomer to Fernhill for twenty-three days, and that in those twenty-three days I'd already learned a great deal about this city that I wouldn't have learned any other way.
I did not look at the fourth row when I said that. I didn't need to.
Afterward, in the lobby, there was cake and coffee and a long line of people who wanted to shake my hand, most of whom wanted to tell me something about a stop sign. Chief Breedlove came over and shook my hand with both of his and said, "Welcome aboard, Chief. You've got good people. Lean on Garrett, he knows where all the bodies are buried," and laughed his big laugh, and I smiled, and said I was sure he did.