"One of what, Mr. Vance?" Wade said.
Vance's mouth opened and closed.
"I'll need a statement from you tomorrow," Wade said. "About your security, and your keys, and the hook in your office where you leave them. Nine o'clock at the station." He walked his cousin to the car, put a hand on top of his head so he wouldn't hit it getting in, and shut the door.
He called Aunt Patsy from the front seat, because she deserved to hear it from him and not from Bud Theriot at the bait shop. She didn't say anything for a long time. Then she said, "Is he hurt?" and Wade said no, and she said, "Is he scared?" and Wade said yes, and she said, "Good. Good. Let him be scared. Don't let anybody be mean to him," and hung up, and Wade sat for a minute with the phone in his lap while Reggie looked carefully out the windshield and Kyle sniffled in the back seat like a little boy, and the halyards went clink and clink and clink in the gold light.
* * *
The report Wade turned in on Thursday was nine pages long. The first seven covered the thefts, the storage lot in Moss Point, the gate codes, the Gas-N-Go footage, the motor recovered behind the tire shop in Theodore, and the name of a man in Mobile that the Mobile police were very glad to have. The last two pages were headed SUPPLEMENTAL: CONDUCT OF REPORTING OFFICER, and when the chief got to them she stopped, took off her glasses, put them back on, and read them twice.
In plain, unhurried sentences, without any of the words that make such documents easier to file and forget, Wade had written down what happened at the public ramp. That he had received an anonymous tip identifying a suspect primarily by race and age. That he had not corroborated it. That he had keyed his radio to report a resident of Bayou Clement as a possible felony suspect on the basis of a hull color seen under sodium lighting, and that the only reason he had not done so was that the resident had stopped him. That he had subsequently attempted to excuse his conduct to the resident at the resident's home. That the resident had reported an earlier burglary of his shed only after the reporting officer apologized, and had explained that he had not reported it originally because he did not believe there was anyone to report it to. That this statement had been included verbatim at the request of the chief.
At the bottom he had written a recommendation: that any anonymous tip identifying a suspect by race, ethnicity, or national origin require independent corroboration before the suspect could be named over a radio channel, and that the department adopt full-spectrum flashlights for night vessel and vehicle identification. He had gotten a price on the flashlights. They were thirty-one dollars apiece.
"The flashlight part," the chief said, "is going to make the council laugh."
"Yes ma'am."
"Good. Let them laugh. Then I'll tell them why." She signed the bottom of the last page and slid it across the desk to him. "You know Garrett Vance came in here yesterday after his statement and asked me if we could, quote, keep the regrettable remarks out of the record?"
"What'd you tell him?"
"I told him I wasn't sure which remarks he meant, there were so many, and that the record was the record." She almost smiled. "He's not going to like you much for a while."