T. Jefferson Parker, John Harvey, James O. Born, Paula L. Woods, Jon L. Breen, John Buentello, Jack Fredrickson, Leslie Glass, Persia Walker, Edward D. Hoch, Laurie R. King, Polly Nelson, Diana Hansen-Young, Peter Robinson, Greg Rucka, Bev Vincent, Paul Guyot, Alafair Burke, Michael Connelly
The Blue Religion
An anthology of stories edited by Michael Connelly, 2008
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 skinheads 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.