Par Four: A Jake Hines Mystery

THERE WAS PLENTY TO LOVE ABOUT MY ROOMY NEW OFFICE AT the end of the hall, beginning with a gleaming brass nameplate on the door that read "Lt. Jake Hines, Investigations." I intended to take my time moving in Tuesday morning and get all my stuff put away before I worried about earning my pay raise. But Lulu Breske blindsided me before I even got my computer set up. I was crawling around behind the desk, trying to remember how the monitor plugs into the CPU, when she banged the door open and yelled, "Jake Hines! You in here?" She startled me, and I jumped. My head hit the corner of the desktop, and for a few seconds I thought maybe I'd gone blind. "Jesus, Lulu." I groped my way to my feet and rubbed my head, where a lump was rising. "What are you hollering about? I'm right here." "How come you never answer my messages?" She aimed her clipboard at me like an Uzi. "Three times, I called you yesterday. What's the matter, you forget how to work your voice mail? Okay, your CID is set for seven-thirty tonight, sign here." She pointed to the line with my name on it. "I don't know what you're talking about," I lied. "What CID?" "The drug bust, the high-speed chase, whatever that screwup was Sunday night. That's your name right there, isn't it? Know any other Jake Hines in the department? So sign it, and I'll be outta here." "Aw, Lulu, that wasn't my collar, I just happened to get in the way by accident." "Argue with the chief about that. He says notify everybody on the list, I'm gonna notify everybody." "Well, I don't have time for any meetings right now, Lulu. I'm buried in paperwork." I waved my arm at my clean, empty desk. All the junk I usually keep there was still sitting in boxes on the floor. Lulu stared at the shiny wood veneer for a couple of seconds. "Uh-huh." She turned to the door. "So, you want me to put down here that you're refusing your CID?" "Of course not," I said, indignantly. It hadn't even occurred to me to refuse it. I was just trying to weasel out of it. CID is copspeak for Critical Incident Debriefing. Conventional wisdom in the law enforcement community now says cops who encounter high-stress situations should debrief as soon as possible. We're supposed to blow off any leftover emotions that might be hanging around, so we won't turn into a bunch of crazies and self-destruct. Somebody noticed the high rate of alcoholism and suicide cops have, I guess, and decided we need counseling. And not just cops. Firefighters after big fires, medical crews that work disasters, they're all being encouraged to sit around afterward and tell how it happened. They're supposed to say how they felt about it, too, like, "I keep hearing that woman scream," or, "I feel like I never want to eat again." Sometimes, I've heard, they even hug. "It's an idea whose time has come," an intern named Josh Hyde told me, beaming as if he'd just found gold in his sock. He helped with a Jaws of Life extrication on the highway after an eight-car pileup. Describing the debriefing he attended afterward, he said a couple of paramedics got into a screaming match, and a driver named Manahan cried. "That made them feel better?" "I don't know about them," he said. "But I sure got rid of a lot of baggage." Josh picks up jargon fast. CIDs are usually run by peers, volunteers who get extra training in counseling. You can tell when somebody's signed up to be a debriefer. He starts toting books around with titles like A Team Approach to Stress Management. A guy whose conversation has reliably been along the lines of "How about those Twins?" will start using words like epiphany, and sooner or later he'll probably say, "We fGunn, Elizabeth is the author of 'Par Four: A Jake Hines Mystery' with ISBN 9780440226369 and ISBN 0440226368.