Page 30 of Shelter for Sharla

They rolled up in front of her house and Carter stopped the truck. “Want me to walk you up?”

“Yes, please.” Something in her voice told him she was anxious, and he wasn’t sure why. Had she seen something? Or someone? Didn’t matter. He’d gladly walk her to the door.

When it was unlocked and she stepped inside, she turned to him. “We won’t get to be together tonight, but I’ll call you when the kids get settled, okay?”

“Sure. Sounds good. Be thinking about when we want to tell them about us, because we’re going to have to.”

She nodded. “I know. I think we should wait about a week, don’t you?”

“Maybe. Let’s see how tomorrow goes.”

“Okay.” Taking his face in her hands, she kissed him lightly and gave him a tender smile. “I love you, Carter.”

“I love you too. Talk to you later. Bye, babe.” The door clicked closed as he made his way down the steps and when he got to his truck and slipped inside, he looked back. Her face appeared in the window and she gave him a little wave before disappearing behind the sheer curtains.

The drive back home was uneventful, but the morning would have its own excitement. He had a rather unpleasant task ahead of him, and he was thankful the coffee pot was full when he reached the office. Durst looked up from his desk and gave a nod, and Carter scanned the room until he found the other deputy. “Edwards, I need to speak to you, please. In my office.”

“Coming, sheriff,” the younger man answered and Carter could hear his footfalls as he stepped through the doorway. “Close the door,” he said without even turning around, and he heard it shut quietly. “Have a seat.”

He turned to find Edwards sitting in the chair in front of his desk, both feet on the floor and hands on his knees. There was no doubt he was nervous, as well he should be. “Do you know why you’re in here?”

“No, sir.”

“I got a visit from JudgeMichaels.”

“Sir?”

“He’s pretty damn unhappy with you wasting his time in court.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I?”

“He threw out four of your tickets the other day, Edwards. Four. Out of the ten we had in there, how many were yours?”

The rookie’s face reddened. “Five, sir.”

“That’s eighty percent, young man. Eighty percent of your citations were thrown out. Do you know why?”

“No, sir.”

“Because they weren’t filled out properly. So this afternoon, I want you here in the office. I’m going to write out five scenarios for traffic stops and I want you to write tickets for them. Then we’re going to go over them and figure out what it is you’re not doing correctly. In the meantime, I want you to pull some of the copies from Lewis, Watson, and Durst, and compare them to what you’ve been doing. Then when you work on the new ones, I want you to be able to tell me what you did wrong. Got that?”

The younger man dropped his gaze to the floor in embarrassment. “Yes, sir.”

“We all have to learn, Edwards, but I thought you’d been taught how to do this properly. Apparently not. And the next time JudgeMichaels has to come over here and crawl up my ass, it had better be for somebody else’s screw-ups, got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. Go finish your activity logs from yesterday and get them filed, and then we’ll work on these.”

The deputy’s eyes shot up. “I’m not patrolling today?”

“No. You definitely are not. You’re going to man the phones so Durst can get out there in a cruiser and do what you should be doing.” He hated to do that to Durst, but the seasoned deputy was eight weeks post-operative for his knee injury and he’d been cleared for full duty, so it was time for him to get back out there anyway.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“Sorry is a bad word to have to use in our profession, rookie. A lot of times when we have to say we’re sorry, somebody’s died. So let’s try to not have to use it again, shall we?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it, sir.”

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