Page 68 of Inside Silence
“I remember.”
Chapter 20
Savvy
* * *
“I need at least four volunteer deputies on this. We’re short bodies.”
Hugo and I are trying to work out a schedule for Saturday morning’s harvest parade and the weekend’s festivities.
“I’ll call around,” my right-hand man offers.
We’re not getting very far trying to fill the vacant spots in the department. I have to follow up with Dad to see if he’s been in touch with the county commission, but I’m still pissed at him. Besides, I doubt much can be done in time for the Harvest Fest anyway.
I don’t like calling on the volunteers for jobs like this, when they’d probably rather be participating, but I am spread so thin right now, I can’t afford not to.
Earlier I had both Warren and KC come into my office to ask them some specific questions about their experience with Sanchuk. Warren had already suggested to me he knew something was up with Sanchuk, but it took me assuring him Jeff had confessed to certain things already, for him to lay it out on the table.
As Warren explained, when the two were working together during Warren’s orientation, Sanchuk had more than once insisted on handling things by himself during certain traffic stops. He’d even seen money exchanged on a couple of occasions, which he chose to file away as potential personal transactions.
I got the gist Warren didn’t want to be a whistleblower, but as I explained to him, under my leadership there is no place for brotherhood nonsense. No covering for, or even turning a blind eye to, a colleague’s bad behavior, because one bad apple reflects on us all. This kind of misguided loyalty undermines the integrity of the department and I made it clear, I would not stand for it.
I gave the same speech to KC, which led him to confess he’d seen some of that same behavior from Jeff. He even admitted he’d had lunch with him at the Bread & Butter diner a few times. A lunch they didn’t pay for because apparently Sanchuk caught the chef’s son with an amount of weed in his possession that exceeded the personal use limit. The kid could stand to lose a much sought after football scholarship with Ohio State he’d just been offered, so Sanchuk cut him a break, but used the incident to pressure the boy’s father into feeding him free of charge.
That confession left me in a bit of a pickle. I should be disciplining KC since he participated in something he clearly knew was wrong, at the very least he enjoyed the spoils of what amounts to extortion. Yet, at the same time, I recognize as a rookie officer, he felt pressured into a difficult situation. He’d felt guilty and claims he never joined Sanchuk for a meal again. Instead of some kind of sanction, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, since he came clean about the diner. I told him I’d make a notation in his file but would remove it if he kept his nose clean for the next two years.
When I confronted Hugo with what had been going on, he shook his head. He admitted he’d been overwhelmed with what had been going on in his personal life, he’d barely been able to focus on his own job, and opted to ignore anything else.
I’ve got three more guys I need to sit down with—I can hopefully catch Lloyd this afternoon when he comes in—but I get the sense I’ll probably hear similar stories from all three of them. They saw or knew about it, but chose to ignore it, and that would be the best-case scenario.
To be honest, I’ve been thinking back to my own time as a deputy, working alongside Jeff Sanchuk, and there were times I was guilty of turning a blind eye to things I suspected weren’t on the up and up myself. Heck, even as sheriff, I’ve known for a while Sanchuk couldn’t really be trusted, but it’s taken me until now to do something about it.
I’m as complicit as everyone else.
The yoke of this office has never felt heavier on my shoulders than it does now.
Getting this department back on track is going to take some doing, but there is no shortcut. For us to be a reliable, cohesive unit, I have to first upset the apple cart.
“Are you okay?” Hugo asks, interrupting my thoughts.
I realize I’ve been standing here, staring at the whiteboard we’ve got this weekend’s schedule marked up on.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, too much going on, my head is spinning,” I confess.
“Why don’t you leave the Harvest Fest schedule with me? I’ll get Brenda to help me make some calls, so you can focus on Ben Rogers’s case.”
He’s right. The problem trying to tackle too many things at the same time is that none of them will get the attention they deserve. I need to start scratching things off my list, not adding more, just because I want to prove I can do it all by myself. That’s ultimately not how I best serve and protect the public, which is my job.
Delegation it is.
“Okay. That would be great. And I’ve asked my father to use his connections with the county commission to see if we can get some more funding for additional deputies.”
“Doesn’t help if we can’t even fill the current positions,” Hugo points out.
Admittedly, that’s an issue.
“Get Brenda to list the two positions to start on local, state, and federal government websites, law enforcement job boards, any applicable professional organizations, and wherever else she thinks is appropriate. And I’d like you to scan any incoming applications,” I add.
