I TURN OFF Sag Harbor Turnpike onto the gravel drive, my car crunching over the rocks. I pull up to a small shingled shack with a tent over the entrance and an old, beat-up wooden sign with a single word—TASTY’S—carved into it.
The parking lot is full, and so is the restaurant, when I walk in to the scent of delicious seafood. I love places like this, no-frills dives, simple tables with paper tablecloths, random photos and signs hanging on the walls, food served in paper trays. The menu is on a chalkboard on the wall—both kinds of clam chowder, steamers, shrimp two ways, scallops two ways, oysters on the half shell, mussels, fried clam strips, about four versions of lobster, and hand-cut French fries.
Ricketts, the rookie cop who’s off duty today, has a table for us. She’s already nursing a bottle of Miller High Life. There’s a second bottle on the table, either for her or for me. Either way, I decide I like this kid.
“Hey, rookie.”
“I love this place,” she says. “Best seafood on the South Fork, and the cheapest. They haven’t raised prices in a decade.” She’s a little looser than the first time I met her, when she was in uniform at the station. She’s wearing a sweater and jeans and her short blond hair is tousled.
A man appears with a Mets cap on backward and a gray shirt. Ricketts orders the scallops, so I do the same, along with a couple of waters, and we’ll split a cone of fries.
Ricketts reaches down to her purse and removes a file folder. “Your list of unsolved murders over the last decade on the South Shore,” she says. “Anything involving a knife or cutting.”
I nod. “How many?”
“Eight,” she says.
“Eight?” I reach out my hand for it. “Gimme.”
She pauses. “You, uh … might want to eat first. You might not have an appetite afterward.”
“That bad, huh?” Okay, fair enough. “But eight?”
“Well, I counted Melanie and Zach as unsolved.”
“As you should.”
“The prostitute found impaled on the tree trunk last summer, too.”
“Definitely.” Bonnie Stamos. Some images will never leave your mind, and one of them is that poor girl, her body split in half over that tree stump.
“And I’m including … you know—”
“Chief James.” I nod. “As you should.”
She finishes a swig of beer. “Then that’s eight.” She gestures around the place. “You know, this is where Melanie Phillips worked.”
I partake of the alcoholic beverage she’s offered me, because I don’t want to seem rude, or make her feel lonely.
“Oh, you knew that. Of course you did. Sorry. I’m—maybe I’m—”
“Relax, Ricketts. I’m hard to offend.”
She takes a deep breath. “I was kind of nervous to meet you, actually. I saw you one other time in the station, but I was intimidated, actually.”
“By me?” The beer is tasting good. “You shouldn’t be. We girls have to stick together.”
“I know, but you’re like, this—pretty much everyone’s intimidated by you. Y’know, coming from Manhattan, and you’re smart and tough and … well, beautiful. Most of the men don’t know how to handle you. Most of them want to sleep with you, from listening to them. But they also want to see you fall on your face.”
That sounds about right, that last part. “Keep your head down and do a good job,” I say. “The acclaim will come, if it’s deserved. You have to prove yourself to these cavemen by your actions. Let the rest of that stuff slide—the sexist comments, all that crap. It will all fall away if you do a good job as a cop.”
“Okay,” she says, nodding compliantly like a student.
“Don’t sleep with other cops,” I say. “Because then it won’t matter how good you are. You’ll just be the girl that fucks.”
She takes a deep breath.
“I didn’t say it was fair, rookie. I’m just trying to help you avoid headaches. You’ll be subjected to double standards all over the place. You’ll have to be better than the men to be considered equal to them.”
“Okay.” She nods. “Okay.”
“There’s a lot of good men on the force. I’m only talking about a few bad apples here. Unfortunately, some of those bad apples are the ones calling the shots. So keep your head down and work your ass off. Always have your partner’s back. And call me, anytime, day or night, if you need anything.”
Her face lights up. “Yeah?”
“Of course.”
“Here you go, guys. Scallops and a cone of fries.” A different man, wearing a button-down shirt and blue jeans. Tall and trim, bronzed skin, a nice smile, thick brown hair swept to one side. The kind of guy your parents would want you to bring home. And I thought the scallops looked yummy.
“Hey, Justin, this is Jenna Murphy. Jenna, this is Justin Rivers. This is his place,” Ricketts says.