Chapter 13
Dean
The cadets were dead.
Both victims shot in the back of the head at close range. The perpetrator used a Beretta Panther—wasn’t hard to tell since the bullets blasted right out of the front of both their skulls—embedding themselves in the wall of a vacant building a block away from our command. Red spray paint was used to decorate the walls to create a more sickening effect. The word, “Whore,” painted over and over in drippy bold letters. A real estate agent and her client found the bodies sprawled out on the fourth floor just beyond the sliding glass doors to the balcony.
The client ran out screaming, ended up falling down a flight of stairs.
I guess she didn’t appreciate the view.
Lucky for her, she would still get to sleep peacefully that night with her ankle wrapped up tight on ice, while I stayed and scraped the dead children off the floor.
And they werechildren.
Both of them were only seventeen.
Telling parents that their children are dead is the worse thing imaginable. When I first got promoted to detective, I used to stop in a restroom somewhere before I had to say the words. I’d lock the door and say the words out loud to my reflection. I’d use the parents’ name, making sure I pronounced it right. I repeated it slowly over and over until I could do it without a hitch to my voice.
With my years on the job, I’ve learned to make it look easy.
It never was, and it never will be. These are the words a family will replay in their nightmares for the rest of their lives, and as a cop, you end up hating yourself for being the one that has to say them.
You lose yourself somewhere in the heaviness of your heart or the racing of your pulse and become the stone on which the grieving need to fall against.
“Mrs. Tatum, I’m Detective Dean Fury.” Clear, precise. “I am so terribly sorry.” I held her hand in mine, and I broke her heart one word at a time. I’ve always said the words with utter genuine compassion and empathy—as if they were being told to me.You say the words you’d want to hear if it were your child,and you wait and you deal with their response as best you can. You take whatever they throw at you. You listen to every word they have to say. You stand and take it, absorb it all in. Answer any questions they have in the kindest way you can.
Mothers never fail to ask me if their children felt any pain.
I lie. I lie to make the shittiest day of their existence not a hell of a lot more shittier. “I’d like to believe he didn’t.”
Someone across the room, some blank-faced human being—some blind-eyed sheep, will always come out with, “Well, at least he’s lucky he felt no pain.”
That’s a load of bullshit.
He’s not lucky he didn’t feel pain. Neither of them was lucky at all. They were dead. Only assholes would think it had anything to do with luck.
It had to do with reality, life, and the pure, darkest of evils that some people walk around, having inside them.
The mother clamped onto my arms and squeezed, digging her nails into my skin. I didn’t let her see me flinch—I was the rock—steady and impenetrable. I held her up as her knees buckled, and her weight crumpled to the floor. I watched, arms full, as the older sister looked up to the ceiling and closed her tear-filled eyes, while the younger brother raged behind us, bursting his knuckles open against the wall.
I had the Chaplain take over quickly. It’s always hard for a brain to process a sudden death, especially such a violent one. The first thing a family did was to question their faith, “Why God, why?”in heart wrenching pleas that make up most of my nightmares. I needed someone there who could help with the answers I didn’t have.
God never spoke any answers to me, and truthfully, I was exhausted from questioning Him all these years. I just did his work, tried to keep peace, keep people safe, even when they fought against me.
Over the next few hours, my squad showed up, one by one, and we scoured over the crime scene. I stayed through the brightening of the sky through to its darkening. I stayed until my eyelids were lead weights, and my hazy thoughts overlapped each other. I hadn’t even stopped to eat—that familiar empty ache twisting my stomach into knots—reminded me that what I needed didn’t matter. Not when there were answers to be found, evidence to collect, dead to defend. Justice to be served.
My Lieutenant, Sebastian Graves, came down to the scene, rubbing the back of his neck with his hands. It was somber, more so than usual. These were kids, but they were also kids that spent their personal time working with us. They were part of our family.
“It’s like we’re fucking cursed,” Graves mumbled under his breath. “Thomas dead and now this?”
Max Kannon called home every hour, making sure his kids were okay. He shrugged as he caught me watching me. “Haven’t been home in a few days early enough that the kids weren’t in bed. I’m forgetting what they look like.”
How was he okay with that?
“Hey,” Ryan nudged a coffee into my hands. I looked away, pretending we both didn’t notice my fingers trembling. “Go home. We did everything we could here,” he mumbled. “Go to bed.”
The thought of going home to an empty bed made me feel hollow inside. But, all Iwantedwas my bed and a warm body next to me. Someone to find comfort in.
