Chapter 8 - Kent #2
"Tell me about Sarah," I say, cleaning blood from the pliers with methodical precision. Jenkins has been crying for the last ten minutes, not from pain but from the slow disintegration of his carefully constructed self-image. "Your wife. How did she really die?"
"Car accident." The words come out automatically, muscle memory. "Lost control on Route 9, hit a tree. Rainy night, poor visibility—"
I remove his middle fingernail. Quick, efficient, like pulling a weed. He screams until his voice cracks, then sobs.
"Try again, Detective."
"She was threatening to leave." The admission comes in a whisper, barely audible over the tape recorder's soft whir. "Said she was taking Delilah, moving back to her sister's place. Said she had evidence of what I…of how I disciplined them."
"Evidence?"
"Photos. Hospital records. She'd been documenting everything for months." His head lolls forward, defeated. "Stupid bitch thought she was building a case against me."
I make a shallow cut along his collarbone, just deep enough to focus his attention. "Continue."
"I couldn't let her destroy my career. My reputation.
Everything I'd worked for." The justifications sound pathetic even to him now.
"I knew her route to work, knew that curve on Route 9 where the guardrail was damaged.
All it took was a little pressure on the accelerator when she wasn't expecting it. "
"You ran her off the road."
"Made it look like an accident. Cops who investigated were my friends—they saw what I wanted them to see. Grieving widower, tragic loss, poor little girl left without a mother." He laughs, a broken sound. "Got so much sympathy. So many casseroles."
I lean back, processing the casual way he describes murdering his wife. No remorse, just practical considerations about reputation and career advancement. The tape recorder captures every word, every inflection, preserving his confession for posterity.
"What about the evidence she collected?"
"Burned it all. Made sure there was nothing left to tie me to…to the discipline issues."
"Discipline issues." I pick up the knife again, test its weight. "Is that what you call breaking your nine-year-old daughter's ribs?"
"She fell down the stairs—"
The blade slides into his thigh, deeper than before. Deep enough to hit muscle, to make him understand that lying has consequences. "Try again."
"I pushed her! She was being defiant, not listening, and I lost my temper. She hit the banister going down." Blood soaks through his uniform pants. "It was an accident."
"An accident you made her lie about."
"She had to learn. Had to understand that family business stays in the family.
" His voice takes on that familiar tone of paternal authority, as if he's still justified in terrorizing a child.
"I told her if she said anything different, they'd take her away from me.
Put her in foster care with strangers who'd do worse things to her. "
The calculated cruelty of it—using an nine-year-old's fear of abandonment to ensure her silence about abuse—makes my vision blur red at the edges. I force myself to breathe slowly, to maintain control.
"I lived with someone like you once," I say, surprising myself with the admission. "Different house, different reasons, but the same fundamental pathology. I know exactly what you are, Detective."
Something flickers in his eyes—curiosity maybe, or the desperate hope that shared experience might create sympathy between us. "You understand then. You know how difficult kids can be. How they push boundaries, test limits—"
"I understand that you're a coward who uses your size and authority to terrorize someone weaker." The words come out flat, clinical. "I understand that you've spent sixteen years breaking down a child's sense of self-worth, making her believe she deserves the violence you inflict."
"She does deserve it! She's ungrateful, disrespectful.
Always acting like she's smarter than me, like my rules don't apply to her.
" The familiar rant, the same justifications I heard through the window last night.
"She thinks because she gets good grades, because she wants to go to college, that makes her better than her old man. "
I remove his ring fingernail. He screams until his voice breaks, then whimpers like the animal he is.
"Tell me about the sexual abuse."
The words hit him like a physical blow. His face goes white, then flushed. "I never—that's not—you don't know what you're talking about."
"Detective Jenkins." My voice carries the patience of someone who has all night and unlimited pain to distribute. "We've established that lying costs you flesh. Do you really want to test my resolve on this particular topic?"
"It wasn't like that." The words tumble out in a rush. "She was young, maybe eleven or twelve. Just innocent touching, nothing serious. And it only happened a few times."
The clinical detachment I've maintained for forty-five minutes cracks. My hand tightens on the knife handle, and I have to count to ten before I trust myself to speak.
"Define 'innocent touching.'"
"Just…exploration. Education. She needed to learn about her body, about what men expect from women." Each word makes my skin crawl. "It's normal. Fathers are supposed to teach their daughters these things."
"How many times?"
"I told you, just a few. Maybe six or seven occasions over a couple years." He's minimizing, the way predators always do. Six or seven could mean dozens. "It stopped when she got older, started fighting back. Got too mouthy and difficult."
The rage that floods through me is unlike anything I've experienced. Pure, white-hot fury that makes my hands shake and my vision narrow to a tunnel focused on his face. This isn't just abuse—it's the systematic destruction of a child's innocence, trust, sense of safety in the world.
I want to kill him slowly. Want to make him suffer for hours, days, until he understands a fraction of the pain he's inflicted. Want to carve my rage into his flesh one precise cut at a time.
Instead, I make myself breathe. Count screws. Focus on the mission.
"Continue," I manage.
"There's nothing else to continue. It stopped. I moved on to more…appropriate outlets." The euphemism makes me sick. "Delilah never said anything, never complained. She understood it was just between us."
"She was eleven years old."
"She was mature for her age. Smart. She understood—"
I drive the knife into his shoulder, deep enough to scrape bone. He shrieks, the sound echoing off the kitchen cabinets.
"She was a child, you fucking monster."
"Okay! Okay, yes, she was a child. But she's fine now, isn't she? She's functional, getting good grades. It didn't damage her permanently."
The casual dismissal of trauma, the complete inability to comprehend the harm he's caused—it's everything I've learned to recognize in predators. They don't see their victims as human beings with inner lives and lasting wounds. They see objects, tools, things to be used for their gratification.
"Tell me about the bribes."
"What bribes?"
Another cut, this one across his knuckles. "Detective, we've been at this for almost an hour. Do you really think I don't know about your supplemental income?"
"Five grand a month," he gasps. "Sometimes more. Drug dealers, bookmakers, anyone who needed cases to disappear or evidence to get lost."
"Names."
"Rodriguez runs numbers on the south side. Kowalski moves coke through the docks. Martinez has a prostitution ring operating out of three massage parlors." The names pour out of him now, his entire network of corruption laid bare. "We all take money. It's just how the system works."
"How long?"
"Nine years. Maybe nine. Started small, just looking the other way on minor stuff. But the money was good, and the work was easy."
Forty-seven minutes on the tape recorder. Forty-seven minutes of confession that would destroy not just Jenkins but half the police department. Murder, child abuse, sexual assault, corruption, bribery—enough crimes to fill a federal indictment.
But listening to him minimize everything, excuse everything, blame everyone but himself, I understand that this isn't about justice anymore. This is about removing a cancer from the world. Some people can't be redeemed, can't be fixed, can't be anything but what they are.
Harry Jenkins is a monster who wears a badge. And monsters don't deserve trials or second chances or the presumption of innocence.
They deserve to die.
Eventually, I set the knife aside and reach for my surgical kit, the black leather case I've carried to six previous scenes.
Each tool has its place, its purpose, its role in the ritual that transforms murder into justice.
Scalpel. Forceps. Suturing needles. Surgical thread.
The instruments of my trade, arranged with the same precision I once used for construction work.
Three screws, never two, never four. Order from chaos. Beauty from brutality.
Jenkins watches me lay out the tools, understanding finally dawning in his pain-clouded eyes. "Please," he whispers, the word barely audible. "Please, I can change. I can get help. Therapy, medication, whatever it takes."
I thread the needle with black surgical thread, testing the tension. "Forty-nine minutes of confession suggests otherwise, Detective. You don't see yourself as the problem. You see yourself as the victim of an ungrateful daughter and an unfair system."
"I was wrong! I know that now. I'll turn myself in, confess everything to Internal Affairs. I'll resign from the force, pay restitution—"
"To whom?" I look up from my preparations, meeting his desperate gaze. "Your wife is dead. Your daughter has sixteen years of trauma that no amount of money can undo. The system you corrupted will simply find another bent cop to replace you."
"Then what do you want from me?"