Chapter 20 #2
“Listen to reason? For all we know, that kid is already six feet underground.” Sam must have caught Shane shaking his head, because he leaned back in his seat with the satisfied expression of a man who had successfully provoked a reaction.
“Sometimes I forget how young you are, Levick. Or maybe it’s because you worked vice instead of homicide.
I’m not saying the system doesn’t have its place, but let’s not pretend it always delivers justice. ”
What was it with that kind of dismissive attitude lately?
On any other day, Shane could have brushed it off as the cynicism of a veteran cop who had witnessed too much death and too many acquittals to maintain faith in the machinery of justice.
Today, with the knowledge of what Kinsley had done pressing against the inside of his skull like a migraine that wouldn’t break, the comment struck a nerve that was already raw.
“What’s the alternative? Vigilantes running around deciding who deserves to live and who deserves to die?” Shane did his best to keep his tone even, though he could hear the strain in his own voice. “That’s not justice, Sam. That’s chaos.”
“It’s not that black and white. In all my years in homicide, you think I haven’t arrested people who had taken a life in retribution?
I made the collar. I did my job. I processed them and testified against them when the time came.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t understand why they did what they did. ”
Rain streamed down the windshield in rivulets now, the gray, dismal morning matching Shane’s mood. He didn’t respond to Sam’s speech, hoping the silence would signal that he was done with the conversation and that Sam would let him sit and brood in peace until the boutique owner showed up for work.
“You ever see that Kevin Bacon movie?” Sam asked, shattering any hope of quiet. Shane stifled a groan. “The one where his kid gets killed by a gang member during a gas station holdup? Death Sentence, I think it was called.”
Shane gave a curt nod, not that his acknowledgment did anything to slow Sam’s momentum.
“The court lets the killer off with a slap on the wrist because of some plea deal, and Bacon’s character just snaps.
Decides if the system won’t deliver justice, he’ll do it himself.
Goes after every single one of them.” Sam shook his head with something that looked like reluctant admiration.
“What gets me about that film is the way it shows the transformation. He starts off as this regular guy, a family man, someone who’d never even thrown a punch.
And then grief hollows him out, fills the empty space with rage, and suddenly he’s capable of things he never imagined.
Now put yourself in Greg Carlson’s shoes.
His wife and daughter were gunned down in their driveway, and he has to live the rest of his life without them.
Thinking about their last moments as they lay on a slab of hot concrete, struggling to breathe as the blood pooled beneath them.
Makes you think about how quickly any one of us could become that person under the right circumstances, doesn’t it? ”
“Real life isn’t a movie, Sam.”
“No, it’s messier,” Sam agreed, setting his empty cup in the holder.
The remaining ice settled against itself with a hollow rattle.
“But the principle stands. You push people far enough, they snap. And sometimes, the snapping makes more sense than pretending the system is going to deliver anything resembling justice.”
He shifted in his seat, turning his body toward Shane.
“You have a sister, Levick?”
The conversation shifted from the philosophical to the personal, and Shane could feel it closing in on him. He was half a second from stepping out and waiting for the boutique owner in the pouring rain.
“I have two, actually—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sam cut him off with a dismissive wave. “I’m not asking for a family reunion invitation. I’m trying to make a point here.”
Shane exhaled slowly through his nose. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could sit in this car.
He could sense exactly where the conversation was headed and wanted no part of it, yet he didn’t want to overreact in a way that would have Sam spreading stories around the station about his new partner losing his composure over a hypothetical.
“Imagine one of your sisters,” Sam continued, and his voice dropped to a lower register that somehow made the words land harder. “She’s dating some guy. Things go south. She tries to break it off. He doesn’t take it well.”
Shane kept his eyes fixed on the storefront across the street, though his focus had turned entirely inward, his mind involuntarily constructing the scenario Sam was painting with a vividness he didn’t want and couldn’t stop.
“One day, your sister is heading to her car after work. Maybe it’s getting dark, maybe it’s broad daylight.
Doesn’t matter. This ex-boyfriend has been waiting.
He’s got a gun. And he doesn’t just shoot her.
That would be too quick. He makes sure she suffers.
Makes sure she knows exactly why she’s dying.
And then he leaves her there on the pavement, struggling to breathe as she bleeds out alone.
” Sam’s expression had hardened, the philosophical detachment replaced by something older and darker.
“You have all the proof. You know who did it. You know where he is.”
“I get the point, Sam.”
“Listen to me, Levick.” Sam leaned toward him, close enough that Shane could smell the remnants of egg and processed cheese on his breath.
“You track this guy down. You’ve got the evidence right in front of you.
There’s no question he’s guilty. Would you seriously just put the cuffs on him, recite his rights, and walk away satisfied?
If you can honestly say yes to that, then you’re a goddamn saint, and I don’t believe in saints. ”
The irony of the moment didn’t escape Shane.
Here was Sam, unknowingly advocating the exact justification that Kinsley had almost certainly used when she pulled the trigger on Calvin Gantz.
The same rationalization that had led her to break the very laws she’d sworn to uphold, to cross the line that Shane had always believed separated people like them from the people they arrested.
Only Sam had no idea that someone within arm’s reach of his daily life had already gone through with it.
That the philosophical exercise he was treating like a bar argument had played out in reality on a back-country road outside Fallbrook, and the woman who had pulled the trigger was currently on the other side of town investigating a thirty-year-old murder as though nothing had happened.
Sam’s casual dismissal of legal justice hit too close to home, and the sliver of irritation that had been building all morning morphed into something hotter and harder to contain.
“So, what are you suggesting? That we should look the other way if Greg Carlson tracks down his daughter’s ex and puts a bullet in his head?
” Shane couldn’t keep the edge from his voice.
“Because that’s not justice, Sam. That’s murder.
No matter how understandable the impulse is, no matter how much pain he’s in, the act itself is murder, and calling it anything else is just a way of making ourselves feel better about it. ”
“Easy there, Levick,” Sam said with a good-natured laugh, raising his palms in mock surrender as though they’d been discussing the weather and Shane had inexplicably started shouting.
“I’m not suggesting anything of the sort.
I’m just saying I understand the impulse.
There’s a difference between understanding something and condoning it. ”
The rain continued to drum steadily on the roof of the cruiser, filling the silence that settled between them.
Shane took a deep breath and tried to rein in the anger before it became visible enough for Sam to start asking questions he couldn’t answer.
This wasn’t about Sam or his philosophical musings.
This was about Shane’s own war with himself, the battle he’d been losing by inches every day since he’d stood on Kinsley's porch and basically cut ties with her.
Would he want revenge if someone hurt his sisters that way?
The question burned through him, impossible to dismiss no matter how many times he tried. Of course, he would. He’d want to make them suffer, to feel the same pain, the same fear, the same helplessness that his sister had felt in that moment. He’d want them to pay with their life for taking hers.
But wanting and doing were two entirely different things.
That was the line.
That was always the line.
“The answer to your question is no,” Shane said, turning to meet Sam’s gaze directly. “I wouldn’t kill him. Because the moment I did, I’d become something I’ve spent my whole life standing against. And that wouldn’t honor my sister. It would betray everything she knew me to be.”
The words sounded right. They sounded principled.
They sounded like the kind of thing a good detective was supposed to believe.
But they were hollow, every one of them, because Shane was sitting in this car harboring knowledge that could put his former lover behind bars and doing absolutely nothing about it.
Was his silence not its own form of betrayal? Of the law he claimed to believe in, of the victims who deserved justice regardless of who had killed them, of his own integrity that he could feel cracking a little more with each day he chose inaction over accountability?
“That’s a pretty speech,” Sam said after a moment, his tone softer than before. “But I’ve seen what grief does to people. I’ve watched good men and women shatter under its weight. It’s easy to stand on principle when the wound isn’t yours.”
The moral certainty Shane had once prided himself on, the clarity that had made him effective as a detective and steady as a man, had been eroding since the moment he’d pieced together what Kinsley had done.
Each day brought new fractures to what had once been a solid foundation, and he was beginning to wonder how much longer the structure could hold before it collapsed entirely.
“Hey, there she is,” Sam said suddenly, all philosophical debate forgotten as he straightened in his seat and pointed through the rain-soaked windshield.
Shane turned to find a middle-aged woman with a yellow umbrella hurrying toward the front entrance of the boutique, her keys already in her hand.
Both men reached for their door handles simultaneously, the conversation shelved for now, replaced by the immediate and uncomplicated demands of police work.
Shane was grateful for the interruption.
But he understood that one question would follow him long after the workday ended, and the Carlson case moved forward, and the rain stopped, and the world kept turning as though nothing had changed.
Could he ever move past the fact that Kinsley had killed a man and then covered it up?
Could he carry that knowledge indefinitely, living in the gray space between loyalty and duty, letting it eat at the lining of his stomach and the foundation of his principles until there was nothing left of either?
Or would there come a morning when the weight of it finally exceeded his capacity to bear it, and he would have no choice but to act?