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Honestly, so was I

Seeing Bax broken like that, watching Nassir hover over Keelyn as blood pumped out of her chestit all hit too close to hole the law and people I cared about I mean I had lockedfor Race to do soh for it to be his turn to sit in a cell But the kind of outright warfare Roark was launching at the people I loved was an entirely different ball gauy knew all the good guy’s tricks, itto catch him twice as hard as it should be

I was already feeling defeated and disgruntled after hours of hitting the streets when I got called to an armed robbery with a fatality The liquor-store clerk was dead at the scene and two of the custo around to buy beer were also shot and en route to the hospital It wasn’t an uncoot to the scene and saw that the kid that was hooked up in cuffs and sitting in the back of the patrol car couldn’t be any older than twelve or thirteen, it al sedan, and not stop driving until I got to the station to turn in un and my shield All the violence and unnecessary waste of life just seele day

I pulled up the knot on my tie and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of my slacks as I cli to a group of people gathered on the outside of the crime-scene tape saw me and started over in my direction The kid in the back of the patrol car looked up at me and I could see that he had tear tracks on his face Shit He should be playing football with his friends not out co felonies

“Anybody see anything?”

The uniformed cop nodded and pointed at the kid with the end of the pen he was using to jot doitness statements

“The guy behind the counter was the owner His as in the back doing inventory when the first shots were fired She saw her husband go down and said the kid just kept shooting and shooting She gave us a positive ID on him”

I grunted and frowned as the coroner’s teaurney out of the store with the body covered in a heavy, black plastic body bag I heard gasps frohed

“How did the kid get caught so fast? Have his parents been notified?” He ht be a killer but he was still a s by the book

“He went back to school Guess he didn’t knohat to do when things went south One of the teachers saw hi and noticed he didn’t look right When she approached him she noticed the blood spatter all over his clothes and shoes She had a school security guard detain hiot the ID fro for it, and there are no parents Moto the kid, he stays with an ‘uncle’ ” The cop made quotes around the word in the air “But it sounds like the guy is a freak show The kid said he was trying to rob the place so he could buy a bus ticket and get out of town Said he was tired of his uncle hurting hiun is the so-called uncle’s, by the way, so we sent a unit over there to grab him as well”

“Jesus” I ran a hand over my face “It never ends, does it?” It was all such a vicious cycle with no end in sight

The other cop sighed and looked at the kid “No No, it doesn’t”

“If the other two victiet statements from them Make sure the kid has someone from Social Services with hiuardian You want to make sure every I is dotted and every T is crossed because I bet they try and prosecute him as an adult”

“Can’t say I disagree with that This is a pretty adult-size fuckup he landed himself in”

It was, but the kid never stood a chance, and all I could think was how easy it would’ve been for Bax to do so to feed himself and survive because no one else was there to take care of hie

“Sometimes it feels like the only choice you have is the worst choice there is Tooput in that position We just have to do our job and do it to the best of our ability in order to keep everyone else safe from those terrible choices and the people forced to make them”

“You speaking from personal experience, Detective?”

I didn’t bother answering When you were a cop in this city—or any city, really—for any length of tiies that were practically zo whatever they had to do in order to feed their fa on the street because a backrooe Men forced to bend the law rather than work inside it because soht as well be thes happened the way they did here, and I didn’t need to spin sob stories aboutfather, or my car thief of a brother, to showcase just how much experience I had with how dark the Point could be

I grabbed the surveillance tapes, had a quick chat with the inconsolable wife, took the notes I would need for the report, and then drove across town to the eleun hidden inside one of the tube slides in the eleround; that was just a block over from the middle school the kid had attended The weapon was still loaded, with the safety off, and ere all silently thanking whatever god atching that day that no other little hands had run across it and caused evenabout what a mess it all was and how deeply sad itlife all the way toI could do about it It was the i able to fix that poor kid’s life, of not being able to help hi should be driven to those lengths, yet it happened every day here

I was packing up the scene when one of the patrol officer’s radios squawked A callout for a boh school a few us threats all the time, but ever since Nassir’s club had been blown up and burned to the ground, we tended to take them more seriously The officer responded and we all climbed in our respective vehicles and headed over to the school It looked like most of the teachers and kids had already been evacuated There were a lot of bodiesand on the street As I climbed out of the car I frowned hard because all the kids were dressed in a very fa navy-blue-and-khaki uniform I saw that same color co and going from school