Page 58 of Sinful Justice

“What are your thoughts on the Dowel homicide?”

Stunned by her change of topic, I frown and set my coffee down. “What?”

“The person who killed Dowel is being hailed a hero. You killed your ex-girlfriend’s attacker.”

My temper flares deep inside my stomach. “Are you accusing me of being Dowel’s killer?”

“No. I’m asking your opinion on what some are calling vigilante justice. There’s a similarity between what you did and what’s happened with Dowel, no? One was a heat of the moment thing, no doubt. The other was a crime of convenience; Dowel was in the right place at the right time.”

“You mean wrong place,” I counter. “Wrong time?”

“That comes down to perspective, I suppose. Regardless, it was as cold and savage as yours. Will you commit one and condemn the other?”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right, Minka. Just because I took things into my own hands doesn’t mean I’ll encourage others to do the same. If we allow everyone to avenge whotheyhave decided is bad, we’d end up with a society crumbling from anarchy. Murder is never okay, and pretending you have the right to end a life isn’t heroism—it’s assassination. Plain and simple.”

“So you would have Dowel still walking the street?”

“No! I’d have him in a fucking cage where he could feel how he made others feel.”

Angry, Minka pushes forward on the table and pins me with a glare. “But he wasn’t in a cage, Archer. The law was letting those innocents down.”

“The law is a very rigid beast,” I argue. “There’s only so much one can do. I’m certain the cops investigating those girls’ deaths were doing the very best they could within the confines they could work. But just because a whole neighborhood says it was Dowel doesn’t mean we get to convict without proof. We have rules to follow, Mayet, and a judge can’t drop his gavel based purely on opinion. We need to be able to prove it.”

“And in the time it takes for that process to work, more little girls were hurt. You didn’t wait for a system to help your friend when you were sixteen. You did it yourself.”

“We’re going around in circles.” I pick up my spoon and dip it in my milk-logged cereal. “I already told you, I’m not sorry for what I did, but I can’t condone it either.” I glance up and meet her eyes. “I’m the ultimate hypocrite, because I did the very thing I fight against every day on the job. But I trust the system to get it right in the end.”

Setting my spoon down and pushing my bowl away, I draw a deep breath and study the faint pulse of Minka’s neck. The thin blue veins spidering beneath her skin. “I have to believe the system will get it right.”

“Why?” She finally grabs her fork and stabs a clump of egg. “Why do youhaveto believe?”

“Because if I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to keep turning up to scenes like the one we did last night. Because if I thought Louisa’s death would go unpunished, I think I’d quit and leave. I’d go back to my father and let him finish what he started.”

“Quite a dark outlook on life.” Pursing her lips, Minka chews on the egg already inside her mouth. “Your options are so black and white. Let the law prevail, or die.”

“The lawisblack and white. If I wanted to ignore it, I wouldn’t have stepped into the academy. I’d have stayed with my father and become the enforcer he wanted me to be.”

Having successfully rendered Minka speechless, I wipe my napkin across my lips.

“That life or this one,” I continue, “I was being trained to hold a gun and bring order to the streets. But whose order, Minka? Whose rules?” I sit back and let my legs drop wide beneath the table. “I chose the law set down by society, and not that decided by my father. Are you done?”

She looks down at her half-finished meal, then back up at me. “Yeah. I’m done.”

“Time to work?”

Nodding, she places her silverware on her plate and pushes up to stand. “I’m gonna swing by pathology and get those DNA results. Find out whose skin is under Louisa’s nails. We find the proof to hand to your beloved judge, then we get Thoma out of that house before he hurts his other daughters.” She stops and smirks. “And if we can’t work fast enough that the law can stop him, maybe our friendly vigilante killer will drop in and do it for us.”

I roll my eyes and offer her coat. “Not funny, Doctor Mayet. We don’t encourage street killers.”

She turns and works to thread her arms into the sleeves of her coat. Glancing over her shoulder, her beautiful eyes glide along my lips. “I struggle to find a reason why not. I’m all about law and order too, Detective. But I’m relentlesslyagainstbrutally harming little girls. And if you can’t stop it…”

I shove her coat the rest of the way on, heavy-handed so she grunts under my weight, then I lean in, quick as a flash, and press my lips to the side of her neck. “For as long as you think the vigilante bullshit is a reasonable response, you and I will never be able to agree. Iamthe law, Minka. I swore to uphold it. And you’re over here thinking it might be cool to create a serial killer and set them loose on the streets of Copeland. Pursuing you when we can’t agree on something so black and white might be the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

“I’ve been telling you not to pursue me all along.”

“But I’m gonna.” I brush the hair off her neck and slide the tip of my nose along the column until she shivers. “I’m gonna keep coming for you. Eventually, we’ll figure this out, one way or the other.”

“Kinda sounds like a threat,” she breathes out. “I didn’t ask to play this game.”

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