Scale of Justice Read online

  Well, I thought, now’s my chance to return the favor. Besides, it was New Year’s Eve. Who wanted to start the year off in jail?

  I walked back to find the man slipping winter boots onto the kid’s feet. "Okay,” I said. “Get him home. I'll give him a warning this time, but if I ever see his name come up again…"

  "Perfectly understood, Officer,” the man said. He shook my hand heartily. “Again, I’m so sorry. He’s a beautiful, beautiful person, but when he drinks, sometimes…."

  The man put his arm around the boy and began walking away, practically carrying the younger man. The wind had picked up and was now packing a ferocious wallop.

  "Want a lift?" I asked.

  "That's quite all right, Officer." The man's voice was nearly lost in the wind. "We’re right around the corner."

  I watched them turn the corner, then got back in the car and wiped the snow from my face and called in my position.

  In my mind, I had done my final good deed of the year. In my mind, I had finished out the New Year the best way possible, doing something nice for someone, and now it was time to see a beautiful girl about a glass of champagne.

  •

  The call came at five twenty-one in the morning. About an hour past mine and Elizabeth’s final lovemaking session of the night.

  I untangled my body from Elizabeth’s and listened to the voice of Chief Michalski telling me to get down to the Yacht Club immediately.

  Fifteen minutes later, I watched as Benjamin Collins’ body was loaded into the coroner’s van. They’d found his i.d. on the frozen pier just twenty feet or so from where his nude, mutilated body had been seen bobbing in the small patch of water heated by the Yacht Club’s boiler runoff.

  I stood there in the cold, as numb and unfeeling as I’d ever been in my entire life. They let me look at the body. It was a sight I would never forget.

  By the end of the day, I’d given my version of the events of the night before well over a dozen times. To the Chief. To internal investigators. I desperately wanted to join in the search for the man to whom I’d turned over Benjamin Collins, but I was kept away from the investigation. Left to sit in a room and think about what I’d done.

  No one had chewed me out. No one blamed me for fucking up, but it was there just the same.

  Finally, the Chief called me in and asked for my gun and badge. It was administrative leave. Until things were sorted out and the killer was caught. Until then, I was gone. The department might be liable should Collins’ relatives seek litigation. I left his office, taking one last look at my gun and badge before he swept them off his desk and into his drawer.

  I never got them back.

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