Kent’s father had joined him when he heard the news, put his own Glock in between his small, crooked teeth and ate it. A rookie cop got stuck tagging the body a few days later when they finally gave up trying to call and broke in. The cop threw up in James’ bathroom twice from the sight and smell.
James’ body got cremated by the state. Headlines broadcast the death of The Staten Island Vigilante. Brass had done all they could to smash James Kent as an individual, not a representation of the NYPD. Some cops stood up for him though, said that James Kent was a good guy who got messed up while trying to do something right, maybe even something they all really wanted to do deep down inside. But none of that would be said in public, only in hushed whispers told in cop bars across the city. The public and the papers said James was insane, a psychopath, a serial killer.
Max saw it the way it was, emulating a wicked god ultimately made you just as wicked. James had become that very thing he’d loathed most vehemently from the start - evil. It was that simple.
At the end of the second week since Kent’s death, Locke hung up his uniform and gun belt and headed home without saying a word in the locker room, just as he normally did. The other cops just watched, only a few had the guts to say something, but even they didn’t know what to say, so they stayed quiet as well, just patted Locke on his back and nodded.
Pulling into his driveway, tired from spent tears on his ride home, Locke hung his head low. He sat with his foot on the brake for a while, finally shifted into park and shut the Mini down for the night. Every move was heavy, getting out of the car, walking beaten towards the front door of his home, all of it.
Not much of a home anymore.
Once inside, he went straight to the kitchen, grabbed the Tanqueray and a small glass bottle of tonic. He brought them to the table and dropped into the seat, poured the gin one third full in a small glass and decided to skip the tonic.
He thought of James. He thought of Madison. He thought of how much purpose there was to his life, even if those closest to him were gone. Christians like James, he reasoned, found their purpose in their god. They often told him that in his life without a god, there could be no ultimate purpose. But Maxwell Locke knew better.
If we don't have a purpose, then everything we do is our purpose. And that makes everything we do all that much more important.
He wished James could have grasped something so simple. He took a sip of his drink and scowled.
“Fuck,” he whispered as he squeezed the glass with one hand, slapped the table with the other. “Just, fuck.”
D.O.A. Page 18