“So what if I did?” Another shrug. “You know how long ago that was?”
Jill almost bit back with justice doesn't have an expiration date, but as soon as the thought entered her mind, she blanched at just how cheesy that was. If Jill was going to start saying stuff like that, she might as well buy herself a pair of sunglasses to take off in the process of saying such nonsense.
CSI: Baltimore, here she came.
“Again, establishing a pattern.” Now standing behind Paulson, and relishing in the confused look on his face because how did she move that fast… Jill allowed herself the tiniest of grins before resting her left fist in her right palm and cracking her knuckles. The flinch she got out of Paulson had been the exact response she wanted.
“Not really for the BPD. It's well known they've looked the other way when it comes to police brutality for decades. Pretty sure that's true in a lot of other places, too. But you, Mr. Paulson?” She refused to use the moniker of detective anymore. “You've been building up to this for years, haven't you?”
Before Paulson could react, Jill was in her seat again. For the first time, he got a look at her face that wasn't obstructed by strands of brown hair. Though the metal half of her face was still on full display, a tiny flicker escaping from her infrared eye on occasion, Paulson's eyes narrowed. The woman seated before him felt familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. It nagged at his subconscious, like a kitten trying to swat at a dangling thread that was just out of reach.
“Even ignoring your questionable behavior as an officer and detective,” she continued. “Good job getting the Bishop to gloss over that, by the way. Who needs red tape when you can just call one of the higher-ups you’re tight with and they can just make it all go away? But see... this even goes back to your war days. Tell me something, Joshua, why'd you enlist?”
The first time Paulson opened his mouth, his forehead scrunched in a potent mixture of confusion and anger, no words formed. So he closed his mouth and sat up a little straighter, clearing his throat in the process. His hands clasped together and rested on the table. “To serve the country I'm proud to call home.”
“And does serving your country involve killing civilians?” Jill arched her human brow.
“What?” Paulson spat as much as he spoke, poking at the table with his right middle finger. “Look, freak! Every monster I gunned down deserved it!”
“So your argument is that a woman in northwest Kuwait who was eight months pregnant deserved it?” Man, the file Captain Richards kept on Detective Paulson from back in the day had held some disgusting stuff in it. “That the three-year-old tugging on her hand as they wandered home deserved to have their head blown off?”
“Couldn't get Saddam,” Paulson said with all the indifference of a man who had been asked to take out the garbage. “They were the next best thing.”
“Innocent people,” Jill said with an anger to her tone.
“No such thing,” Paulson argued. “Just like there's no such thing as innocent in this city. Especially that Grainger kid, especially that damn preacher, and damn sure especially that Buckner kid!”
No sooner did the word kid escape Paulson's mouth, the edge of the table went airborne and clocked him in the chin. Paulson fell onto his ass, covering his face. Blood poured out from between his fingers as the table toppled over and his chair had skidded to the wall. Paulson looked up, blinking the stars out of his eyes in time to see Jill hovering over him, jaw clenched and fists cocked. She reached down and grabbed the detective by his collar, and Paulson chuckled before her elbow slammed into his nose.
Bone cracked. Blood spilled to the floor. Jill then dropped Paulson to the floor before approaching the door to the interrogation room and locking it. When Jill approached again, Paulson stammered and backpedaled to the far wall, his eyes wide and his nose gushing red. He stole a glance at the two-way mirror, his mouth hung open. “But...” he gaped, struggling to speak as blood filled his mouth. “Th-the cameras...”
“Are disabled,” she growled before pressing the heel of her left boot against Paulson's throat.
Paulson grit his teeth, which were now stained red, grabbing Jill's ankle with both hands. He tugged as hard as he could, but to no avail. “Y-you wouldn't...”
“Answer my questions and you won't have to find out,” she promised, even as there was incessant banging on the door.
Paulson kept his grip on Jill's boot, but his hands stopped struggling. Turning to the side to spit out the blood in his mouth, the detective sighed. His shoulders dropped and the anger disappeared from his eyes, replaced with the resignation of a man who knew he was at the end of his rope. The BPD would likely never touch him, but it was clear to him now that the vigilante was real and as driven as even the most annoying cop.
“Fine,” he snarled before spitting out more blood.
“Did you and Brady kill Carlos Grainger?”
“Yes.”
“Did you attack the detective working the case when he got too close to the truth?”
Paulson's eyes flickered upward. “Yes.”
The boot applied pressure to Paulson's neck. Not enough to cut off his air supply, but enough to make him think he was about to be choked. If nothing else, the panic that would elicit was worth it.
“Did you kill that preacher?”
“No.” Paulson sniffled and shook his head. “But I know who did. And nothing you or any of your cop buddies can say will make me spill.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you don’t scare me. I’ve been at this for a long time, and you’re not the first self-righteous goody-goody to get on my case.” A knowing smile crept onto Paulson’s face, as if the proverbial light bulb had just gone off. “How is Paul, anyway?”
The implication nearly made Jill double over, and she couldn’t help but wonder how someone she had just met already knew who she was -- even when she was dressed up as her alter ego. Perhaps her secret wasn’t as well-guarded as she thought, and every time someone else knew her secret, Jill fought the urge to march down to the local TV station and just… tell the world.
What a story that would be.
“You can ask him yourself after they fry your ass for assassinating an elected official,” Jill managed once she regained her composure.
Before Paulson could respond, a gunshot rang out and the door to Interrogation One swung open. By the time Jill glanced over her shoulder, she saw Detectives Stevens and Watson with their weapons drawn and trained at her back. Turning back to Paulson with a glare, she put her hands up before slowly turning around to face the two detectives.
“Your timing is impeccable,” she muttered. “He was in the process of confessing.”
“Not that we can do anything about that,” Stevens groused as he holstered his piece. Watson did the same before fishing out a pair of handcuffs and stepping behind Jill. He tugged on her right arm before tucking the hand behind her back and slapping the cuffs over her wrist. He repeated the motion with Jill's left arm until she was secure in the cuffs before leading her out of the room.
Stevens knelt beside Paulson once the commotion was over, another tsk sound coming out as he shook his head.
“Looks like your case just went down the shitter,” Paulson said with a chuckle. He was insufferably defiant, even with a broken nose and being soaked in his own blood.
“Maybe,” Stevens said as he yanked the other detective back to his feet. “But it was fun watching her beat on you. Ask me, you deserve a lot worse.”
◊◊◊
Once Hitori Watson got Jill to the Holding area, but before leading her into one of the cells, he took the cuffs off and pocketed them with a shake of his head. “That was a pretty stupid thing you did in there, Andersen. You’re lucky the cameras were off.”
“I made sure they were,” she said, rubbing her wrists.
“You think Paulson killed the DA?”
“I’d bet my badge on it,” Jill said. “He swears up and down he didn
’t kill that preacher, though, and I’m not sure I believe him.”
“That wouldn’t make any sense.” Watson shrugged. “Why commit a murder in your own jurisdiction?”
“So you catch the case and steer the investigation away from yourself.” Jill matched Watson’s shrug with one of her own. “That’s what my father did.”
Paul’s execution and the revelation that he was in fact the monster everyone accused him of being did nothing to lessen the weight it put on Jill’s shoulders. The closure of it all offered her a small, strange measure of peace, but his memory was ever-present. The Devin Buckner case was no different, especially knowing Paul faced a similar case during his own career, with disastrous results.
Jill couldn’t help but wonder… did the disillusionment Paul experienced in the Carlos Grainger case make it that much easier for Gregor to lead him down the path he did? Was that the opening Gregor needed to corrupt the one cop in the city everyone thought was incorruptible?
Was Jill destined to suffer the same fate?
Detective Stevens joined the pair in front of one of the empty cells, his black cowboy boots announcing his presence long before he showed up. By the time he did, his face was red and he was struggling for breath. Grabbing a knee with his right hand, Stevens clutched a nearby bar with his left, gulping in oxygen as quickly as his lungs would allow.
“Uh, Earl?” Jill quirked a brow in Watson’s direction. “You alright?”
“Nope,” Stevens answered before gulping down another hit of oxygen and standing upright again. “And neither is Fuckwad. He apparently had a capsule in his damn mouth.”
Watson frowned. “Capsule?”
“Cyanide.” Stevens tossed a thumb over his shoulder. “Started foamin’ at the mouth, convulsin’, all that shit. Medics’re looking him over, but bastard’s long gone by now.”
Watson cursed under his breath before turning to Jill. “Why would he do something like that? Paulson doesn’t strike me as the fall-on-the-sword type.”
“Unless there’s someone pulling his strings,” Jill theorized, her mind instantly going to the previous night. “Someone who considered him a loose end once we had him in our custody.”
Stevens rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you mean who I think you mean.”
“Honestly, I have no idea.” Jill ran her fingers through her hair, glancing over Stevens’ shoulder to make sure they were alone. She needed to speak with Captain Richards, but she couldn’t do it dressed as the vigilante. “All I know is, ever since Gregor offered his ‘help,’ things have gotten even more out of hand. The Bishop got involved, the other vigilante showed up, and now a long-tenured detective is dead in our interrogation room, the day after his old buddy announces he’s back in town.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Jill nodded in Stevens’ direction. “Go to my locker, the code’s my birthday. A change of clothes and my badge are in there. Get me those so I can change before talking to Richards. Then, I want you to find anything you can on Sam Brady.”
Watson watched as Stevens left the Holding area. “This isn’t over, is it?”
“Nope. Not by a longshot.”
CHAPTER 54
The change of clothes in Jill’s locker wound up being a faded University of Maryland hoodie, an old pair of jeans, and a pair of Chucks she’d had since high school. The sole was coming off the right shoe and the white across the toes was smudged brown and gray and a couple other colors, but she loved those shoes as much anything else she had ever owned.
But as nice as it felt to get out of the tight leather and the bulky mesh armor, Jill had to admit that she was starting to feel more comfortable in that outfit than out of it. She wasn’t sure what that said about her, and to be frank, she didn’t wanna know.
“Paulson committed suicide,” she announced without greeting her captain.
Daniel Richards, to his credit, didn’t seem shocked. Then again, he probably had the precinct’s best poker face. Instead of reacting as many others would have, he simply set his pen down, folded his arms over his chest, and cocked his head to the side.
“Guilty conscience?”
“I think he was protecting someone.” Jill stood on the opposite end of the captain’s desk, her hands stuffed into the front pocket of her hoodie. “Far be it for me to mourn a racist waste of a badge, but… we still don’t know who killed Mitch’s grandfather, and we have no way of knowing whether or not Paulson was in any way connected to Devin’s killers.”
“Mitch’s grandfather isn’t your concern,” Richards pointed out. “That case belongs to another precinct.”
“That’s done jack shit with it!”
“You can’t save everyone in this city, Jill.”
“Someone has to,” she fought back with a shrug. “Someone in this city has to understand and appreciate what it means to carry a badge.”
“And you do just that.”
Jill sighed and shook her head. “And now I’m a target because of it.”
“Don’t let Downtown bother you,” Richards argued. “I’m the one who has to fend them off. That’s my job, not yours. You catch killers and put them behind bars.”
“Unless the killers have badges.” Jill shook her head. “Then they get away with it until some other vigilante shows up out of nowhere and tosses them into the bay.”
Turning to plop herself into the sofa across from Richards’ desk, Jill brushed her fingers through her hair. When she was Detective Andersen, she wore her hair in a tight ponytail, mostly for convenience sake and because it was a slightly more professional look. Her fingertips brushed the edge of the skin graft as she raked them through her hair, and Jill shook her head before looking up at her captain.
“Brady’s back in town, too,” she announced.
“Shit,” Richards muttered, taking off his glasses and tossing them onto the blotter atop his desk.
“Had a run-in with him,” Jill explained. “Well, more like he shot me in the face and then we threw down.”
Richards opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again before any words got out. His brow scrunched in something between confusion and revulsion, and the captain decided then and there that he probably didn’t want to know what Jill meant by shot me in the face.
“Did Brady say what he wanted?”
“To spring his buddy.”
“Then I guess we can rule out Brady as the source for the cyanide pill.”
“I’m not discounting anything at this point,” Jill muttered with a shake of her head. “But… Dan, I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
Richards frowned. “Because of this one case?”
“It’s not just this case.” She shook her head again. “Ever since they fished Trent’s body out of the bay, I feel like I’m always looking over my shoulder. This morning, I got into it with some cops in riot gear cause they were trying to start something with a group of protestors.”
Richards pinched the bridge of his nose before wiping both hands over his face. He visibly shuddered at the mention of riot gear and everything that insinuated.
“An actual fight, Dan.” Jill’s lower lip quivered. “I knocked two cops unconscious and shattered another one’s elbow… but if I hadn’t, then who knows what we would’ve seen on the news tonight?”
“That’s not your fault,” Richards argued, emerging from behind his desk and kneeling in front of Jill, placing his hands on her shoulders.
“Maybe. I became Bounty to fight bad guys, not cops.”
The shame was, it was hard to tell when the cops were the bad guys anymore. There was entirely too much gray mixed in with the black-and-white, and Jill didn’t like knowing that some who were hailed as heroes were actually anything but. They were a disgrace to the profession and everything it entailed, but the fact that downtown appeared ambivalent most of the time was even more unacceptable… especially when that ambivalence meant those who gave a damn paid a price.
“It’s not fair to the
rest of you to shoulder that burden,” Jill continued. “This is my battle. I can’t let you guys get dragged down with me anymore.”
“Don’t you think that’s our decision to make?”
“If I was just a cop, yeah.” Jill chewed on her lower lip, sucking in a deep breath to keep an oncoming wave of emotion at bay. “This precinct -- you all -- would be better off without me.”
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
“Really?” Jill forced herself to look her captain in the eye, before eventually pulling away her gaze to stare at her hands, which were now cradled in her lap. “Think about how much easier your lives were before you learned my secret.”
“An easy life is not necessarily a good life,” Richards reminded with a wry, sideways grin.
Jill, despite her inner turmoil, fought back a smirk. “But if the cops find me out and bring me down, all of you could be accessories.”
“And we accepted that risk when we decided to stand by you after we learned the truth.” Richards heaved a weary sigh and glanced down at the floor. “I hope you know what you're doing.”
Richards was every bit the surrogate father Jill had needed following Paul’s arrest -- ironic, considering Richards had been the one to arrest him -- and the skeptical look the captain was giving her at the moment was just like the same look Paul used to give her. Were Jill an uncertain teenager, bravado masking just how out of her element she was, the appraisal would make her wilt. Instead, she straightened her posture, taking a moment to reflect on the weight of the badge on her hip.
It represented so much of her life. As a child, that badge had been the only thing Jill wanted. It represented all of the best qualities of humanity, qualities her father exemplified every day. As a teenager, it had become a symbol of what she thought her hometown should be. Even then, Baltimore had started to decline in several different ways, ways in which the police were either incapable or unwilling to deal. Even when she was in Iraq, avoiding IEDs and volunteering for secret government experiments, she spent every moment fighting to get back home -- to get back to the Academy.
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