Better the Devil by TL Dyer

Author:TL Dyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edge of the Roof Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Hoss had been a cop for ten years. Not the best cop there was, perhaps; not the kind who had commendations coming out of his ears or had accelerated through the ranks. But he had tried. Mostly done the right things. He’d endured the grueling training. Not just the punishing fitness schedule, but the classroom hours spent learning the laws that governed the city and the codes associated with them, drilling them into his skull so he could recite them at will to anyone who broke them or threatened to break them. He’d come out of that training with a badge, a certificate, a pat on the head from the sheriff and the mayor, and an ego the size of Mount Rushmore. He was a goddamn hero.

Then came in-the-field training. Otherwise known as a lesson in humility. Boots on the ground. The real deal. No role playing now. No nice clean crimes easily tucked up. No compliant criminals. No eight-hour car chases and adrenalin rushes. No more pats on the head. There was paperwork. Piles of it. And blood, and shit, and mess, and noise. If you didn’t know your city well before, you certainly did by the end of field training – you knew it was as screwed up and hopeless as any other city in the country. And then, having learned that crucial lesson, you went to work. You pinned your mouth shut, you polished your shoes, you forgot about changing the world for the better, and you just damn well recited those codes all day every day until clocking off time.

If you were lucky, like Hoss had been, you might make detective. Detective meant you didn’t have to worry about the uniform, you didn’t have to bother yourself with the boring stuff like neighborhood disputes or lecturing disinterested kids in the dangers of smoking pot. Sometimes you forgot the damn codes, and it didn’t really matter. You had more important things to do. Bigger fish to fry. And when you managed it, when you got a case closed satisfactorily, you were a hero again. For a few hours, anyway. Though by that point in the game, it didn’t seem important anymore. Didn’t give you the same buzz. Didn’t give you any buzz, truth be told. Because, of all the things you got right, there were plenty more you didn’t. And there was no balancing it out. Not ever.

Perhaps because of all that, Hoss could sympathize with Carrie. Maybe with Lucas, and even DeSantis too. He’d seen all three of them before during his time with the state police and then with the sheriff’s office. Different names, different faces, but Hoss imagined with a little thought he could come up with a profile for each one of them that even Fletcher the profiling expert would agree with. Drug users, drug dealers, criminal bosses, they weren’t strictly evil, per se. Sure, it’s easy to paint them all as such, certainly when it’s your kids’ lives they’re ruining with their filth.

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