The Helper by M. M. Dewil

Author:M. M. Dewil [Dewil, M. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

THIRTY-THREE

Six months ago, Detective Fennella Rose considered for the first time in her twenty-three-year career that maybe this wasn’t the job for her, that maybe she should resign and start a flower shop and begin painting watercolors like she had always thought about.

She was standing in the courtroom. Judge Landon’s courtroom. A courtroom that was always a mess of papers and lateness and old broken benches. Rose hated this courtroom. Landon had just banged his gavel and, without even looking around, declared a mistrial. The evidence against the confessed murderer of a young jogger was vast and conclusive. But somewhere along the way, his DNA sample had been contaminated, and now despite his confession, he was free to go. His name was Nicky Valdez. Detective Rose had arrested him. He had spit in her face and called her an ugly bitch. He had said that he was going to rape her too when he got the chance. Now Valdez was walking out of the courtroom a free man. He smirked at Detective Rose as he walked past.

She sat in the empty courtroom for nearly two hours after that, wondering about her future as a policewoman, wondering about that smirk on his face, and wondering about the dead jogger, who had first been beaten and raped.

Mostly, Rose wondered about justice and whether there was an inherent order in the world. She asked herself how people like Nicky Valdez could walk free. She wondered about killing him herself. She was not a violent person. In fact, she abhorred violence and the damage it could do to the skin and bones of innocent people. Nevertheless, she was so shocked that such a person could go unpunished she considered that perhaps she was duty bound to right this wrong. Surely to allow such injustice was in itself a crime.

Her superior and mentor, Captain Dietricks, had once given her a glass plaque embossed with the words The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. It had struck her deeply. It was a code that had guided her, those words often pushing her to work later and harder than she otherwise would have. It was an obligation she felt in her bones, and for that she was prepared to sacrifice her sleep, her weekends, her hobbies.

She knew that she was a good person, just as she knew that there were evil people. Nicky Valdez was clearly one of those, so what should she do? She understood there was a part of her that could take the emotion out of it and pull the trigger, right the wrong. But was this really what was required of her?

She never managed to answer the question that day. Later that week, when she told her sister that she was thinking of leaving the force, her sister’s young daughter asked who would protect her then. Hearing that, Rose decided to hold off leaving for the near future. Still, something has not been right with her since.

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