Miles barged through the doorway. "Let me se-e the letter!"
Bella turned to him, her eyes round. Her dark skin looked paler than usual.
She looked like she'd just seen a ghost.
Miles heart thundered. His hands trembled slightly beside him.
Maybe we could use this letter to finally trace the killer? Maybe all hope wasn't lost.
"Here." She passed it to him with shaky hands.
He took it. He blinked. Once. Twice. He turned it over. Nothing. He flipped it to the front again.
Nothing.
"There's noth-ing here." He looked up at her, eyes widening with every passing second.
I'd run all the way here for a blank piece of paper...
His nostrils flared. Miles massaged the bridge of his nose. In. Out. Yet, it did nothing to quell the growing anger that was piling in his chest.
Miles noticed Bella's confused expression.
As though she didn't know.
Miles forced himself to be calm. "Do you thi-nk this is a joke?"
Bella's eyes rounded. "I don't understand. You-"
"Do I lo-ok I have the tim-e for pranks? There's not-hing on this letter!"
"Wha-"
Miles threw the paper to the floor. The heat in his system reached a pique as he watched her pick up the letter.
A shudder rushed down his arms. Henry's burnt corpse stared at him, somewhere in his mind. He swallowed the lump in his throat. Bella's brows furrowed as she stared at it.
"Believe me, I have no idea what's-"
"Really? Show me wh-ere it is the-n. Or are you already sh-aring critical information on your Instagram?!"
Bella's eyes narrowed, squeezing the letter in her hand. "You're not even making any sense right now! Do I look like I'd be lieing to you?! Someone had written something about Henry-"
Miles walked out the door, cutting her off before he shut it with a bang. Blood roared in his ears. The blazing sun only worsened the pounding in his head.
A few dots were scattered along the periphery of his vision.
Miles walked down and up the pathway.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Despite that, his muscles remained bunched up. Tight with tension.
He shook out his arms. He really thought he had something. He really thought he had gotten another clue. At least something to explain themselves before Chief called them.
He swallowed again but it did nothing to relieve him of the discomfort.
What am I going to do?
Pictures of Henry's corpse. The ice that formed on the windows. The crackling sound that followed after it with the smell of something unnatural. Something that made his stomach turn, even now as he thought about it.
The ice had still somehow carried the putrid smell of ashes. At the initial formation, it was so strong that he would have thought somewhere outside of the house was burning. But, it did wear off with time. It really made him wonder.
Who were they up against?
Only a long list of questions without answers.
He ran a hand through his hair in vexation. He heard an angry shout from inside before something broke but he was too annoyed to care. He rushed halfway across the city. For a prank!
Didn't she know that was an expensive joke she pulled?
The voice droned on, amidst the pounding in his head. Biting. Bitter. It continued,
Well, that's what you get for trusting people. Give them just the bank and they'd cross the whole river!
Trust no one. Never give them the opportunity to let you down.
He sighed before getting into his car. Then, he drove to the station. Annoyed. Tired.
As though the weight of a life hung on his shoulders.
What if Henry's death was my fault?
---
Miles entered the conference room. Alice looked up from her seat with a start. With widened eyes, she stood up,
"Did you find anything?"
Miles closed the door quietly behind him. "No."
"I can't believe this! This is all your fault right!" Alice roared. Miles exhaled. He looked at the table, avoiding her gaze.
"If you'd listened, we wouldn't have a suspect's blood on our hands!"
That bristled him. Goosebumps lined his skin. The air was suddenly pungent. Each breath was like inhaling a toxic gas. It stifled him. Clogging his throat. Every breath set his insides on fire.
I killed someone.
The sinking feeling from the first realization came back. Harder. It swung at him. Crippling him for a moment. He wobbled as the image pestered his mind. Henry's lively face and now..... his dead corpse.
Maybe if he'd taken him to prison, this...
"I think-"
Officer Isaac opened the door. He looked just as crushed as Miles felt on the inside. Bags underneath his eyes. His normally vibrant grey eyes looked droopy. His shoulders hunched, thin lips chapped.
"Chief wants to see you both."
---
The room was cold. Colder than normal. The faint sound of the air conditioning ruffled the silence. The blinds were pulled down, only letting in strips of lights that scattered across the walls. Chief Derrick watched them both.
His jaw was set. His fingers drummed against the table.
For a moment, he felt like he was being pried open. Like his skin was being ripped apart. Fabric pulled away from the main frame. One patch after another. Yet, his face remained blank.
His heart beat increased by a fraction.
From the corner of his eye, Miles could see that Alice was having a poor time hiding her distress. She was wringing her hands in front of her as her eyes skittered from one corner to the other. She wanted to leave. Fast.
Well for once, so did he.
Chief caressed the stubble dotting his angular jawline. Miles straightened.
"Do you have any idea what you just did?" Chief looked between them, his head tilted, gaze unreadable.
"Sir, I had nothing to do-"
"Nothing to do with what? Henry's death? You have everything to do with it."
"But sir, I told him-"
"Don't give me such silly excuses." He finished, shooting a glare her way. "You could have done something. Press Miles harder? Report to me? Anything in fact."
Chief looked between them again, the walls crumbling gradually to reveal anger.
"I read both your reports. What were you both thinking?!" His fists came down on the table with a thud.
Miles winced.
"What were you thinking?"
Miles cleared his throat. He avoided the glare Alice was still shooting at him.
"There was nothi-ng else, we cou-"
"Don't bring me into this, you idio-"
"Enough Alice!"
Alice shut her mouth reluctantly while still shooting daggers at him. Chief stared at him again as though giving him permission to continue.
Miles inhaled again.
"He kille-d his son. He fit t-he pattern. I thought w-e would ca-tch him. I never imag-ined they would kill him." Even saying the words out loud was a punch to his gut. He felt stupider with every ticking second.
But he still didn't understand what had gone wrong.
Should he have left more officers? Should someone have actually been in the house? Should he have not even done it at all?
"You never imagined? Do you know what this whole incident has caused us? Do you know the damage you both have done? Do you know what people are saying?"
Chief paused as though trying to keep his temper under check. He leaned forward. In a slightly less heated tone he continued,
"It's all over the news. The tabloids. Conspiracies of police taking out criminals by themselves. A regression to jungle justice."
"But that's insane! We would never do that!" Alice interjected, sounding just as surprised as Miles felt.
Chief was quiet for a moment. He grabbed a remote beside the stack of files on his table. He pressed a button. The small TV by the west wall came on. A news reporter with blonde hair and grey eyes appeared on the screen and she was standing beside a petite dark woman with big, dark eyes and a chubby face.
Chief increased the volume.
"Can you give us an update of what happened?" The news reporter asked her. The woman sniffed.
"Henry's been a good friend of my husband. We usually had them over to our house until recently when they moved. A friend told me, the police caught him beating his wife and that his son was dead."
The woman shook her head bitterly as though she couldn't even believe what she was saying. "But now, he's also dead. Makes me wonder, what if the police actually killed him? I mean they don't even know who the killer is. So, who's to say that it's not them?" The woman shook her head, struggling to hold back her tears. The news reporter nodded encouragingly.
"We've moved past this stage. Yes, what he did was beyond horrible. But, he still deserved the right to a fair trial. I mean, if the police could kill him, what if they staged his crimes too?!"
The clip changed. The man's hair was almost completely white and he had skin that looked like it had been bleached one too many times.
"I don't think these are co-incidences. Why would the police be found with the dead body of a criminal they were supposed to apprehend? I've always felt like the police had too much power. And I fear they're beginning to use it to their advantage."
The clip went off.
Chills filed down Miles' back. How... absurd. But some where, deep down, he understood what they were saying.
What they were afraid of.
Chief turned back to them. He dropped the remote on the table.
"Unfortunately, that's only a tip of the iceberg. Look at what the tabloids are saying."
He gave Miles the tablet and he took it with a pounding heart. The headlines made his brow raise slightly.
"Are our protectors actually the enemy?"
"The body count rises: Is this the work of a killer- or the cops?"
"Justice or Execution? Public suspects police are silently eliminating criminals."
"Shadow justice: Inside the theory that police are cleaning the streets- permanently."
"How could people believe this?" Alice stated, looking beyond bewildered as Miles handed the tablet back to chief. "If this keeps spreading, if they start thinking we choose who lives or dies- this could lead to-"
"Anarchy." Miles finished quietly. Chief nodded, his face grim.
"But we could try and explain ourselves to them." Alice tried. "Let them know what our true intentions were. They can't possibly think we're the enemy!"
"Do you think, we're not already doing that?" Chief gritted out, cutting her rant off.
"If we push too much, they'll think we're hiding something. If we do little to nothing, they'll think we don't have a semblance of dignity for human life. We're in a tight spot. Our credibility is already going down the drain. All we can do is try and put out all fires without coming off as threatening.
"An-d where do w-e come in all of this?" Miles folded his hands over his chest before leaning against the wall. He tapped his arms as they were plunged into a brief silence.
One plagued with something that made his chest constrict. A guilt so tightening that he feared he would faint. How he wished he could have turned back time. Maybe if he had just taken him to the station, he would be alive, safe and sound. At least they wouldn't be involved in a scandal of this magnitude.
But what difference would that make? Would he still have died? What if this really was bigger than all of them?
He was growing ridiculously tired of not being able to answer any of his questions. Something that threw him off more than the clip of the shadow of a little girl by Henry's bed before the interference.
He was only brought back into the world by Chief's loud exhale. He leaned back in his chair. "You're both off the case."
"What?! Chief, you can't do that-"
"Oh, yes I can. You two have done enough damage. You'll be lucky if we're able to get out of this in one piece. Not neglecting the fact you still have no concrete evidence."
"But-"
"We do have some-thing..."
Chief raised a brow. Miles cleared his throat, pushing off from where he stood back against the wall.
"Before the interference in the sur-veillance van, there was a shad-ow of a little girl by Henry's bed. About five feet."
"So.... you're saying that a girl is the killer?"
"I don't kn-ow. But what I do know is there's still ho-pe. We can fin-d the criminal."
"Words are fickle. It's easy to promise something and fail."
"We're not pro-mising," Miles continued. "We're aski-ng for a chance. We ca-n do it. This won't ha-ppen again."
"I can't see why it would. Badge and gun -now. No more field work for you two." He beckoned to them, tapping on the table. Alice looked reluctant as she stepped forward, drawing her gun from the holster belt.
"I don't th-ink that's a good idea."
"Excuse me?"
"Sir, with all due re-spect, there's no one who can do this as well as us. We ma-y not know much b-ut at least we do know. There's no one else on b-oard to handle the case. You've said it yourself-"
"Our hands are full." Chief finished, massaging the bridge of his nose. "But if word gets out that I let you two back on this..... it could land me in serious trouble with higher-ups."
"Then we ca-n go off the gri-d." Miles responded. He could feel Alice's burning gaze but he ignored her. The fire in him pulsed so strongly within him.
As he started it, he'd make sure to see it to the end.
"We could continue invest-igating behind the scenes. No uniform - just results."
Even then, chief still didn't look convinced.
"I trust you, Miles. I really do under normal circumstances. But it's too risky-"
"How ab-out this?" Miles inhaled. "If you allow me to continue, I will catch the killer. Even if I get killed while trying." There was an intensity to his tone that made Chief sit up.
"Miles, we've been through this al-"
"But if I don't..... You ca-n fire me."
Chiefs eyes widened.
"Yes, fire me. T-ake my job. Tell the superiors that I acted out of my own accord. No one wou-ld be able to pin the bla-me on you."
He looked like he wanted to argue but then chief laced his hands together. "Miles. I hope you know what you're getting yourself into?"
"Fine. You're both back on the case -off the grid. No badges. No backup. No official ties. From this point on, you're on your own."
"If you slip up, kiss the case goodbye."
Miles couldn't help the smile that lifted his lips. "Thank y-ou, I won't let you do-wn."
He walked to the door. Miles hands closed around the door. He looked up and noticed Alice standing, rooted in place. An unreadable expression etched on her features.
"Aren't you c-oming?"
Alice stepped forward, then placed her badge and gun with a quiet finality. "I'm not throwing everything away for this. You're on your own."
Alice pushed past him. She wrenched the door open before walking out. He stared at the door for a few beats. Alice left. He didn't know what to feel. It felt empty. The way he always had, head hunched and back straight. The numbness would pulse underneath his skin, cloying to it like gum.
Now, he was back. Back alone. Handling everything by himself. He shook his head. "Miles."
Miles turned and noticed the serious expressed etched on his face.
"Your current affiliation with the police ends here. Don't show up for work. Drop your badge. And if everything turns out right, you'll come back to work as planned."
Miles swallowed.
"Any mishaps, you'd be relieved of your job -permanently."