Page 20 of This Is Law 3

“You know what’s next, Crawford. This is not some Bad Boyz movie where I can just listen to the audio, and round up my officers, and we go find Sterling, kick his door down, and arrest him.

You know as well as I do that this kind of stuff is a process.

I need to get a copy of that recording, so that I can have it logged into evidence, and have it sent over for a forensic audio specialist to listen to it.

Once they can verify that the audio hasn’t been tampered with, then we can make our move.

Please, don’t be offended by anything that I’m saying.

This would be the process if it were anyone else,” he let me know, and I respected it because I already knew that it would be a process.

That’s the only thing that I wanted to hear.

If this man had sat here, and told me anything else, accused me of the audio being fake or something along those lines, then I would have turned up in this bitch.

“How long we thinking? I want his ass in cuffs by the weekend. Cap, you know this shit is personal to me. My boy was put in cuffs and accused of some shit that he didn’t do.

Ima pull the mental card like everybody else likes to do and say that that shit really did fuck with his mental.

Don’t slap this shit on the back burner.

It’s still early in the day, so this can get in the hands of someone in the forensic department by the end of the day.

Once it checks out because the audio is legit, it should move fast getting to the DA.

When it goes before a judge, I don’t see why it wouldn’t get approved for a warrant, and an arrest. Move this process along like someone had did this to your son,” I said, pushing up from the chair.

I had copies of the audio, so I was going to leave him with the one that was left on the table.

“You know that when it comes to my position, that I always play a fair game, so I’ll move this process right along.

Me, and Sterling aren’t buddies. I could give two fucks if he’s a free man, or what.

I only reacted to the audio the way I did because I wasn’t expecting this, and I instantly thought about his wife, and children,” he said, and I nodded.

“I’ll continue getting the same amount of rest each night that I always do.

I say that to let you know that you don’t have to worry about any funny business happening on my end.

Before you go though, I do want to ask you something.

Excuse me if I’m stepping out of line, but it’s been rumors going around that after all these years, they finally have a suspect on who killed your father.

Was it really Dutch Thorne that’s responsible for that murder?

” he shocked me with that being his next question.

“Yeah, it’s true,” was all that I said in response to that.

I had a feeling that word would eventually get out about that shit.

I knew that officer Smith wouldn’t be the one to speak on it, but when I was in that small, meeting room, beating Dutch’s ass, and after I was pulled away from him, and I said what I said to him, I had a feeling that the other correctional officers that were there would talk.

I knew that word would travel. I’m not upset about it because the second word started traveling, and niggas in that jail learned that Dutch was responsible for killing my pops, it was going to be hell in that jail for him.

“I want to say something to you Crawford, and again, sorry if I get out of line. I’ve been in this line of business for a little over forty years.

Years ago, when your father was murdered, I wasn’t captain at the time.

I’d just made detective probably three years prior.

When your father was killed, I was called to the scene, along with other officers and detectives.

In all the homicide cases that I’ve worked, your father’s case was the only one where we couldn’t get to the bottom of it, so we had to scrape the case.

There were no witnesses, no cameras, the bullets that we found on the scene, they didn’t come back to any gun that we had in our system either.

Whoever did it, they were skilled, and they knew exactly what they had to do to cover their asses.

Back then, wasn’t any fancy ring cameras that people had on their porch, so the killer had been able to get away scotch free.

Because we didn’t have any angles to turn to, that’s why the case was dismissed.

Till this day, that was the only case in my career that I ever had to scrape because just like you, I do my job, and I do a damn good job at it.

Not even for my bragging rights, but you don’t know what that did to me that I couldn’t give you, a three-year-old little boy at the time, and your mother the justice that you both deserved,” he finished, and I had never heard this before from him.

His words kind of caught me off guard, so I ended up taking a seat back down in the chair. My eyes were on him, deeply paying attention to him, and from the way he was standing there looking at me, I just knew that he was being sincere.

“I don’t want you to think that I’m saying this now because the truth is out about Dutch, but man, even back then, I always had this nagging feeling in my gut that it was him that did it.

I’ve seen so many homicide cases that I knew that the way the murder was executed, it had to have come from the inside.

Your father was shot in the back, walking in the house with gifts in his hand for you because it was your birthday.

I’m telling you I’ll never forget anything about that case.

Someone that didn’t know your father on a personal level, they wouldn’t kill him in that manner.

It was too personal. I knew what your father did for a living.

Couldn’t prove it, but I knew he moved weight.

With that, I knew that it wasn’t one of his rookie block boys that probably got upset with him and gunned him down.

Those rookies would have been too stupid for that, plus they had too much loyalty to him.

For years man, I thought that it was Dutch.

We questioned everyone that was close to Knox, and with that, Dutch was questioned as well, but he had an alibi.

He showed proof of his plane ticket, showing that he’d already left Miami the night before Knox was murdered.

Knowing now that it was him, I wouldn’t be surprised if he came back earlier.

I just don’t know man. As much as I suspected it was him, you know as well as I know that in this business you don’t put people in jail based on suspicion.

You gotta come with hard proof, and that’s just what I didn’t have,” he explained to me.

I took in everything that he’d said. I sat quietly because honestly, the shit was lowkey depressing me. He walked over, and he put his hand on my shoulder, as he stood on the other side of me. That’s when I looked up at him.

“Let me ask you something man. My mind so fucked up, that I really don’t know what to believe anymore.

Since you were on the scene, can you tell me what my mom was doing?

She lost her mind behind that shit. His death took a toll on her, and that’s the reason she’s in a mental facility now,” I revealed.

He sighed heavy after I revealed that to him.

“Her cries, man. Her cries were pierced in my head for years. The screams that I heard were a big part of the reason why I felt so bad that we had to toss the case. I couldn’t give her the justice that she deserved for her husband.

I remember when we arrived at the scene, and she was outside on the porch with him, cradling his head in her lap.

All the blood that he’d lost was on her clothes.

I remember taking one look at her, and life looked as if it was sucked out of her.

She died with him too. Physically, she’s still here, but I’m telling you that her soul went with him.

When I saw her like that, I told one of the officers that she would never be the same, and she was going to need some serious therapy,” he concluded.

His words fucked with me, and because they did, I was going to leave the conversation alone and not ask anything else. The shit was hurting too badly, and there wasn’t anything that I could do to change the situation, so I was going to just dead the topic altogether.

“I appreciate the talk, man,” I said, standing up from the chair, going to leave for good this time.

“We didn’t get justice for your father, but Crawford, I’m going to send what you sent me over to forensics, so that they can get a move on it.

I don’t want you to view the justice system as one that’s never in favor of you,” he responded, and I told him that I appreciated that, and I left out of his office.

Walking out, I had to pass the detectives again that were on desk duty.

Even with me not being in the best of moods, and a little down from the things that captain Roy just shared with me, I still found it in me to be petty, and I laughed at them on my way out.

I’m sure everyone here was happy that I was making my exit because I came through starting all kinds of problems.

I made it back to my truck, and instead of going back to the office like how I’d planned, I just decided to head over, and chop it up with my mama.

I haven’t seen her in a few days, and after hearing these things from the captain about how she was on the floor with my pops, his blood all over her, and shit, I just wanted to pull up on her, bring some food, and have lunch with my lady.

I wasn’t sure the kind of mood that she was in today, but I was going to pull up with positive vibes, in hopes that she would be on the same shit.