Page 128 of Too Old for This

“Maybe you imagined yourself how you used to be. Clever and sharp. Not a bad dresser, either.”

There’s a shift in his eyes. Not a twinkle—that’s long gone—but they look a little brighter. “You weren’t so bad yourself. I never understood how you stayed so quiet.”

“I had to. I couldn’t afford a lawyer.”

“Oh, right. The single mother.”

Even now, there isn’t an ounce of respect in his tone. “Yes. I was a single mother.”

“That helped you. Otherwise, I probably would’ve been able to get an arrest warrant.” He sits back in his chair, laying his hand on the armrest. “We had this woman working in the station. Wanda. Another single mother. Her husband left her or something.” He flicks his free hand, keeping the other wrapped around that gun. “Anyway, she was on your side. Told me every day that you were innocent. Maybe she told the captain, too.”

I remember her. She sat near the reception desk at the front, her clothes always ironed and creased and buttoned up tight. Not old, though. She might have been younger than me. What I remember most is that Wanda was the only one who smiled when I walked in.

“You didn’t believe Wanda,” I say.

“She was a secretary, not a cop.”

“So her opinion didn’t matter.”

He raises his empty hand, palm forward, to stop me. “Don’t do the feminist thing with me. This isn’t about that.”

“No?”

“You might as well tell me,” he says.

“Tell you what?”

“The truth.”

People say they want the truth, and they believe they want it. But it’s a lie. Nine times out of ten, if you know what’s good for you, the last thing you want is the truth. What you want, what we all want, is the story we believe in. And it’s probably a lie.

“Let me tell you a story,” I say.

“A fairy tale?”

“No. A story. It’s about a man who was a police officer.”

“I don’t think I—”

“Yes, you do. You want to hear this,” I say. “Now, this cop was very good at his job. He was tough and fair and very smart. He became a detective—a really dedicated one—finally feeling like he would be able to work on more serious crimes than pickpockets and shoplifting.”

Burke sits back in his chair, relaxing a little.

“Our detective solved a lot of crimes in his career. Murder, rape, assault. He improved his community by putting criminals in prison. He made people’s livesbetter. And that’s what he wanted, to make a difference. It was the whole reason he became a police officer.”

Burke almost nods along with that but catches himself just in time. “What is the point of this?”

“Then the town got a serial killer. The bodies kept piling up, one after the other. The police put together a task force, and the detective volunteered to lead it. He had never caught a serial killer before but couldn’t stand to see what this wasdoing to his town. So he jumped in, devoting a year of his life to catching the killer.”

Burke can’t help himself now. His head bobs up and down, nodding along, and his hand relaxes on the armrest. The gun is still pointed at me, but it’s sideways.

“Finally, the killer was found. The detective who led the task force got a medal from the mayor, and he was hailed as a hero in a special ceremony. Everything was great. The town was safe again, right?”

“Right.”

“The town was completely safe until two days later, when someone was murdered. And then a week later, when there was another murder. And you know what?”

“He arrested the wrong person?”