Vandermein

III

I like to think myself a gentleman.

My colleague-in-evil, the Reverend Billy Graham, had rule that he would not meet with any woman without his wife present. But I believe that all people are entitled to equal dignity regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. I would not hesitate to shoot a black trans woman in the face any more than I would a white man. It comes from a place of respect.

But I could not ignore the power differential between me and the young officer. She was a young, unarmed woman alone in a middle-aged man's heavily guarded house. I needed her to feel comfortable, to let her guard down, so I woke Kenzie up and asked her to sit with me and the junior detective.

My wife joined us downstairs, still dazed and bleary eyed, and put on a pot of coffee. As the machine hissed and dripped in the kitchen, the young detective sat at my table, hands clenched together so tightly they were white at the knuckles.

"Relax, please. you're making me nervous. If I wanted to hurt you, you wouldn't have gotten past the gate." I smiled a friendly smile, but she only returned a half-second smirk. Kenzie leaned her head from the kitchen and glared at me. Apparently I'd said something wrong.

"I apologize. Humor, I'm told, tends to lighten moods, and you've come here with such a dour energy." I sat opposite her at the table. "So what's got you down?"

Shakily, she removed her glasses, revealing a red and purple bruise swelling on her face. As she did this, Kenzie came into the dining room with three cups of coffee expertly balanced on a try. She had been a waitress when we met, working the graveyard shift at the university-adjacent cafe. She left the job as quickly as she could, but the job, it seems, never completely left her.

Still, she nearly dropped all three steaming drinks to the ground when she saw the detective's face. In what seemed like a single swift motion, Kenzie placed the platter down and grabbed the young woman by the chin, turning her face up toward her.

"Who did this to you?" Kenzie demanded.

The young woman shrugged her face out of my wife's hand and looked to me again. "My name is Veronica Guzman. I've been on the force for six years. I was promoted a year ago to detective..." Her words trailed off.

"And it's not a very good fit?" I asked.

"Did a thug do this to you?" Kenzie interjected.

Veronica leaned forward over the table. "Detective Boone did this to me."

I couldn't tell you why my blood ran cold at that admission, but I felt betrayed; shocked. It was as if I'd learned my son was a bully at school--totally unexpected. Boone had always played by the rules, more or less, inside the box, by the books. He was passionate about justice and order and doing the right thing. It's what made our game so fun: I could poke my finger in the box from the outside and watch his paw try to swat me away.

But this?

"Wha--why? What happened?"

Kenzie sat next to Veronica, scooting her chair closer.

The detective picked up her cup of coffee and took a brief sip before setting it back down and clearing her throat.

"Detective William Boone isn't who you think he is. I don't think he's who anybody thinks he is."