How I See The World

Chapter 9 Doubts and the last one ever

The next day I took Marina to the library. I had a card in Alice's name. I didn't really take her there for her but more for me to do some research on all the people who were on the list. I left Marina in the kids section and then logged into a computer.

I didn't bother with Officer Matt Davis. I already knew everything I wanted to know about him.

I started with Hector Lopez. He had a shaved head and in his mug shot I found from a news video he looked like he wanted to bite my head off. Mostly a rat with a tiny bit of rabbit and fox. He was a drug dealer. One whose product was somehow ten times more addictive than others. It's suspected that more than 100 people have died from overdoses on his products. A few weeks ago he killed three teenagers because they couldn't pay for the drugs he gave them. That seemed so pointless. They can't pay debts if their dead.

Next is Detective David Parker. A tall skinny man with dark brown brown hair. All of his facial features were kind of pointy. A rabbit I decide with just a little fox. I found a picture with him smiling and he looked kind of goofy. Just last year he won one of those awards for being a great cop or something like that. He has four kids. Three girls and a boy. The boy, Jack is the oldest and is a the quarterback on a high school football team. Apparently he is pretty good because there are at least ten articles about him. He is supposed to be getting a really good sports scholarship. I found an obituary too. For Olivia Moore, his wife. She got hit by a drunk driver three years ago.

I type Nelson Carter into the search engine. He looked insanely muscular and scary. He was like a rabbit on steroids. He too had shaved his head. I never understood what it was with big guys and baldness. They were all going to get there eventually. Why rush it? He was an enforcer. Arrested at the beginning of the month for almost beating a kid to death. He is also being charged with seven accounts of first degree murder and 12 accounts of attempted murders. The boy he was arrested for beating up is still in the hospital now. From what I could understand from the article they weren't sure if he was going to make it. It was only recently that he had started to recover. He was 15. How can you beat a 15 year old kid within an inch of life? Why did River want me to steal evidence that incriminated him?

Detective Peter Moore. He was an older man with thick curly gray hair and eyebrows that were just as thick and curly. He was a half and half mix of rabbit and rat. His face was long and thin. In every picture I found of him he looked sad and empty sometimes even to the point where he almost looked furious. When I read about him I understood why. His partner died in a shoot out the previous year. They had been partners for years. His wife was dying of a rare cancer and he was bankrupting himself paying for the treatment. His only kid. A little girl disappeared when she was three. She was presumed dead but her remains had never been recovered. He was three years away from retirement.

I couldn't do this. How could anyone do this? I knew River was horrible but I didn't think it was this bad. I didn't think anyone could be that bad. Surely there were other cops out there, bad cops that deserved to be under River's thumb or at least deserved it more than these ones.

I didn't want to look up the last name but I felt that I had too. I had an obligation to all the lives I was ruining.

Chester Anderson. A tall guy not necessarily very buff but big enough. He had spiky blond hair and piercing blue eyes. All fox. He was scary looking. I honestly thought he might jump out of the computer and strangle me. I found the list of charges against him.

17 accounts of murder.

36 attempted murders.

28 asults.

The list went on for another page but I stopped reading after just the three. I didn't want to know anymore. I felt my eyes watering. I couldn't do this. I couldn't be the reason that these people were released. And how could I condemn those cops. River would threaten their loved ones and force them to do his bidding. For the first time ever I was beginning to doubt my philosophy on people. How could I think everyone was naturally evil when people like that existed but how could I believe anything else when there were monsters like Chester Anderson out there too.

I tried to hold back the tears but it was no use. I was crying over people I didn't even know. People that would get hurt if I did this. I always have assumed that someone would always get hurt when I did jobs but then it just felt like an inevitable part. I could prevent this. All I had to do was be strong enough. Strong enough to say no.

"Why are you crying?"

I looked to see Marina holding a stack of picture books. She was crying too, "Why are you crying?"

"You were sad and when you're sad I get sad."

"Come here." I waved her over to me. As she walked around I exited the browsers. I never wanted her to see anything like that. I wanted her to think that the world was an amazing and beautiful place for as long as possible. It was too late for me but I could still save her. I didn't understand why weren't trying to save all the little children from the truth about the world. I always thought the sooner you learned the truth about all the bad things in the world the better. The sooner you could accept it and once you accepted it you could learn to live with it. But they shouldn't have to live with it. Not ever. They shouldn't have a care in the world. Their only worry should be what kind of candy they wanted or what game they wanted to play. Life should be a game for them, one that they were excited to play. I feel like life is kind of like a game. Sometimes you want to play but sometimes you're forced to. At first the game is new and exciting full of new challenges and adventures but after you play it for a while you start to hate it. You start to see all the bad things about the game and completely ignore all of the good. The older you got the worse it got. And the worst thing about the game was that there were no ways to win but a million ways to lose.

"What's making you so sad."

I sighed, "This place, this city. Sometimes everything just looks bad."

"Then let's leave." She said totally serious, "To a different city one that doesn't make you so sad."

The idea was a very good one. A change of scenery might have been good for both of us, "I kind of like the sound of that Marina."

She smiled, "Let's go right now we could leave and never come back. If we left now you wouldn't have to steal anything for the bad man and you wouldn't have to worry about him hurting us."

I reluctantly shook my head, "He might still find us."

She hung her head with disappointment, "I don't want you to do anything for him."

"Me neither and after this last job I never will again."

"Promise?"

"pinky swear."

I held out my pinky and she locked hers around mine. I remember the way she glowed. So happy, so young. It felt so possible then that I could escape the life I was living. Everything felt possible with her.

I remember almost exploding with hope. This would be the last time I would ever have to work with River. I could get through this job no matter how horrible it was if I knew it would be the last one.