Men In Blue (Badge of Honor 1)

“Some people don’t like it,” Nelson said. “Take a sip. If you don’t like it, say so.”

Wohl sipped. It was heavy, but pleasant.

“Very nice,” he said. “I like it. Thank you.”

“I was shooting stag in Scotland, what, ten years ago. The gillie drank it. I asked him, and he told me about it. Now I have them ship it to me. All the scotch you get here, you know, is a blend.”

“It’s nice,” Peter said.

“Here’s to vigilante justice, Inspector,” Nelson said.

“I’m not sure I can drink to that, sir,” Peter said.

“You can’t, but I can,” Nelson said. “I didn’t mean to put you on a spot.”

“If I wasn’t here officially,” Peter said, “maybe I would.”

“If you had lost your only son, Inspector, like I lost mine, you certainly would. When something like this happens, terms like ‘justice’ and ‘due process’ seem abstract. What you want is vengeance.”

“I was about to say I know how you feel,” Peter said. “But of course, I don’t. I can’t. All I can say is that we’ll do everything humanly possible to find whoever took your son’s life.”

“If I ask a straight question, will I get a straight answer?”

“I’ll try, sir.”

“How do you cops handle it psychologically when you do catch somebody you know is guilty of doing something horrible, obscene, unhuman like this, only to see him walk out of a courtroom a free man because of some minor point of law, or some bleeding heart on the bench?”

“The whole thing is a system, sir,” Peter said, after a moment. “The police, catching the doer, the perpetrator, are only part of the system. We do the best we can. It’s not our fault when another part of the system fails to do what it should.”

“I have every confidence that you.’11 find whoever it was who hacked my son to death,” Nelson said. “And then we both know what will happen. It will, after a long while, get into a courtroom, where some asshole of a lawyer will try every trick in the business to get him off. And if he doesn’t, if the jury finds him guilty, and the judge has the balls to sentence him to the electric chair, he’ll appeal, for ten years or so, and the odds are some yellow-livered sonofabitch of a governor will commute his sentence to life. I’m sure you know what it costs to keep a man in jail. About twice what it costs to send a kid to an Ivy League college. The taxpayers will provide this animal with three meals a day, and a warm place to sleep for the rest of his life.”

Wohl didn’t reply. Nelson drained his drink and walked to the bar to make another, then returned.

“Have you ever been involved in the arrest of someone who did something really terrible, something like what happened to my son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And were you tempted to put a .38 between his eyes right then and there, to save the taxpayers the cost of a trial, and/or lifelong imprisonment?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Straight answer?” Peter asked. Nelson nodded. “I could say because you realize that you would lower yourself to his level,” Peter said, “but the truth is that you don’t do it because it would cost you. They investigate all shootings, and—”

“Vigilante justice,” Nelson interrupted, raising his glass. “Right now, it seems like a splendid idea to me.”

He is not suggesting that I go out and shoot whoever killed his son. He is in shock, as well as grief, and as a newspaperman, he knows the way the system works, and now that he !$ going to be involved with the system himself, doesn’t like it at all.

“It gets out of hand almost immediately,” Peter said.

“Yes, of course,” Nelson said. “Please excuse me, Inspector, for subjecting you to this. I probably should not have come to work, in my mental condition. But the alternative was sitting at home, looking out the window ...”

“I understand perfectly, sir,” Peter said.

“Have there been any developments?” Nelson asked.

“I came here directly from Stockton Place,” Peter said, “where I spoke to the detective to whom the case has been assigned—”