Behind the Badge by J.D. Cunegan Page A

horribly put upon by having to be here. She enjoyed their collective annoyance and decided to use it to her advantage. If they were already feeling some type of way, maybe they were one small push away from snapping and she would find the break she needed.
    “You four have apparently had quite the night,” Jill teased, slapping her notepad against the rusted table and flipping the chair around so that when she sat, she could rest her arms over the back. “I'll try not to keep you so you can go lick your wounds.”
    “Fuck you.” As expected, Officer Carter was the first to speak.
    “So not the tree you wanna be barking at,” Jill said with a shake of her head before flipping open her notepad and taking a moment to study its contents. Not that she hadn't already committed it all to memory, but she wanted these four to squirm. They weren't the typical suspects; they already knew every page of the interrogation playbook. Jill had to be on top of her game. “Nolan Carter... Kayla Stevenson... Scott Harper... and Freddie McPhee. All badges with the Fourth Precinct, and according to your official files, some of the finest this city has.”
    “Then why are we here?” Kayla asked with a sneer, her chin black and blue and her broken arm pinned to her chest in a faded blue sling.
    “Well, how about having a police colonel unconscious in the back of your van, for starters?” Jill asked.
    “You can't prove that,” the burly man, Harper, sneered. “All you got's the eyewitness account of a vigilante.”
    “A vigilante who has more than proven her worth to this city,” Jill countered, finding it odd to refer herself in the third person.
    “That bitch is breaking the law,” McPhee, the shortest among them, said.
    “Not as many as you all have.” Jill flipped through sheets of legal paper tucked into the leather-bound notepad, letting an awkward silence fill the room. She waited for one of the officers to fire back at her, but they all sat with their arms folded over their chests. Whatever they were in on, they were clearly in this together. If one of them went down, they all were going down.
    Which was just fine with Jill.
    “I mean,” she continued, “where should I start? Kidnapping a high-ranking BPD official? Assaulting him? Breaking more traffic laws than I care to count? Attempted murder? And I haven't even gotten to Devin Buckner yet.”
    “That little fucker?” Carter shook his head; clearly, his little game of subterfuge the first time they talked was over. “No great loss.”
    “Tell that to his mother.” Jill pushed herself away from the chair, crossing to the other side of the table. “Tell that to his best friend, who was looking forward to rooming with him at Morgan State. Tell that to his high school basketball coach, who said he was the first kid to come to practice every morning even after tearing his ACL.”
    “Tell that to the deadbeat he bought weed from,” Kayla said.
    “Last I checked, smoking marijuana isn't punishable by death.”
    “What about the time he shoplifted a fucking CVS?” Harper.
    “Shoplifting's not grounds for capital punishment, either.”
    Carter snarled. “Well, aren't you just judge, jury, and executioner.”
    “Actually, these are all officially outlined in our legal code.” Jill arched a brow. “The law literally tells us what punishments fit what crimes.”
    “We got a menace off the streets,” McPhee said.
    “You tortured and murdered a child! ” Jill let her voice rise to the point that it echoed off the drab walls, before plunking herself back into her chair and glaring at the four officers with as much anger as she could manage without visibly shaking. “I bet this isn't the first time you've done it, either.”
    “Even if you could prove it -- which you can't,” Carter said as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table, “you'll never bag us. Downtown, public opinion, the media... it's all on our side.”
    Jill refused to believe that.