Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

He let the commotion eddy unheard above his head for a while.

Finally someone asked bitterly; “What is it, politics?”

“No. Not altogether, anyway. It’s true it’s an election year, and they may play a part, but there’s a lot more involved than just that. Here’s how they lined it up to me. Severn has been executed for that crime. There’s no way of bringing him back again. The mistake’s been made, and it’s irretrievable. To bring this guy to trial now will unleash a scandal that will affect not only the D.A.‘s Office, but the whole Police Department. It’s not only their own skins, or ours, they’re thinking of. It’s the confidence of the public. It’ll get a shock that it won’t recover from for years to come. I guess they feel they would rather have one guilty criminal walk out scot-free than bring about a condition where, for the next few years, every time the law tries to execute a criminal in this State, there’ll be a hue and cry raised that it’s another miscarriage of justice like the Severn case. They won’t be able to get any convictions in our courts. All a smart defense lawyer will have to do is mention the name of Severn, and the jury will automatically acquit the defendant, rather than take a chance. It’s a case of letting one criminal go now, or losing dozens of others in the future.” He got up with a sigh. “I’ve got to go up now and get him to sign a waiver.”

The handful of men stood around for a minute or two longer. Each one reacted to it according to his own individual temperament. One, of a practical turn of mind, shrugged it off, said: “Well, it’s not up to us— Only I wish they’d told us before we put in all that hard work on him. Coming, Joe?”

Another, of a legalistic turn of mind, began to point out just why the D.A.’s Office had all the wrong dope. Another, of a clannish turn of mind, admitted openly: “I wouldn’t have felt so sore, if only it hadn’t happened to be a police sergeant.”

One by one they drifted out. Until there was just one left behind. The detective named Rogers. He stayed on down there alone after all the rest had gone. Hands cupped in pockets, staring down at the floor, while he stood motionless.

His turn of mind? That of a zealot who has just seen his cause betrayed. That of a true believer who has just seen his scripture made a mockery of.

They met in the main corridor at Headquarters a few hours later, the detective and the murderer who was already a free man, immune, on his way back to the outer world.

Rogers just stood there against the wall as he went by. His head slowly turned, pacing the other’s passage as their paths crossed. Not a word was exchanged between them. Blake had a strip of plaster along-side his nose, another dab of it under his lip. But Gary Severn was dead in the ground. And so was Police Sergeant O’Neill.

And the little things about him hurt even worse. The untrammelled swing of his arms. The fastidious pinch he was giving his necktie-knot. He was back in life again, full-blast, and the knot of his necktie mattered again.

He met the detective’s eyes arrogantly, turning his own head to maintain the stare between them unbroken. Then he gave a derisive chuckle deep in his throat. It was more eloquent, more insulting than any number of words could have been. “Hagh!” It meant “The police — hagh! Their laws and regulations — hagh! Murder — hagh!”

It was like a blow in the face. It smarted. It stang. It hurt Rogers where his beliefs lay. His sense of right and wrong. His sense of justice. All those things that people — some of them anyway — have, and don’t let on they have.

Roger’s face got white. Not all over. Just around the mouth and chin. The other man went on. Along the short remainder of the corridor, and out through the glass doors, and down the steps out of sight. Rogers stood there without moving, and his eyes followed him to the bitter end, until he was gone, there wasn’t anything left to look at any more.

He’d never be back here again. He’d never be brought back to answer for that one particular crime.

Rogers turned and went swiftly down the other way. He came to a door, his lieutenant’s door, and he pushed it open without knocking and went in. He put his hand down flat on the desk, then he took it away again.

The lieutenant looked down at the badge left lying there, then up at him.

“My written resignation will follow later. I’m quitting the force.” He turned and went back to the door again.

“Rogers, come back here. Now wait a minute — you must be crazy.”

“Maybe I am a little, at that,” Rogers admitted.

“Come back here, will you? Where you going?”

“Wherever Blake is, that’s where I’ll be from now on. Wherever he goes, that’s where you’ll find me.” The door ebbed closed, and he was gone.

“Which way’d he go?” he said to a cop out on the front steps.

“He walked down a ways, and then he got in a cab, down there by the corner. There it is, you can still see it up ahead there, waiting for that light to change—”

Rogers hoisted his arm to bring over another, and got in.

“Where to, cap?”

“See that cab, crossing the intersection up there ahead? Just go which ever way that goes, from now on.”

Blake left the blonde at the desk and came slowly and purposefully across the lobby toward the overstuffed chair into which Rogers had just sunk down. He stopped squarely in front of him, legs slightly astraddle. “Why don’t you get wise to yourself? Was the show good? Was the rest’runt good? Maybe you think I don’t know your face from that rat-incubator downtown. Maybe you think I haven’t seen you all night long, everyplace where I was.”

Rogers answered quietly, looking up at him. “What makes you think I’ve been trying for you not to see me?”

Blake was at a loss for a minute. He opened his mouth, closed it again, swallowed. “You can’t get me on that O’Neill thing. You guys wouldn’t have let me go in the first place, if you could have held me on it, and you know it! It’s finished, water under the bridge.”

Rogers said as quietly, as readily as ever, “I know I can’t. I agree with you there. What makes you think I’m trying to?”

Again Blake opened and closed his mouth abortively. The best answer he could find was, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you won’t get anywhere.”

“What makes you think I’m trying to get anywhere?”

Blake blinked and looked at a loss. After an awkward moment, having been balked of the opposition he’d expected to meet, he turned on his heel and went back to the desk.

He conferred with the blonde for a few minutes. She began to draw away from him. Finally she shrugged off the importuning hand he tried to lay on her arm. Her voice rose. “Not if you’re being shadowed — count me out! I ain’t going to get mixed up with you. You should have told me sooner. You better find somebody else to go around with!” She turned around and flounced indignantly out.

Blake gave Rogers the venomous look of a beady-eyed cobra. Then he strode ragingly off in the opposite direction, entered the waiting elevator.

Rogers motioned languidly to the operator to wait for him, straightened up from his chair, ambled leisurely over, and stepped in turn. The car started up with the two of them in it. Blake’s face was livid with rage. A pulse at his temple kept beating a tattoo.

“Keep it up,” he said in a strangled undertone behind the operator’s back.

“Keep what up?” answered Rogers impassively.

The car stopped at the sixth and Blake flung himself off. The door closed behind him. He made a turn of the carpeted corridor, stopped, put his key into a door. Then he whirled savagely as a second padded tread came down the corridor in the wake of his own.