It amazed me sometimes how people could say they'd do one thing, and yet do another…and not in a good way. It made me wonder sometimes why I'd even bothered becoming a cop. Why I bothered trying to take care of this city that never seemed to want to give me anything in return. And then when I found the time to actually sit down and think about it, I realized something: it was worth it.
Call me crazy, but it was. I couldn't see myself doing anything else. Couldn't see myself sitting in some corporate office behind a desk, or in the courtroom, other than on the witness stand when some prosecutor or defense attorney called me up there. I saw myself on the streets, my shield in my hand and my gun on my waist, ready to drop everything and take on a case at a moment's notice. That was just the way it was.
But it hurt more often than not. I'd already seen so much that by the time I decided to retire, I was thinking that it was only because there was nothing more for me to see. No motive I hadn't heard of, no method of killing I hadn't come across…no family that hadn't been torn apart by a loss, no parent that hadn't dissolved into tears upon seeing my partner and me on the front porch. I knew there was. Hell, with something like eight million people in the city, there was no way there couldn't have been.
I'd heard people lie. Telling me one thing when they meant another. Claiming they left things out because they didn't think it had anything to do with what I was investigating. I'd seen people do things they swore they'd never do, solely because of the fact they were being pressured into it. Threatened, even. Sometimes, it made me sick. Other times, I understood, but I still wondered why.
It shouldn't have been hard to take a stand. But then again, this was New York City…and more often than not, it was.