Tell Them This When I Die

Tragedy

"There are two witnesses that place him at the scene," Adam points out.

"Credibility, Adam," Eris says, putting a piece of lettuce in her mouth.

"First of all, there's two of them," Adam insists, rustling through the papers. "How can you say two witnesses are both uncredible? Not to mention that they have no history of anything illegal or bad."

"Two options," Eris says, pushing around a tomato. She hates tomatoes, but Adam made the salad, and so she'll eat it. "You link them and give them a motive to lie. Second option—you make them uncredible. You meddle."

Adam gives her a look. He's sitting on the floor, papers spread over the coffee table. "Meddle," he repeats.

Eris sets the bowl on the table, leaning back into the couch. "Chase them into a photo radar ticket. Put something in their pocket while they leave the store so they'll get caught. Meddle."

Adam waves her off. "That's illegal," he says.

"Welcome to the cutthroat world of law," she replies.

Adam shakes his head. "Is there no way to put bad people away without doing something immoral?"

"The law is structured to let a thousand criminals go before they put away someone innocent. So in most cases, no."

"It's a broken system," Adam concludes.

Eris points to him. "Bingo."

Adam does anything to distract himself. He runs, lifts, does anything that strains him. When Eris is there, they argue nonstop about court cases. Last night, he'd showed her an article about a downtown incident where a man shot his wife in anger. She'd made some comment about how she'd probably file for divorce when she woke up from her coma.

"The gun control is all wrong," Adam had muttered. "They kill too many people to let just anybody have them."

"Guns don't kill anybody," she'd said. "Neither does cocaine or gin. They're all nothing until somebody decides to make them something."

Adam had raised his eyebrow. "Is that your brand?" he'd asked. "A drug dealer that doesn't do drugs? People pay you their life earnings for what you see as just white powder?"

She'd grinned. "It's the art of the wielder, Adam. You are all the more powerful to possess something with the ability to kill someone, and not be afraid of it."

Adam had glanced over at the glasses of water on the table. He imagined they were gin. Just a liquid. Absolutely nothing until Adam gave it power.

Tonight, he gets a phone call from Wilkes. He looks at it. Four weeks, one month. He reaches over, looks at Eris as he answers. "Sergeant Wilkes. Good to hear from you," he says.

"And you, Hughey," Wilkes says. "Look, I know you're on hiatus, but you're coming back in the next few days, isn't that right?"

Adam clears his throat. "That's right. What's going on?"

"Things are picking up on the Diakos case these days. We might actually have some shit going on."

Eris can't hear the phone. She reaches for her salad, stabs another tomato with her fork.

Adam swallows. "About that. I think I'm going to ask to get taken off that, Wilkes. I'll work on something else."

"She's going to jail, Adam," Wilkes says. "We're damn sure of it this time. You've been on her for years. Don't you want to be apart of this?"

Adam watches her push around a piece of lettuce. Take down Eris, replace her with someone that brings back the violence of the drug trade. Replace her with someone who laces. Someone worse.