I thread the needle with black surgical thread, testing the tension. "Forty-nine minutes of confession suggests otherwise, Detective. You don't see yourself as the problem. You see yourself as the victim of an ungrateful daughter and an unfair system."
"I was wrong! I know that now. I'll turn myself in, confess everything to Internal Affairs. I'll resign from the force, pay restitution—"
"To whom?" I look up from my preparations, meeting his desperate gaze. "Your wife is dead. Your daughter has sixteen years of trauma that no amount of money can undo. The system you corrupted will simply find another bent cop to replace you."
"Then what do you want from me?"
I stand, moving to position his chair exactly where I need it. The kitchen table cleared, the lighting adjusted, everythingarranged according to the pattern I've developed over two years of work. "I want you to understand something before you die, Detective. The system protects people like you. Qualified immunity, police unions, the thin blue line—all of it designed to shield bad cops from consequences."
"I know the system's flawed, but—"
"Someone has to protect people like her." I adjust his arms, extending them at precise ninety-degree angles from his torso. The positioning is crucial, part of the message I leave behind. "Someone has to stand between monsters and their victims when law enforcement won't."
"She's stronger than you think. Delilah, she's tough. She can handle—"
"She's brilliant." The words come out sharper than I intended, protective. "I've watched her work, seen how she thinks. She's going to study criminal psychology, going to spend her life understanding people like you. She's going to catch monsters someday."
I pause in my preparations, the weight of that future settling over me. "But she shouldn't have to live with one."
Jenkins's breathing is ragged now, pain and blood loss taking their toll. But there's something else in his eyes—calculation, the same predatory intelligence that made him a successful corrupt cop.
"You don't know her like I do," he says, voice gaining strength from desperation. "She's not as innocent as you think. She liked the attention, the special relationship we had. She seduced me, made me want her."
The lie hits me like a physical blow, so obscene and vile that for a moment I can't breathe. He's trying to shift blame ontohis victim one final time, to make his child’s sexual abuse her fault even as he dies.
"She was eleven years old."
"She was mature. Sophisticated. She knew exactly what she was doing." The words pour out of him in a toxic stream. "She wanted it, asked for it. I was just giving her what she needed—"
I drive the scalpel into his chest, just below the sternum, cutting through muscle and fascia with surgical precision. He screams, the sound raw and animal, but I don't stop. This is the beginning of the end, the first incision in the pattern that will define my work.
"You're going to die now, Detective," I say, my voice calm despite the rage coursing through my veins. "But first, you're going to understand what you really are."
I work methodically, each cut deliberate and purposeful. This isn't torture anymore—it's surgery. The removal of something malignant from the world. Jenkins's screams fade to whimpers, then to the shallow gasps of a man bleeding out slowly, precisely, exactly as I've planned.
His head falls back at the angle I've calculated, exposing the full line of his throat. His arms remain extended at perfect right angles, palms facing upward as if in supplication. The blood pools beneath his chair in patterns I've seen six times before, abstract art painted in crimson.
This is justice. Not the kind dispensed in courtrooms by judges who've never faced real evil, but the kind that comes from understanding exactly what monsters are capable of. The kind that ensures they never hurt anyone again.
I continue working for another ten minutes, completing the ritual positioning, ensuring every detail matches myprevious work. The investigators will recognize the signature, understand that the Carver has struck again. They'll add this to their growing file of unsolved cases, never knowing that justice has been served.
The tape recorder shows sixty-three minutes when I finally stop it. Sixty-three minutes of confession that will never see a courtroom, never be entered as evidence, never bring closure to his victims.
But Delilah will know. When she sees how he's positioned, how carefully he's been arranged, she'll understand that someone cared enough to make him pay. Someone saw through his facade to the monster underneath and decided that the world would be better without him in it.
I'm cleaning my tools when I hear the car in the driveway.
The sound freezes me mid-motion, surgical forceps halfway to my kit. A car door slams. Footsteps on gravel. The familiar rattle of keys against metal.
She's home…two fucking hours early.
My eyes dart to Jenkins—still breathing, still bleeding, positioned exactly as I need him, but not yet dead. His chest rises and falls in shallow, labored gasps. Blood bubbles at the corners of his mouth. He could last another ten minutes, maybe fifteen if I'm lucky.
I don't have ten minutes.
"Dad?" Delilah's voice carries through the front door, muffled but clear. "I finished early; my manager let me go….
The confession tape sits on the kitchen table, its red light still blinking. Sixty-three minutes of recorded evidence that could destroy half the police department. I grab it, pop it out of the machine, and slip it into my jacket pocket. One problem solved.
