She sat down and sighed.
These last few months had aged her by a decade. Until then, she was fairly sure that no criminal in New York was smarter than her. Mob bosses, drug dealers, street gangs were all actually afraid when she took their cases.
She was born in the late 70s, when the crime rate in the Big Apple was at an all time high. The gangs weren't even afraid. Holdups and robberies were everyday occurrences. No one really complained, because no one thought it could be changed. An entire generation of New Yorkers had lost faith in the system.
Cases just kept piling up, justice was agonizingly slow. It didn't make much sense blaming the NYPD either. Shackled by a barrage of laws regarding search warrants, surveillance and interrogation, it was a miracle if they made an arrest, let alone got a conviction.
As a teenager, she saw the same scenario as her parents had seen. The 80s and 90s produced record breaking crime rates in the city.
Of course the likes of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa did nothing to help the reputation of the police.
Monica, however, grew up at a distance from all these realities. Her parents were rich. She attended the finest prep school in Manhattan and seemed destined for a classy high society life. That changed unexpectedly.
Her best friend Ellen had been dating this guy in school, Carson Brady. He was the son of the city's top defence lawyer. Ellen was very taken by him, but Monica always sensed something less than endearing about his demeanour. This was another gift she had, an uncanny intuition, bordering on premonition, in judging people. She never interfered, but kept a close eye on her nonetheless.
Her friend had been visiting a lot of parties with Carson- the seedy, underground type with free drugs. Some nights, she didn't even return home.
One day, a homeless guy stumbled across Ellen's body in Washington Square Park. She had been shot multiple times.
A search of Carson's house unearthed a gun of the same make and model. The bullet was matched to it. It seemed like an open and shut case.
Unfortunately, the judge who signed the search warrant was in a hurry to return to his teenage mistress' apartment. He just somehow scribbled his name in the signature blank and left.
And this was how Carson Brady was released by the famous New York catch-and-release program, who liked to call themselves police.
Faulty search warrant. Hmm..... sounds like justice, right?
As far as the New York of the mid 90s went, it was the closest to justice you could hope to get.
Sixteen year old Monica simply could not reconcile with this. Carson returned to school and went about his life as if nothing had happened. A few days later, he even made a pass at her.
If she had a breaking point, this was it. That very day, she told her family that she would be ditching her father's plans for her to go to Princeton and instead join the police force. Her parents might have tried to dissuade her, but she had the look of unshakeable resolve.
Someone would have to do something about it. She wanted to do it herself.
Even trying to become a police officer was a pain. She spent more time learning about proper police procedure and the bureaucratic norms that needed to be followed than something actually useful.
At night, she would sneak into the firing range and shoot the practice dummies. She visualized Carson's face on the dummies to get a direct hit. With practice, she became an excellent shot. Her instructors kept bemoaning her lack of respect for the system, but she didn't care.
When she beca,e a police officer, she found out exactly how frustrating it was. Between having to follow every damn Miranda right to the letter and the red-tape involved everywhere; there was hardly any room for justice.
One of her earliest cases involved a man who routinely beat his wife. The neighbours frequently called 9-1-1, but it was no good. The wife refused to press charges against her husband. They were popularly called 'Stockholm Syndrome wives' on the force. Too beaten to think right any more.
Officer Devereaux decided to dispense her brand of justice. She took the husband in her cruiser and drove him out to outskirts and pushed her gun against his head. The poor bastard pissed his pants in fear and swore he would change.
The very next day, he tossed his wife out the window of their tenth story apartment.
He had changed, just not quite the way Monica expected.
She knew that she had erred. She had taken justice into her hands, but not quite dispensed it properly. It was the last time such a thing happened.
She returned to see him in connection with his wives' murder. This time there was no warrant, no confession, no trial, she shot him point blank in the head.
Everybody on the force seemed appalled. Being fired was the least of her worries. She was looking at facing manslaughter charges. But then, something unexpected happened.
This case was picked up by the media, and they ran with it. Every citizen of New York was fed up with the inefficient criminal justice system. They rallied behind her case calling her the 'vigilante cop'. According to them, she was being punished for doing the right thing, something the other cops were too afraid to do.
Faced with insurmountable public pressure, the mayor told IA to drop the case. That was an epoch in her career. She became a darling of the public. Every New Yorker from every walk of life wanted her to go about doing her job in her way. Finally, the city had a cop who could look beyond the rules and kick some ass.
The new commissioner and mayor agreed on the issue and gave her a hotline through the bureaucratic quagmire, affectionately christened the New York legal system. She could get any warrant she wanted instantly and in perfect condition. There was one judge appointed just for her. Over and above, she was given a free pass through all possible errors of impunity. Any complaints against her were duly fed to the religiously slow legal system, so that no actual justice came out.
Her rise since had been meteoric. She made detective in the blink of an eye. She had her choice of forensics and personnel. The media (except for that right wing slut Judy Lynch) projected her as a saviour. The people could not agree more. She had cut the city's crime rate in half, and she was just a detective. Surely, she would do radical things higher up. All this adulation came at a price though.
Her single minded dedication to her work meant that she really didn't have time for much else. Trying to succeed in a male-dominated sphere had hardened her to the extent that she had buried her feminine side. Every guy she tried to be with was either scared of her, or treated her with too little respect. After a few such disasters, she settled on a convenient kind of relationship- a purely sexual one.
It seemed awesome, no strings, no commitments, no expectations, her job never got in the way-- and most importantly, the issue of respect never came in. The entire relationship was just based on their physical needs. Nothing more, nothing less.
Also, she had an insatiable sex drive and a pathological need to dominate over her partners. This combination led to a string of steamy flings. She never felt the need for more.
Simon had changed that.
For the first time in ages, she met someone that she intrinsically loved. Not just sexually, but in every way possible. The most striking part was that he loved her back, for who she was. He put up with her headstrong attitude and need to overwhelm. He even put himself in the line of fire when she had a particularly violent phase. She looked down at her belt and smiled.
Simon was perfect for her.
But over the past few days, he had been distinctly off colour. He was pale and fidgety and constantly afraid of some invisible force. Sometimes, he would wake up at night, sweaty and shaking. She tried to get him to tell her about it, but he stayed shut. Monica knew exactly what was going on.
Simon had a dark secret. Something big had happened sometime last week, something that he was desperately trying to get over. All the signs were there. She knew this because she had one of her own.
A few days after Carson Brady walked free, Monica stalked him to a high end nightclub. She followed him inside and made herself very conspicuous. He noticed her immediately and started chatting her up in the hope of getting lucky. He promised her some new fangled drugs that had just come in. She readily agreed and followed him outside to his car. They sped off into the night.
They never found Carson Brady's body. The manager at the club vaguely remembered seeing him leave with 'some blonde'. The same day, a dossier was anonymously sent to the Times. It contained graphic photos of a well known city judge having sex with a girl young enough to be his grand-daughter. In fact, it was his grand-daughter. There were further pictures of him being spanked by this girl and tied up while she performed a few more exotic acts on him.
It was safe to assume he wouldn't be misspelling his name on any more search warrants.
"No, Simon is not worth losing over this. Whatever his secret is I have to find out."
She flipped open her phone and pressed 2 on her speed dial.
"Boz, listen I want favour from you, off the books."
"Sure, what is it?"
"Check Simon's phone records for the last week. Tell me if anything stands out."
"Your boyfriend Simon?"
"It's complicated."
