I knelt to the floor and picked up the bullet shell, now stationary on the concrete floor. How ironic; it was empty and cold, like the shooter must have looked in his victim’s last moments.

I didn’t yet know the details, and I didn’t want to. It was easier to assume that whoever had pulled the trigger was not a first-time killer. They were evil, I decided- the type of person that the system was made to prosecute. I imagined last night’s dialogue in my head:

Open up the registers, kid. Do it.
Y-yes sir-
C’mon, I don’t got all day! Wait, is that a cell phone?
No, of course not-

Bang. The murder. Bang, a cowardly suicide to avoid his just desserts. Two bodies, two people dead, and only one that deserved it. Show’s over, folks. You can go home now.

I glanced up, and Williams was looking at the evidence with a grave expression.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

He turned to me with a sigh and spoke the words that would shatter my assumptions: “We didn’t get the killer, Smith. He got away.”