John Hartigan

I try to slow my heart down and breath the fire out of my lungs. My muscles make me a promises of pain to come.

She shivers in the wind like the last leaf on a dying tree
I let her hear my footsteps
She only goes stiff for a moment

Just hour to go. My last day on the job
Early retirement. Not my idea
Doctor's orders. Heart condition
"Angina", he calls it
I'm polishing my badge and getting myself used to the idea of saying "Goodbye" to it
It and the years of protecting and serving and tears and...
blood and terror, triumph that represents
I'm thinking of Aileen's slow smile about the thick fat steak she picked up at the butcher's today
I'm thinking about the one loose end I haven't tied up
A young girl who's out there somewhere

Burt Shlubb and Douglass Klump any-job-there-is thugs with dellusions of eloquance.

I finally sit down, just like you told me to the sirens are close now. She'll be safe... Things go dark. I don't mind much... Getting sleepy. It's OK. She'll be safe. An old man dies. Little girl lives.

She heard about you and that little girl... This is nothing but a price I promised myself I'd pay, and I'm paying it You don't save a little girl's life, and turn around and throw her to the dogs.

Skinny little Nancy Callahan... years pass...

Get Senator Roark behind bars? Sure. And maybe after I've pulled off that miracle, I'll go and punch out God There isn't a prosecutor in the state who'll go after Senator Roark I killed his only son. The bloodline is cut Roark's lost his goddamn legacy He'll use all his power to get revenge on me He'll go after me through Nancy He'll find her again. There'll be no end to it. She'll never be safe. Not as long as I'm alive. There's only one way to beat him...