The line repeated in my head like an empty joke told too soon.
"This city is full of people that nobody is looking for."
"It's kinda hard to find people when half your department is running wild." Coffee murmured under his breath, despite the whisper, he wished the person he directed it to could hear it loud and clear.
He exhaled through his nose then turned his head back, raised his eyebrows, and leaned his hands over on the back of the chair like it were an arm rest.
Once more, when I looked over at those two investigators sitting in front of me, I didn't see…investiagtors, but two tired individuals that I knew nothing of, yet was so quick to assume I knew the type of people they were.
I squinted my eyes. "What's gonna happen to Kuroda?"
What I also knew was that I was in no position to be asking questions like that, but I forgot my own rule. Hell, I mean I always forgot my rules.
Perhaps it was the resemblance to the man they cursed under their breaths that kept me talking.
Coffee lowered his raised brows, Ink was doing his usual, inking in words that didn't need to be written down or finished.
"That's not for us to decide," Coffee slid his hands against his slightly-crinkled trousers like the friction would start a fire more satisfying than the distaste that burned his open lips. "Depends on him…on how long he's spent sitting on the other side of the desk."
His expression looked like he was skating on thin ice, little cracks began forming on that half-baked smile.
"Things are a lot harder when every reporter in the city is breathing up your neck about injustices they never batted an eye at before." He finished his point from before.
"They were only able to get coverage from evidence, evidence that Kuroda found."
"He never did anything illegal." I added a little too desperately, like I was trying with all my might to defend him.
That back, that barrier I looked up at, that tired look of his as he looked down at the rough, cracked concrete I lazily crouched down to tie up my nonexistent laces.
Yet, never once did his gaze think of me as something below him.
"Things are a lot harder when every reporter in the city is breathing up your neck about injustices they never batted an eye at before." He finished his point from before.
"They were only able to get coverage from evidence, evidence that Kuroda found."
"Look," Ink sighed. "Doing nothing illegal and doing nothing wrong don't mean the same thing."
His mouth twitched.
"Kuroda's problem isn't something like…corruption. His problem is proximity."
I looked away.
"To you, to Victor, to that little—gang of yours." He sighed. "Talking to people he shouldn't have met, filing things that didn't need filing, and not filing what was supposed to be filed…"
Coffee scratched his head, a light snicker left his lips. "Having a bunch of children walking all over you isn't a great look, if that isn't corruption then what is."
Ink looked over at Coffee, he turned over a fresh page of the notebook.
"It's not like anybody's gonna hang him." He cleared his throat, he looked back at me like he knew what my next question would be. "People like him have been writing their resignation letters since before you could walk. You aren't a part of his final ledger."
"Let's go back, shall we."
He changed the topic, clacking his pen like a motif.
"Before the fire, you were talking about the missing kid…go on."