Those are different things, and knowing the difference is the only reason I sleep at night.

I will admit there was grief.

Not for the man in the handcuffs — I felt nothing for him but the clean cold thing you feel closing any case — but for the boy he had been, long ago, before whatever slow rot got into him.

I grew up with Julian.

He taught me to ride a bike in our father’s driveway.

He was, once, before the money and the resentment and the terrible ordinary greed, a person I loved.