In that darkness, they were invincible, because they controlled the very light by which anything could be seen.

A complaint to the sheriff’s department went nowhere, because they were the sheriff’s department.

A local case died at the county line, because they owned the county line.

Their power was not really the power to commit crimes; it was the deeper power to control whether their crimes could ever be seen.

And that is exactly why nothing local could ever have touched them, and exactly why I did not try.

I did not fight them on their ground, in their darkness, by their rules, because on that ground they had already won before I began.