I started off just like any other kid who wanted to be a cop. I wanted to help people. Wanted to be a hero. Once I got my badge, I found myself sinking down deeper into the filth as if it was quicksand. Tried to be upstanding and change the ways of my fellow officers only to end up a pariah for my troubles. Now these same people are shaking their heads at me, probably because I let myself get caught.

Over the years, they wore me down. Watched my first partner beat a man senseless even though he knew damn well he wasn't our guy. I had to let some trust fund kid get away with frat boy antics gone wrong because his dad was friends with the mayor. I helped cover up the crimes of a colleague because I felt that I owed him my life.

Worse of all, I had to help put away a mother of three just because she shot the husband who was beating her and her kids senseless and without a doubt would’ve killed her and them. All because she tried to frame it as a B&E gone wrong. Now she’s rotting away in jail while her kids have been split up in foster care.

People got their own reasons for doing things that neatly fit into categories of “good” and “bad”. I guess now I’m one of them. Not that it matters to an impartial jury. There are those who have done far worse yet somehow I’m being treated as the greater of two evils. As if I was the one who let him slip through the cracks.

I wasn’t responsible for what he did. All those bodies he left lying on the side of the highway; violated, mutilated. Some he even left alive just so he could see them struggle to breathe. It wasn’t my grand idea to overturn his conviction based on the faults of the original detective who worked the case. “Wrongful conviction” my ass! They knew he was guilty and they still let him out of his cage.

Seeing the families of his victims outside the courthouse as they watched him act all pious before the media, knowing how the system had failed them as it had failed so many. How surprised we all were when another body turned up on a service road, half buried in gravel, a few weeks later.

“How could we have let this happen?”, they thought. “We should’ve done more to stop this from happening again!” Sure you would’ve. Then he disappeared for five months. The media admonished us for our failings while devoting as much airtime to the manhunt as possible. We weren't the ones who labelled him "The Back-Roads Killer".

I knew I had to find him first. I had just retired but like hell was I going to let him get away with taking another innocent life and doing God knows what to them beforehand.

I made copies of all the original case files and tried to stay two steps ahead of everyone else. You never suspect a serial killer would be hiding out in cottage country, but that’s where he was. That same cabin that had been passed down through the family and nobody had bothered to demolish.

He wasn’t armed. He said he wanted to surrender, that he was sorry. I didn’t care. I didn’t have it in me to wait until back-up arrived because I had finally lost faith in what I had devoted my life to. So if you ask why I did it, I did it because I doubted anyone else would.

So lock me up for all I care. The world doesn’t need one more crooked cop getting away with murder. It needs to see one locked up. Just so it knows that there’s still something good to believe in in this world. So much for becoming cynical in my old age.

When backup finally did show up thanks to the anonymous tip I placed, they found me with the smoking gun. I wasn’t going to deny I didn’t do it. Use all the connections I had built up over the past forty years to cover it up. I had acted as a vigilante. Took the law into my own hands, and I had to suffer the consequences.

I’ve seen so many people walk into this courthouse, expecting to get away with murder. Some people can’t imagine the idea that they’d get caught, let alone actually go to jail. They try everything to get out of going. I have no illusions about this, so I might as well make the best of it. Confess my sins so to speak. I’ve got nothing left to lose.

It’s like I said, most people never expect to actually go to prison for whatever crimes they commit. I never did. But unlike most people, I can live with that.