Briggs is at his desk at seven-fifteen PM, which is not unusual for either of them — Donahue is at his own desk across the room, and the floor is otherwise empty, and the quality of this particular kind of late-evening quiet is something both men have been existing in for long enough that it requires no acknowledgment.
Briggs is reading the Surgeon case files. Not officially — officially, Briggs is assigned to a financial fraud case that has nothing to do with homicide. But the files are accessible and he reads them the way he reads anything related to this particular matter: with the steady, evaluative attention of someone who has a personal stake in the outcome without being able to say so.
"You know what I keep thinking about?" Briggs says.
Donahue does not look up. "Tell me."
"The methodology. Every kill is specific to the target. He doesn't use the same method twice in the same way. He adapts it based on the victim's background, their medical history, their circumstances." He sets the file down. "That's not a person operating from compulsion. That's someone thinking."
"I know."
"Thinking clearly. Methodically. Someone who sits with a problem and solves it the way you solve a case." Briggs pauses. "You know what that sounds like?"
"What?"
"Like us."
Donahue puts his own file down. He looks at Briggs. Briggs is not looking at him — he is looking at the folder on his desk, at the photographs inside it, and his expression is the neutral, composed face of a man who is saying a true thing and knows it is true and is watching himself say it from a distance.
"It sounds like a person who has built a system," Donahue says. "Like a lot of people who do terrible things."
"Is it terrible?"
"Briggs."
"I'm asking seriously. I want you to answer seriously." He looks up. "If you found out tomorrow that every person on that list genuinely did the things their records say they did — the trafficking, the assault, the children — and the system genuinely let them walk — would you still call it terrible?"
The room is very quiet.
Donahue picks up his coffee mug. He drinks from it, though it is long since cold. He thinks about the question. He thinks about it honestly, the way he forces himself to think about uncomfortable things — not reaching for the reassuring answer, not reaching for the professional one, just sitting with it until the real answer shows itself.
"Yes," he says finally. "Because if we're going to live in a society with laws, somebody has to follow them even when they fail. If we all get to decide which laws we follow based on our own moral calculus, there is no law. There's just whoever has the most conviction."
Briggs is quiet.
"That's the right answer," he says. "I know it is." A pause. "I just keep asking myself what the wrong answer costs."
Donahue looks at him. He says nothing.
Briggs closes the file.
"Good night, Ray."
"Good night."