"Not yet," he said. "Not just from this."
He opened his laptop and turned it so Marcus could see the screen. He had pulled up the case-closure summary from Dana's office, which included the list of individuals whose property had been returned or compensated. There were nine names on the list. Desmond's was the last one.
"That's what winning looks like," he said. "When the person who comes after us doesn't have to go through it."
Marcus looked at the list for a long time without speaking. Then he nodded once, slowly, the way he nodded when something landed fully rather than partially. He picked up his homework from the chair beside him and went back to work.
Desmond folded the cash and put it in the envelope. He would deposit it in Marcus's school account in the morning. That had always been what it was for.
Three weeks later, Desmond drove down Cedar Row on his way back from a community meeting in the south end of the district. It was after 8:00, dark and cold, the kind of night that emptied the sidewalks early.
He pulled to a stop at the light at the corner where the convenience store still had its sign half lit, one letter dark, the others buzzing faintly against the sky. A patrol cruiser came up behind him and stopped at the light.
The officer behind the wheel was young, a first-year officer, careful and earnest, the kind of young man who wrote his reports in full sentences and asked questions after briefings that showed he had been listening. He was the kind of officer who had not yet decided what kind of officer he was going to be, which meant he was still deciding, which meant it still mattered what he saw around him every day.
The light changed. Desmond pulled through the intersection. The cruiser followed for half a block, then the officer raised one hand from the wheel, a simple acknowledgement, the kind of gesture exchanged between people who share a road and nothing more complicated than that.
Desmond raised his hand in return. He drove the rest of the way home in the specific quiet of a man who understood that the work was not finished and had never expected it to be, and who had decided some years ago that unfinished work was not a reason to stop, but a reason to keep going, carefully, with both hands on the wheel, watching the road ahead for what was coming next.
Briggs thought his biggest mistake was not recognizing the face of the man he shook down on Cedar Row. But that was never the real mistake. The real mistake was believing that what he did was acceptable as long as the person on the receiving end had no power to stop him.
Every single victim before Desmond had told the truth. Every single one of them had been ignored, not because their stories were not real, but because they were ordinary people, and ordinary people are far too easy to disbelieve.
That was the thing worth carrying forward. Treat people right not because you know they can hurt you, but because it is right, regardless of who they are, regardless of whether anyone is watching, and regardless of whether they will ever be in a position to hold you accountable.