Chapter 180: George Stacy and Finlay
Carrie believed in her choice.
As for her mother, Margaret, she disappeared.
She was not dead.
Rather, among the choices Matthew gave her, Carrie had let Margaret go because of her kindness. No matter what, that woman was still her mother.
Respecting Carrie's choice, Matthew allowed Margaret to live.
Of course, she would not have an easy time. The murders Lilith had committed in order to guide Carrie would ultimately fall on Margaret.
Without question, Margaret's final outcome would be prison.
In Illinois, where Chicago was located, the death penalty was still legal in 2007. First-degree murder and serial murder could be prosecuted as capital crimes.
However, in 2000, Governor Ryan announced an indefinite suspension of all executions.
The result was that even if the evidence was ironclad and the jury could sentence her to death, the governor and the judicial system would not carry it out. In the end, it would certainly become life imprisonment, with no chance of release.
But that was enough.
Margaret would spend the rest of her life in prison. To prevent her from using even the tiny bit of power she had, Matthew specifically sealed the power inside the old woman's body.
This ensured that the old woman would serve her sentence in prison as an ordinary person.
Whether she lived or died after that, Matthew could not be bothered to care.
At the same time, those people at Carrie's original school who had often bullied her would also pay the price.
Matthew gave those bullies a few small curses.
Those curses would make everything go wrong for them. Eventually, they would contract all kinds of agonizing illnesses and die in pain.
School bullying did not deserve forgiveness.
They all deserved to die.
Minors? Growing up and becoming better? Matthew did not care about any of that.
He only knew that whatever cause one planted, one had to reap the result.
If they hurt an innocent person, they had to be punished.
If Carrie had been willing, he would have preferred for her to personally kill those little beasts herself.
And as for whether Matthew's actions placed him above the law, he did not care.
He had worked so hard to become stronger. Was he still supposed to worry about the law?
Then would he not have become strong for nothing?
Besides, the law would never punish those little beasts with money and power.
The law had never judged people like them. It judged the powerless people at the bottom.
And so, Matthew left with Carrie.
Not long after that night, the agents outside woke up in the car. It was as if they had forgotten what had happened earlier, and they felt nothing strange about why they had fallen asleep in the car.
After waking, they naturally got out of the car and knocked on the door of Margaret's house.
But no one came to open the door.
Kimberly and the other agents exchanged glances, then chose to force their way in.
After one of the stronger male agents kicked the door open, everyone drew their guns and rushed inside.
They found Margaret on the sofa, seemingly in deep sleep.
Without question, what awaited Margaret next was a judicial interrogation.
As for Matthew, he did not rush to bring Carrie back to the island base.
Because this girl had serious psychological problems.
Although the atmosphere of the two warbands at the island base was very good, it was still ultimately a military-type base. Most of the time there was spent training and studying, and the schedule was extremely tight.
To put it plainly, the competitive atmosphere was very heavy.
Carrie had already been oppressed for more than ten years. If she were thrown into the base and made to start training, it would only worsen her psychological issues.
Matthew was unquestionably a good leader.
So he happily took Carrie out for some proper fun.
…
Manhattan, New York.
Postwar reconstruction was proceeding in an orderly manner.
George Stacy had been very relaxed recently.
In fact, as Police Commissioner, his daily work was not especially busy. It was different from the work of frontline officers at the bottom.
Originally, after something like the Manhattan incident happened, New York should have become rather chaotic. Certain criminals were best at taking advantage of disasters.
But the exact opposite had happened. Those criminals had been extremely well-behaved lately.
There were two reasons.
The first was that after the battle, many agencies had flooded into Manhattan. The FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA, and various other departments were carrying out an almost ground-scraping investigation, trying to find traces of the demons and those mysterious warriors.
With a large group of agents packed into New York, what criminal would dare commit crimes?
Of course, there were indeed some brain-damaged fools. As soon as those idiots committed crimes, the NYPD arrested them immediately.
There was nothing for George to handle.
The second reason was that they had been frightened by the killing.
Not that many people had actually been killed by demons in that battle. Most had only been injured. The few hundred who died had basically been killed by the Astartes and Raven soldiers.
All because those people had tried to take advantage of the chaos.
The two warbands had been too ruthless.
And their targets had been extremely clear.
Because of that, the gangs had become very sensible. During this period, they had no intention of causing trouble, and many gray businesses had stopped.
They were afraid of being discovered by the soldiers of the two warbands.
Although the probability might not be high, what if it happened?
Who could withstand that "what if"?
With the crime rate dropping, George's daily work was reduced to handling some documents, then leisurely going to request funding.
Rebuilding the police station, replacing cars, and upgrading equipment were all very important.
They were all benefits.
With the workload reduced, George had more time to spend with his wife and daughter.
At noon that day, George drove to the streets of Manhattan. It was his break time, and he planned to eat at a restaurant he liked.
Sitting in the passenger seat was a Black man in a suit.
The man was slightly heavyset, but his temperament was refined, and he wore glasses.
He had been transferred from Boston to New York over the past two days. He was the second-in-command at the police department, Deputy Commissioner Oscar Finlay.
George had looked into his résumé, and it was very impressive.
He had graduated from Harvard, an outstanding student of law and criminal investigation, and came from an elite intellectual background. He had worked at the Boston Police Department for ten years, with a brilliant record and many commendations, and had been Boston's ace major crimes detective.
He held the rank of captain, the same level as George as commissioner.
Later, because of certain incidents, he had been demoted and transferred to a small town called Margrave, where he quickly cracked and dismantled a massive money-laundering and smuggling criminal group.
After returning to Boston, it was said that for certain reasons, he was transferred again to serve in New York.
After spending the past two days with him, George had a good impression of Finlay.
He was someone who did real work, and his style and logic complemented George's own. On top of that, he clearly had considerable connections. George believed they would get along even better in the future.
So today, George brought Finlay to his favorite restaurant for lunch.
The restaurant was located on the northern stretch of Broadway near Union Square Park in Manhattan. Though designated a restaurant, it was actually an American bistro.
It served the most ordinary burgers, fries, tomahawk steaks, and the like. It was an old place where George used to gather with friends after work back when he was still a frontline officer.