“Ashley, why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

“Sir?”

“Go on home. I know you came in 30 minutes early today,” Conner said.

The 64-year-old woman that still had some natural brown left in her gray hair looked at the prosecutor with some surprise in her expression.

Conner gave her his million dollar smile. He’d used it through the years as he worked his way up to Tanner County Prosecutor. Combined with his thick wavy brown hair, it made him look ten years younger than he actually was. He was popular around the area, and just about everyone he didn’t send to jail loved him. Hell, he was so charismatic, some men he put in prison couldn’t even bring themselves to hate him.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. I just have one last thing to handle, and I’ll take off early myself,” Conner said.

Ashley nodded, Conner helped her put on her white wool coat, and she left.

Conner went back into his office, now alone. It was 4:30 p.m. on Friday, and the Tanner County Courthouse was mostly empty. The clerks and judges usually took off around this time, trying to squeeze in an extra half hour into their weekends.

Still, Conner’s heart was heavy. He wasn’t going anywhere. The prosecutor partially lied to Ashley. Although he only had one thing left to take care of, he likely would not be leaving early due to the gravity of the task he had to accomplish.

He reached into the bottom left cabinet of his oak desk and pulled out a bottle and two glasses. The tan bottle of Jim Beam was half empty, and he’d put it there at the start of the year. He only drank out of it on two occasions, when something marvelous took place or something unfathomably horrific happened.

The approaching situation would not be something marvelous.

Conner’s face looked young, but his soul and hands felt anything but. He’d served as prosecutor of Tanner County for 20 years, and the things he’d seen others do in his line of work would turn the toughest men inside out.

His mother had a belief that she could tell how old a person was with a simple handshake, and she was shockingly spot on most of the time. In her final years after Conner had already been prosecutor for a decade, she wouldn’t smile when she held his hand.

“The hands always age the fastest, my little Con Man,” she’d often say.

She called him con man because he talked a mile a minute and would often use his silver tongue in an attempt to avoid trouble with her when he did something wrong. It worked on others, but never her. She saw through it every time.

Conner’s hands brushed over the white label on the bottle of bourbon as he poured himself a small glass of Kentucky’s finest.

Grabbing the glass, he took a drink, swallowing slowly.

As if on cue, he heard the outer door of the prosecutor’s office open and boots clicking on the hardwood floors.

“Conner?”

“Back here, Jim,” the prosecutor said, putting his feet on his desk and leaning back in his chair. His brain wished to be anywhere but the office, yet his gut held him where he sat. The prosecutor would do what had to be done.

Tanner County Sheriff Jim Flannigan was making his way back to Conner’s office, and the prosecutor took another drink from his glass.

In walked Jim, suited up in full uniform, his obvious gut showing through his tan button down shirt.

He had his Beretta M9 9mm Pistol holstered at his side as usual.

Jim smiled, showing a less than perfect set of teeth.

“Whoa. Kicking off the weekend a little early, Conner?”

“Not quite. I have one last piece of business to attend to,” Conner said, locking eyes with Jim.

The sheriff was a heavy-set man with short curly brown hair. He wore thick glasses and was always in uniform. Unlike Conner, who had gone into college and law school after graduation, Jim had gone straight into the marines, going overseas to fight in the Vietnam War.

While Conner was getting textbooks, Jim was attending boot camp in San Diego.

“What kind of assignment do you have to deal with that has you digging into the booze?”

“An unpleasant one. Drink?”

“Well sure. I can’t turn down a glass from you, buddy,” Jim said, walking over and grabbing the other glass Conner had set out.

Conner filled the sheriff’s glass a quarter full, and Jim took a drink of the bourbon, clicking his tongue.

“Jim Beam ain’t my favorite,” Jim said.

“It’ll have to do,” Conner said, pouring a little more into his glass.

The two shot the breeze for a few minutes talking about Jim’s kid. He was the local quarterback for the Ettlesville Rattlesnakes, just like his daddy before him.

Jim and his wife were very proud of their son, and they made sure every other parent in the school district knew it. Conner, a bachelor, did not have any children. Hell, he didn’t even have any prospects to have children with. He was married to his work.

“I keep the county safe by putting the monsters away in prison,” Conner would often say.

Bank robbers, meth dealers, murderers, rapists, it didn’t matter. He’d work tirelessly to put them away; 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, life sentence, death penalty, he won so many cases that defense attorneys usually went for plea deals right after charges were filed at the arraignment.

He had a social life, sure. Conner would go get drinks with other cops, troopers, and deputies. They were his social life, and he got along with most of them quite well, especially Jim.

“So, what’s this case you’ve got that has your drinking before closing time? Local PD finally bust Keith for his fourth and final DUI making his crimes a felony?”

“I wish it were Keith. I really do, Jim.”

“Well spit it out, Conner. What case is eating you up?”

Conner pointed to a folder on his desk among some newspapers and the current issue of Time Magazine.  

“Open it,” Conner said.

The sheriff did as he was told and found a stack of papers inside. He smirked and said, “Oh, that’s funny. An arrest warrant for Jim Flannigan? The fact that you got Judge Turner to sign this and go along with the joke shows you’ve really got a silver tongue,” Jim said.

“Oh yeah, it’s a hoot, Jim. Look at the charge,” Conner said, putting his drink down.

Jim’s smirk faded from his face as he read aloud, “Distribution or viewing of child pornography.”

He avoided eye contact with the prosecutor for a moment before Conner broke the silence saying, “It’s real, Jim. Two weeks ago an investigator with the Department of Homeland Security Cyber Crimes Against Children Division contacted me. They’d flagged the IP address of your home computer, caught you downloading explicit images involving minors.”

“Bullshit,” Jim sputtered.

“One week ago I filed a search warrant for your online Dropbox account. You were smarter than the average predator. You didn’t keep any of the videos or images stored locally. You kept them stored online only, but I found your stash, Jim. You had a total of 3 videos and 453 images depicting girls as young as 10.”

The sheriff took a step back, dropping his glass. It shattered on the floor, sending drops of Jim Beam everywhere.

Conner wasn’t the only popular elected official in Tanner County. Jim had won four of the last six sheriff elections. Local authorities jokingly called them the “Dream Team” because Jim would arrest them, and Conner would prosecute them all the way to their prison cell.

The chemistry the two shared was unrivaled. They’d been close since their high school days when they each played on the Rattlesnakes football team.

One particular memory came back to Conner of he and the sheriff as seniors in high school.

The Rattlesnakes were at the state championship. It was raining with one minute left in the fourth quarter. The Rock City Lions were ahead by three points.

Coach William Charleston was as old fashioned as coaches came. He stomped, hollered, cursed like a sailor, and probably had a cholesterol level that would kill four African Elephants. No amount of Cheerios could help him.

Jim was pretty beat up and worn down. He’d been hiding a sprained ankle for the past quarter, and the coach was catching on.

The Rattlesnakes were 20 yards from a touchdown and were on their third down. The coach had a choice to make. He could either put Jim in, run the ball, and risk his star quarterback being severely injured, or he could take a chance with his kicker Conner and attempt to take his opponent in overtime.

With only a few seconds left in their last time-out, the coach told Conner to go in. Jim threw a fit immediately.

“I can do this! We can drive the ball! Trust me, coach,” Jim said.

The coach grabbed the front of Jim’s facemask and pulled him right up close.

“I know this choice won’t be well liked, especially with every parent in the stands breathing down my neck, but one day you might find yourself in a tough spot like I am now,” William said.

The next words out of his mouth stuck with Conner for the rest of his life.

“Part of being a man is making difficult choices, especially when they won’t be popular,” the coach said.

The decision certainly proved to be unpopular, especially when Conner missed the kick, and the Rattlesnakes lost the game 17 to 14. Coach William was fired not long after that game, but Conner always remembered his words.

“Conner?”

Jim’s voice brought the prosecuting attorney back to the present.

“You can let this slide, right?”

“Excuse me?”

Jim put the folder back down on the oak desk.

“You can choose not to file charges, right? Let this slide?”

Conner raised an eyebrow, unable to stomach what he was hearing. The sheriff was asking him to look the other way?

Conner stood up at once and said, “No. I can’t let this slide. The warrant for your arrest has already been filed.”

“So make it disappear. Come on, you’re not really going to order the arrest of your best friend, are you?”

“Jim, even if I didn’t file charges, a federal prosecuting attorney would. At least at the local level you’ll get a better trial.”

“You’re really serious about this? I mean, come on. So I looked at some pictures of younger girls. It’s a victimless crime! I’m not out there raping anyone, Conner.”

“Jesus Christ! Would you listen to yourself? You’re the sheriff, a lawman sworn to uphold our rules in society! And a victimless crime? Every time those images are shared or downloaded, the children featured in them are revictimized. It’s despicable that you would suggest anything less,” Conner said, fuming.

“So what. You want me to just turn myself in? Do you have any idea what that’ll do to my family? How it’ll make us look?”

“Maybe you should have considered that before you started downloading pictures of naked 10-year-old girls,” Conner said.

Jim’s anger was starting to show now as panic set in. For the first time, it started to dawn on him that he could do some serious prison time, and he’d never work in law enforcement again.

“You can’t do this to me! Everyone in this county loves me. There is no way that you’ll ever get a conviction against me so long as I have a jury of my peers,” Jim said.

“If you won’t turn yourself in then I’ll just phone Undersheriff Kendall Tyson to come take care of this,” Conner said, reaching for his desk phone.

The tension between the two law officials finally exploded as Jim unholstered his gun and fired two rounds into Conner’s black desk phone, effectively ending his call.

“Do you know what kind of mistake you’re making here? This case will never stick. Prosecuting me is suicide for your career. You’ll never be elected to your post again!”

Unphased by the gunshots, Conner grabbed Jim by the collar of his shirt and slammed him into a large gray metal filing cabinet.

“I used to know a guy named Jim Flannigan. He was tough as nails. He played football with a sprained ankle, fought in the Vietnam War, and helped me protect this community every day. He’d been shot several times, stabbed twice, and he rarely got to eat dinner with his family, but he kept on at his job. He was my partner and my friend,” Conner said.

“What happened to him?”

“Somewhere along the way he lost his spine and became a filthy coward,” Conner said, his eyes full of disgust.

“How can you do this to your partner and your friend?”

“Because, Jim. Part of being a man is making difficult choices, especially when they won’t be popular,” Conner retorted, finally letting go of the sheriff.

As those words sank in, Jim dropped his weapon, slowly sank to his knees, and put his face in his hands.

Conner pulled out a cell phone and called the undersheriff.

As he finished his call, Conner looked down at a sobbing mess of a friend he once knew. Was it the job that did this to him, or was this a mental defect that had always been with the sheriff?

Conner understood that he would never know for sure, but part of the prosecutor needed to know. Because deep inside him, there was a small fear that someday all the horrific things the prosecutor had witnessed through evidence, testimony, and confessions would drive him to become as despicable as the sheriff. And at that point, he’d know that he was truly broken beyond repair.