Justice Unserved

by Nadia Siddiqui

  Thomas had been forced to stand there, listening to both parties complain and scream at each other until he finally had enough and smoothed things over. He can remember standing there, watching that fire in Doris’ eyes, not because she was happy that she thought that she was winning and certainly not because her allergies were anything at all. Obviously her neighbors weren’t out to kill her like she had claimed on the phone. No, he watched the light in Doris’ eyes because that old bitch loved chaos. She was a miserable soul and she wanted everybody else around her to be just as miserable as she was.

  Usually it worked.

  Thomas sat in his car for hours afterward, thinking about all of the ways that he would have liked to shut her up for good. All of the ways he never wanted to have to listen to her speak ever again. He knew that by the time he got back to the station, she would likely have called in a complaint about the fact that his squad car had been parked out front of her house and it was annoying her and making her paranoid. Thomas Crane decided that enough was absolutely enough. That night, he would go back to make a house call in uniform but out of his squad car so none of the neighbors would think anything of it. He borrowed a car from the impound lot and drove back to her house, parked right in her driveway and stomped up her front steps. He didn’t say a single word as she opened the door and started barking about the indecent hour, he just pushed his way inside of her house and started checking rooms while she stomped along behind him insulting his job and asking annoying questions the whole time. He knew then that he could do anything to her and nobody would care. She couldn’t even manage to tell him to leave her home with any conviction. So he did do as he liked, over and over, and the satisfying rush of power that it gave him was unlike any other that he had ever experienced.

  It started a pattern.

  Just like today, he was called to Doris’ house the week after. She didn’t have any living relatives that were going to check on her but some of the other officers noticed that she had stopped calling because they had a hell of a lot less paperwork to do and one had gone to check on her. Stealing her jewelry was another thing that nobody noticed. It was certainly easy enough to make friends with the pawn shop dealer a couple towns over. He takes a small percentage of whatever each item Thomas Crane brings him and he doesn’t ask any questions. Usually he can fetch an alright price for just about anything that Thomas brings him. Though things like lockets with pictures in them and the old brooches are things that he likes to keep from the women; with men, he likes anything engraved, watches or cufflinks, things that would have been of sentimental value; the rest is only things taken to cover his tracks, to throw people off the scent. It is a process that over time he has learned to perfect.

  Which led him down this path to today. Most of his victims he meets because they are either called on for a welfare check and he can follow back up with them as his victims a couple weeks later, having already checked their house and living situation, or sometimes he likes to stop down at the local hospitals, hospices or nursing homes. He gets the layout of the buildings and comes back after dark. Nobody ever thinks that he’s doing anything but looking out for all of those involved. It’s the perfect setup.

  “Sir, over here please.” The deputy calls him over in the direction of the bedroom and Sheriff Crane heads over quickly, as if he doesn’t already know what’s waiting for him inside. Just as he left it, the bedcovers are all in disarray and some of her personal belongings have been upturned. They hadn’t even made it into the bedroom here but he has trashed it anyway. Her jewelry will all be missing of course. From this particular victim he took a small jewelry box covered in silver spray-painted elbow noodles. It was obviously dear to her, she had cried so hard when he took it. Apparently it was the last thing her granddaughter had ever given her. Which was all the more reason for him to keep it.

  “Anything taken?” Sheriff Crane asks.

  “We will cross check everything with her insurance tomorrow to find out one way or the other for sure, but it does seem like there was a struggle of some sort in here.”

  Sheriff Crane nods. “Very good. What about—” He stops because his phone starts to ring in his pocket. The number isn’t one that he recognizes at first. As this is his personal cell phone he doesn’t like to keep numbers saved that might be used later to get him in trouble. The phone in his hand vibrates twice and then the call cuts off. Three seconds then pass before the phone starts to ring again. A secret pattern that he teaches all of his informants to use whenever they really need to talk. “I’ll be right back, I have to take this.” The deputy nods that he has heard him and goes right back to work on whatever item he was inspecting first.

  “Yes?” Sheriff Crane spits the moment that he’s in the quiet, empty hallway.

  “The loud mouth is back,” a voice from the other end of the phone whispers. Crane is struggling to put a name to her face right away.

  “And?”

  “And she’s not alone.”

  Crane pauses, putting the mental pieces together. “What do you mean she’s not alone?”

  “I mean she has some man with her, on the tall side, seems to be recording just about everything the two of them are saying. I think I heard her introduce him as a journalist. You might want to get down here.”

  It all starts to click. The woman on the other end of the phone, Josephine but called Jo for short, works at the hospice center just outside of town where the loud mouth’s father lives. Until now, Emma Claire has been annoying, but he felt that it was mostly for a good cause. He couldn’t touch her father until she was out of the picture and frankly she was just too young to be bothered with. Emma has too many friends and is involved in too many groups. She’s exactly the sort of person that people would raise hell over if she were to go missing. She is practically untouchable but if what Jo is saying is true and she’s hired some fancy reporter, she might be making waves that Sheriff Crane can no longer ignore. “Thank you Jo, I’ll handle it.”

  Sheriff Crane ends the call and ducks back into the room. “I want you to put a tail on that newest group of thugs that have been making trouble under Main Street Bridge, alright? Make sure this isn’t something tied to them. I think the timing of their appearance is just a little strange. I have to run an errand, but I will meet you back at the station.”

  Sheriff Crane is already on the phone again before he reaches his cruiser, calling various informants that he has around town that he knows will do absolutely anything for him in an attempt to find out just who this person that Emma has brought on board is and what they know about him. Infuriatingly, nobody seems to know a thing.

  4

  E mma Claire takes Nathan “Hank Pettyfer” on a small tour of the town. He’s cramped inside of her small two-door car but he doesn’t complain. He will need to find a way to distance himself from her to check in with his handler at the company shortly, but he knows they still have a little bit of time left.

  She has wasted no time in showing him all of the houses of the people who have had crimes committed against them and from the case files that Nathan was given previously he mentally assigns a name and a case number to each of them. His real goal here is to draw just enough attention to the pair of them that a certain local police sheriff will catch wind of their movements and decide to stop by. The sheriff might think he’s done a wonderful job of keeping himself anonymous and for most people perhaps he has. Though cases like this are the bread and butter of the company he works for Nathan doesn’t know how their selection process works or what all it entails. He doesn’t know how they assign each one to a member of the Does or why they pick who they do. It isn’t Nathan’s job to ask questions, he just wants to get the rest of the pieces of this assignment in order. He knows the next puzzle piece to fit in will be making contact with the sheriff so that he can look him in his eyes.

  It’s always been the most surefire way of triggering his little visions. Each member of the Does has been blessed with a unique gift; perhaps,
in a time before he can even remember, that is why he was chosen in the first place. Perhaps those same gifts were why they were all chosen to become what they are now. For Nathan it’s the ability to have insight into a person. He can look them in the eyes and sometimes he will be shown an image or a memory or something that might have happened or will happen in the future. It’s not something he can fully control, but the closest thing to a guaranteed trigger that he has found so far is looking a person straight in the eyes.

  Emma Claire shows him around one of the old nursing homes that her father used to be in, explaining to him that they moved him out of concern for his safety. She comments about how tricky it was to get his insurance to agree to it but finally she managed to swing it. She says frequently that they are all each other has and if she didn’t have to work as much as she presently does then she would have been happy to look after him herself. Emma has recently been looking into ways that she can shift her career into a working from home situation in order to accommodate his growing needs and demands, but it’s a process. Nathan feels for her. He cannot remember if he had parents or what they might have been like, but he’s certain that, in another life, he might have ended up like Claire. The level of adoration and empathy that she is capable of feeling is something he finds fascinating.

  Nathan takes special care to make note of the security cameras and other features that are available. In each of the places that Emma shows him around the town he makes mental notes of the traffic cameras and other things that no doubt the company has already matched with dates and locations. All things to have figured out who the killer and sadistic bastard is. Each crime is able to be matched about a week apart from some related police case. Just enough time for the rest of the people in the town to have moved from one big ticket item in the gossip train and on to the next big ticket item. At least he was crafty whenever it came to that. Finally Emma finishes her tour and Nathan makes an excuse about how he wants to get to see the town a little better on his own and the pair of them agree to meet up in a few hours in order to allow Emma to introduce Nathan “Hank” to her father and get as much of his opinion as possible. It seems that the only victims who have been left alive all have some sort of memory disorder. In Emma’s father’s case, it’s dementia. Memory disorders tend to make for very unreliable witness accounts.

  Nathan wonders if Sheriff Crane knows that somebody is in town and poking around already. He wonders if the man has started to follow the pair of them. Nathan knows that the sheriff will find him sooner or later. He wonders if he will be able to make it all the way to the station for an impromptu interview or if Sheriff Crane will find him before that. It all depends on how paranoid the sheriff actually is, Nathan supposes. He knows Crane is a narcissist and doesn’t think he will ever be caught for anything he does. Nathan knows he will also not like to have loose ends hanging around for that same reason, and Nathan’s being here will make Claire a very annoying loose end for the sheriff to want to tie off as quickly as possible. Sheriff Crane probably doesn’t think of Emma has any sort of threat to him, but he should. She’s a lot more observant than she looks and she doesn’t seem at all like the type of woman to be able to easily let things go.

  Nathan stops at a small coffee shop in town, checking over his shoulder until the police cruiser finally shows up. It only took a few hours since Nathan’s arrival here in town to be noticed. Sheriff Crane has enough eyes in this town to be able to move quickly it would appear. Nathan thanks the barista for his latte and starts to walk down the sidewalks casually. He’s not doing anything that would warrant the sheriff stopping him; for all intents and purposes Nathan looks every bit like a tourist just enjoying a cup of joe. He wonders if curiosity will get the better of the sheriff or if he’s an impatient enough man to stop Nathan without even having a reason to do so.

  Only he never does. Nathan can’t help but feel satisfied by this little development because it keeps the buildup going. Eventually the squad car drives off and Nathan decides to skip this little courtship and heads right after that car in the direction of the police station. He pulls out his notepad and positions his tape recorder in his front pocket before strolling casually into the station.

  The moment he’s inside everybody starts to stare at him. Nathan doesn’t think any of them have really been around too many outsiders. He is willing to bet that each of the people in this room went to school with the other people in this room or at the very least grew up down the street from one another. It’s almost intimidating. “Hi I’m looking for Sheriff Crane, please.”

  “What for?” the small woman behind the counter demands, not at all pretending to be friendly or in any way customer service oriented.

  “I just have a couple of questions for him, is he here?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Hank Pettyfer, ma’am.” Nathan pauses, pretending like she’s just supposed to know who he is by his name alone. “I’m a reporter?” Dramatically, he blinks as if he’s somehow appalled that she still doesn’t have any idea who he is and waves away her pointed stare. “I’m here to help your town get funding for a search party or at the very least gain some national attention for all of these crimes that you’ve been having lately.” He looks around, gesturing to them like they should thank him. Hank is a boisterous personality, and Nathan has to play into it. “You know, since you all have been having trouble finding any leads?” He means it to be exactly as condescending and rude as it comes out too.

  The woman behind the front desk only glares at him.

  For half a moment, Nathan thinks he’s actually going to have to give up and go on to his next lead when the sheriff himself comes out from behind a partition wall, holding a white Styrofoam cup full of black coffee.

  “Sheriff?” Nathan asks, though it’s very obvious by the large badge on Crane’s uniform that’s exactly who he is. Nathan extends out a warm hand in a friendly gesture and shakes Crane’s hand firmly. “Nice to meet you, would you mind if I ask you just a few questions? I would love to have a sheriff’s perspective on a few things here, if you have time.”

  Nathan is careful to play into his ego. He is careful to appeal to that self-centered nature just a little, just enough to make him want to help him.

  Sheriff contemplates his answer and finally nods. “I think I can spare just a couple moments, right this way.”

  Crane leads the two of them around a small open office with about four desks in it toward a small hallway and his office is through a wooden door at the end of it. Sheriff Crane holds the door open and waves Nathan inside as if this was all his idea from the beginning. The moment they are in the room alone together it’s so much clearer that the sheriff is used to getting everything he wants. His wall is decorated in hunting trophies and other insignia that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the typical academic achievements that are normally displayed on office walls. The sheriff moves with his shoulders totally level as if he owns the whole building as opposed to just this room. He likes having a position of power and he likes being able to wield it.

  Personally, Nathan thinks he’s obviously compensating for something.

  “Thank you for taking this time out to talk to me, I don’t want to waste your valuable time so I’ll make this as quick and to the point as possible.”

  “Yes, my time is very valuable, thank you.” The sheriff sits and leans back comfortably, putting his boot-covered feet up on the blotter on his desk in a power pose, his fingers knitting his hands together as he lets them rest behind his head.

  “These robberies have been happening for quite some time now, correct?”

  “A few here and there, but over the last four months things have been getting steadily worse. We think that whoever the culprit is, they’re getting bolder. He no longer seems afraid of getting caught.”

  “And yet, there haven’t been any public leads published. Do you have your eye on anybody? I’ve talked to a handful of townsfolk today and they all have confided in me
that they are very frightened for the welfare of their loved ones, their grandparents and elderly neighbors. What are you doing to keep the town safe?”

  Nathan waits with his tape recorder poised, knowing full well that the only person he has spoken to today is Emma. Sheriff Crane knows it as well because he has been following Nathan, though the sheriff continues to play his part expertly.

  “We are doing everything in our power to keep the citizens as safe as possible. Unfortunately this criminal or criminals have been very good at covering their tracks. So much information is available on the internet these days and TV shows, it leaves only very corrupted evidence. I have personally been taking patrol routes. We want to make sure the town knows we are out there every day and night with our eyes peeled.”

  Nathan pauses, keeping his face carefully neutral. “So what you’re saying is that this single sadistic bastard is more intelligent than your entire police force? More powerful than you?”

  Sheriff Crane’s eye twitches.

  Nathan has put him in a very difficult position. Either he can remain the all-knowing police sheriffr or he can be this mastermind murderer, but he cannot be both. One role will cancel out the other and the only way to be as perfect at both roles would be to accuse himself and serve out a sentence. To be true to both sides of his personality that would be the only way, but his ego would never allow for it. There is not a chance of redemption in Sheriff Crane and Nathan knows it. He just needs to make the man enraged enough to become reckless.

  “What sort of question is that?”

  “What’s the matter, sheriff? You don’t like being questioned as to why you haven’t caught this psychopath that’s terrorizing your town? It’s my job to ask the tough questions and it’s your job as sheriff to solve this case. What leads do you have? You have to be better than this.”

  “This interview is over.”