Cruel Justice
Authors: William Bernhardt
A Ben Kincaid Novel of Suspense (Book Five)
William Bernhardt
A MysteriousPress.com
Open Road Integrated Media
Ebook
For
my father
and
my son
Yet in my lineaments they trace
Some features of my father’s face.
—
LORD BYRON
(1788-1824),
“PARISINA”
Prologue
ONE
Twenty-five Years Before
“I
T
’
S DARK IN HERE
, Daddy.”
The boy doesn’t know how long he has been in the closet, tied to this chair. He doesn’t know what time it is, or even what day it is. He knows he is hungry. And thirsty. And scared.
Very, very scared.
“Please, Daddy. I don’t like it in the dark.”
The ropes chafe against his wrists and burn his skin. His legs and groin are sore and sticky. He doesn’t know how many times he has wet himself. He’s been in here so long.
“Daddy? Mommy? Please help me.”
He knows they are out there. Daddy is listening, laughing maybe. Mommy is out there, too. She won’t laugh, but she won’t do anything. She never does. She pretends she doesn’t hear, pretends she doesn’t know what’s happening. But she knows.
He rocks back and forth, straining against the ropes. “Please, Daddy! I can’t stand it in here. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll—”
The door opens. The sudden brightness is blinding. The boy scrunches his eyes closed, then slowly opens them as he adjusts to the light.
His father towers over him. He can’t see his father’s face, just the outline of his immense body silhouetted in the closet door. He is everywhere and endless, like an enormous shadow, a real-life bogeyman.
Suddenly the boy is far more frightened than he had been when he was alone.
“You’re a dirty boy,” his father growls. Even in the darkness, the child knows his father’s fists are balled up—two tremendous battering rams. The boy wants to escape, but the ropes hold him fast to the chair.
“Are you ready for your punishment?” His father’s voice booms and echoes in the tiny closet
“But I didn’t do anything, Daddy. Honest I didn’t!”
“Shut up.” One of the huge fists strikes the boy across the face. “I’ve had enough of your lies. Lying is a sin against God. Don’t you know that, you ignorant boy?”
The child wants to answer, but his whole body is trembling and he can’t control his voice.
“I checked your sheets. They were wet. Again.” His father leans in closer, his huge head swallowing the light. “What did I tell you would happen if you did that again?”
The boy forces words from his throat. “I—I didn’t mean to, Daddy. I tried to hold it, but—”
“Shut up.” Another fist batters the boy, this time on the other cheek. He begins to cry.
“Pansy. Weak, dirty pansy. Don’t think I don’t know what you do when I’m not around. I’ve seen you. Touching yourself. I’ve seen the way you look at your mother , too, when she parades around in her underwear and her high-heeled shoes like some—”
He leans in even closer, till his nose is barely an inch from his son’s face and the boy can smell his hot, whiskey-soaked breath. “You’re a dirty boy. And you won’t be clean till you’ve taken your punishment.”
“Please don’t,” the boy cries, his voice quivering. “Please, please don’t.”
“You have to be punished.”
“I don’t want to hurt, Daddy. Please!”
His father draws back. His voice becomes oddly calm. “I brought someone to see you.” He holds up a small stuffed animal.
“Oliver!” It’s the boy’s teddy bear. “Thank you, Daddy. I missed—”
His father jerks the bear away. “Since you won’t take your punishment, Oliver will have to take it for you.”
“No!” The boy’s eyes are impossibly wide. He realizes what his father is about to do. “Please, Daddy!
No!
”
His father’s huge hands clutch the bear’s head and rip it off. The foam stuffing spills out from the neck onto the boy’s head.
“
Noooo!
” he cries, choking as the foam falls into his mouth. “You’re killing him!”
“Oliver isn’t dead yet,” his father replies. “But he will be. Because you betrayed him.” The father withdraws a lighter from his pocket. The flame casts an eerie glow on his face. It makes his eyes seem red, evil, like the pictures of the devil the boy has seen in his mother’s Bible.
“Don’t do it, Daddy!
Please!
”
The father ignites the teddy bear. When it is nothing more than a ball of flame and embers, the father tosses it into a trash barrel.
“You killed him!” the boy wails, tears streaking his face. “You killed Oliver!”
“No, I didn’t,” his father replies. “You did. You were a dirty bad boy and you wouldn’t take your punishment, so Oliver had to take it for you. It’s your fault. You killed him.” The father folds his mighty arms across his chest. “Are you ready to take your punishment now?”
The boy finds he cannot answer. He is crying, choking, gasping for air.
“I said,
are you ready?
” his father bellows.
“I guess so,” the boy whispers.
The father pulls himself erect. “Well, then. That’s more like it. Good boys always take their punishment. You make Daddy very happy when you take your punishment.”
He says more, but the boy doesn’t hear it. He’s already distancing himself, relocating to that faraway place he goes to when his father punishes him. It’s the only way he can endure the hurt, the humiliation. The only way he can survive.
In that distant place, he dreams about a better world. A world without closets, without pain. A world free of his father. A world where he will be the punisher, instead of the victim.
Ten Years Before
S
ERGEANT SANDSTROM STEERED THE
patrol car down the curving road that wound around Philbrook. The lights inside the museum were off; no one would notice if he drove a bit faster than he should. Anything to drown out that damned harmonica.
“Hey! Watch it!” Sandstrom’s partner, a young, baby-faced punk with thick curly black hair, slammed sideways against the door. The impact knocked the harmonica out of his hands. “You spoiled my song.”
“Sorry,” Sandstrom lied. “Wasn’t watching the road.” Morelli was okay, as far as kids fresh out of the academy went, but Sandstrom could stand those Bob Dylan songs only so long. Morelli sang worse than Dylan himself, if such a thing was possible. “Did you say you used to play in nightclubs?”
“Yeah. Pizza parlors, campus bars, dives. With a friend of mine.”
“And you gave that up for the glamorous world of law enforcement?”
“What can I say? Every night it was the same old same-old. Thunderous applause. Babes throwing themselves at my feet and begging to bear my children. You get tired of that after a while.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet your wife did, too.”
“You got that right.” He pulled a wallet-sized photo out of his shirt pocket.
“Oh, jeez,” Sandstrom said. “You’re not going to start mooning over her picture again, are you?”
His partner grinned. “I can’t help myself.” He sighed. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
Sandstrom turned the steering wheel hard to the left. “Look, how many times I gotta tell you? This sucker stuff is strictly for newlyweds. You gotta get over it.”
Morelli continued gazing at her picture. “Why?”
“ ’Cause a cop can’t afford to be distracted, that’s why. You gotta be … focused.” Of course, that wasn’t the real reason. The real reason Sandstrom hated to see new cops get entangled in whirlwind romances was because they never lasted. History kept repeating itself. Another year, maybe two, and that gorgeous gal Morelli was making goo-goo eyes at would be the biggest liability in his life. But there was no telling him.
Sandstrom had been on the force for over thirteen years, but his partner tonight was an APO (Apprentice Police Officer). Just getting started. Michelangelo A. Morelli—Mike to his friends—was an English major who for some perverse reason had gone to the police academy. Go figure. Mike had all the attributes of a new recruit. A fresh face, not yet worn down by the grind and menace of the patrol. Preposterous idealism and naïveté that bordered on the comical. And an annoying habit of quoting Shakespeare to perps.
“I must be the luckiest guy in the world,” Mike said, still gazing fondly at the photo.
“Yeah.”
“You wouldn’t believe what she did the other day. I came home and she’d bought me a brand-new car. A Corvette. Can you believe that?”
“A Corvette? Christ, kid, can you afford it?”
“That’s what I asked her.” Mike beamed. “And she said, ‘Honey, where you’re concerned, money is no object.’ ”
Sweet sentiment, Sandstrom thought, but the bank might have a different opinion. “So this morning why did I see you parking that beat-up Dodge Omni?”
“Well, Julia had a lot of shopping to do, so she took the new car.”
“Ah,” Sandstrom said. “I see.” He was beginning to, anyway.
They were cruising—gliding, really—down the residential streets of Utica Hills, Tulsa’s poshest neighborhood. The exclusive enclave of the old rich. Sandstrom hated this beat. There was rarely any street crime around here at this time of night, but it gratified the well-heeled citizens to know that the boys in blue (brown, actually) were keeping an eye on their swimming pools and Ferraris. Since their bank accounts largely determined who the mayor and city council members were, and thus determined who ran the police department, they tended to get whatever they wanted.
“So how’s your lovely bride adjusting to life as a cop’s wife?” Sandstrom ventured.
Mike tucked the photo back into his breast pocket. “Oh, Julia’s very understanding. All she cares about is my happiness. She doesn’t complain at all when I come in late. Just as long as I’m not too tired to …” He flushed, suddenly embarrassed. “Well, you know.”
“Kid, I truly do not want to hear about this.”
“We’ve been trying to have a baby—”
“Aw, jeez …”
“Julia wants a girl, but I want a boy. A little curly-haired Morelli. A chip off the old block. I just hope I can be half the dad to him that mine was to me.” His head lowered, and his smile faded somewhat. “We’ve been going at it every chance we get for a solid six months, but so far, no luck.”
“Six months is nothin’. My sister Amelia and her husband tried for eight years before they got their first bundle of joy. Now they have five.”
“Really? Julia thought maybe we should see a doctor. Of course, her father’s a doctor, so she thinks they’re the solution to everything.”