[Lady Justice 07] - Lady Justice and the Vigilante Read online

  As I suspected, the Captain looked like ‘he had been drug through a knothole backwards’, as my grandma used to say.

  I’m sure he had gotten a lot less sleep than I had.

  When he addressed the squad, you could see that he was a man on the edge.

  “Right in our own back yard! We lost a prisoner right in our own back yard! Blown away surrounded by cops! How does this happen?”

  I wanted to tell him, and I’m sure others did too, that it wasn’t anybody’s fault and there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent the killing, but no one spoke.

  He tried to compose himself.

  “The papers are saying that this is the work of the same person that offed Grimes and that we are dealing with a vigilante.

  “At this time, there is no evidence to support that theory.

  “The slug that killed Larson was from a 30.30 and Grimes was killed with a 6.5 mm.

  “If it is the same perp, he’s being very careful to cover his tracks.

  “All we have to go on at this point is the testimony of Officers Williams, Wilson and DeMarco who were at the scene and described the shooter as a male dressed in army fatigues.”

  He looked at the three of us.

  “Anything else come to mind since you made your statements last night?”

  We all shook our heads.

  “We’ve got to put a lid on this thing. The last thing we need is some guy running loose in our town, making himself the judge, jury and executioner.

  “Right now he’s killing scumbags, but sooner or later, there’s going to be an innocent victim.

  “People just can’t take the law into their own hands.”

  Ed Jacobs was also reading the headline in the Star.

  He knew that it would come, but he was surprised that it had come so soon.

  “Vigilante.”

  That was the word used in the papers, on TV and on the street.

  As in the Grimes’ shooting, the average man on the street had no sympathy for a criminal that had raped two women in their seventies. The world, it seemed to them, was a better place without him.

  The American Civil Liberties Union weighed in with a different point of view.

  “Law and order is the foundation of our society. Whether or not we are in agreement with every outcome, our civil liberties must be protected.

  “LeShawn Grimes was found innocent by a jury of his peers and Brian Larson had not even been formally charged with a crime.

  “Regardless of our personal feelings toward these men, the bigger issue is that they were deprived of their civil liberties.

  “If we tolerate this miscarriage of justice, where do we draw the line?

  “This murderer must be stopped. Vigilante justice must never be tolerated.”

  ‘Murderer’, he hadn’t really thought of himself in those terms.

  He let it sink in for a moment.

  Then he thought of the old proverb, “You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

  Everyone was entitled to their opinions, but as Dirty Harry said, “Opinions are like assholes. Everybody’s got one.”

  Then, his thoughts turned to something more urgent; he had almost been caught.

  In spite of all his precautions, there was no way he could have known that off duty police would have been at the scene.

  Thankfully, the sprinkler system had given him time to escape.

  Without that diversion, he would never have outrun the cops.

  He had arrived at his car totally winded and barely able to breathe. Maybe it was time to renew his membership at the YMCA.

  Recent events had led him to believe that if he continued this course of action, it was inevitable that, sooner or later, he would be forced to defend himself.

  He had seen a karate class advertised for older adults.

  He had prepared himself mentally for the task ahead and now it was time to prepare physically, and even more important, he would have to be more careful next time.

  The cops on the scene the night before had taken names, numbers and addresses on everyone that they could corral after the panic.

  We were given a portion of the list and our day was spent following up with all those people, hoping someone knew something or had seen something, but we came up empty.

  I was totally beat by the time the day was over. The lack of sleep and the day’s fruitless search for clues had left me drained.

  After supper, I was stretched out in front of the TV doing my darndest to keep my eyes open, when the phone rang.

  Reluctantly, I picked up the receiver.

  “Mr. Walt! This is Mary!”

  “Hi Mary. What’s up?”

  “What’s up is that we’ve been robbed!”

  I put my pants back on, grabbed Willie from the basement apartment and we headed to the Three Trails Hotel.

  This architectural monstrosity is the last remnant of my once large rental portfolio.

  Finally growing weary of the hassles of being a landlord, I sold everything --- everything that is, except the Hotel. Nobody would touch it.

  It’s a flophouse, plain and simple.

  There are twenty sleeping rooms containing a bed, dresser and chair and its occupants share four hall baths.

  My tenants are a motley conglomeration of old guys on social security and younger guys working out of the labor pool.

  The rent is forty dollars a week and most of the guys pay in cash.

  Presiding over this rental anomaly is seventy-three year old Mary Murphy.

  She lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor.

  There is a mail slot in her door where the tenants deposit their weekly rent.

  Due to their irregular working schedules, rent could be deposited at any hour of the day or night.

  When we walked on to the porch, we could see that Mary was in a dither.

  “Oh, Mr. Walt. We’ve been burgled.”

  Willie leaned over and whispered, “Where’d she get dat word?”

  I just shook my shoulders.

  “What happened, Mary?”

  “I decided to go out for the evening. I had me a burger at the Dairy Bar and took in the early movie. When I got home, the door was busted in.”

  Sure enough, the doorframe had been splintered.

  “Can you tell if anything was taken?”

  “Nothing except some of the rent money. I noticed that there were a couple of envelopes in the box under the slot when I left. I figured I would take care of them when I got home. Guess I shoulda done it before I left. I’m sorry, Walt.”

  “Any idea how much there might have been or who had put it through the slot?”

  At that moment, I noted that the porch had filled with most every tenant in the building.

  One old guy raised his hand. “Mine was in there.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, there arose a chorus.

  “Me too!” “Me too!” “Me too!”

  It seemed that mysteriously, everyone had paid their rent this week during the three hours that Mary was at the movies.

  Since there was no way I could prove otherwise, I had no choice but to write off the whole week as a loss.

  “Willie can you secure this for the night?”

  “Sho ‘nuff. Den I’ll come back tomorrow an’ fix it proper.”

  I assured Mary that everything would be OK and ushered her into her apartment.

  I was bone tired and I was pissed that I had lost a week’s rent, but more than anything, I was angry that some creep had violated my building and Mary’s home.

  I didn’t mean for it to happen, but suddenly the thought popped into my head.

  “Maybe the vigilante will bust a cap in his ass!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Although the media was wringing as many headlines and sound bites from the vigilante case as possible, and the department had made the apprehension of the shooter a top priori
ty, other cases and other criminals could not be ignored.

  At squad meeting, the Captain introduced Sergeant Winkler from the drug task force.

  “As you all know, the production and sale of illegal drugs in our city is an ongoing battle.

  “One of our most effective deterrents is the honest citizens of the community who suspect suspicious activity in their neighborhoods and report it to the task force.

  “We are working on one such case now.

  “There have been numerous reports of suspicious activity in an eastside neighborhood, an increase of traffic on the residential streets late at night, strangers walking the streets and veiled threats to homeowners to ‘mind their own business.’

  “We have narrowed the activity to a home in the twenty-seven hundred block of Myrtle.

  “Our plan is to sweep the block, house by house, with the aid of an old friend of mine.”

  Winkler gave a whistle and a beautiful chocolate Labrador retriever trotted into the room.

  “This is Buster and he’s got a nose you wouldn’t believe. Let me show you.

  “Before the meeting, I taped a joint to the bottom of one of your chairs. Let’s see if Buster can find it.”

  Winkler made a hand signal and nodded his head and Buster made the rounds of the room huffing and puffing like a freight train.

  When he reached my chair, he sat on his haunches, looked me in the eye and snorted, “Rufffff!”

  “Officer,” Winkler said, “you’re under arrest for possession of a controlled substance.”

  Then he barked an order. “Buster! Hold!”

  The lab rose to his feet and his big head went straight for my crotch. Before I knew it, my privates were being held firmly in his jaws.

  My fellow officers, seeing the horror written across my face, laughed uncontrollably.

  “Officer, I wouldn’t make any sudden movements,” Winkler admonished.

  This was my second encounter with a police dog.

  The first was a German Shepherd who had obviously had the same training as Buster, since he too had become intimate with Mr. Winkie and the boys.

  Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Winkler barked, “Release! Come!”

  Buster and I parted company and he trotted to his master’s side.

  Dooley couldn’t pass up the opportunity to deliver a zinger.

  “Hey, Walt! Does Maggie know you’re into this animal thing? If she doesn’t she soon will!”

  “Lucky me!” I thought.

  When order was restored, Winkler continued.

  “We don’t want to give Buster any preconceived notions by leading him directly to the suspect house, so we’re going to let him sniff every home on the block and draw his own conclusions.

  “The reason I’m here is that we need some extra manpower to cover the neighborhood.

  “While Buster and my officers are sniffing around, we need some of you to cover the rear of the houses in case someone tries to rabbit on us.

  “I could use four guys.”

  Then he looked at me.

  “How about you and your partner, seeing as how you and Buster are already acquainted?”

  I looked at the Captain and he nodded his head while trying to stifle a smile.

  I turned to Ox. “Well partner, I guess we’re on dog duty.”

  We parked the four cruisers a block away from the target street and set out on foot.

  Winkler freed Buster from his leash and the big dog trotted off with his nose in the air.

  The task force guys stayed close to Buster as he went house to house and Ox and I and two other officers headed for the back yards.

  There was an old alley that ran between the back of the houses being searched and the rear of the houses on the next block.

  Ox and I stayed close to the houses and the other two guys covered the alley.

  It was slow going.

  Buster was thorough and sniffed the perimeter of each house before moving on.

  We all knew which house was the target house and when Buster started sniffing, we were all ready for anything.

  Sure enough, Buster lit up like a Geiger counter and Winkler gave the signal that we had pinpointed the drug house.

  The plan was that once Buster had detected drugs, Winkler would radio back to the station where an officer was waiting to get a judge’s signature on a search warrant.

  An assault team would deliver the warrant and storm the house.

  It took the better part of a half hour before the assault team showed up with the warrant.

  The back of the house had a basement garage and a gravel driveway that led to the alley.

  I was between the back door and the garage and Ox was on the other side of the garage door by the corner of the house.

  We heard Winkler pound on the front door and bellow, “Police! Open up! We have a warrant to search the premises!”

  We heard no response from the front of the house, but from behind the basement door we heard the distinct rumble of a Harley coming to life.

  The guy was going to roar out of that basement on his bike and it looked like our only choices were to either shoot him or let him get away.

  I knew I certainly wasn’t going to stand in front of the big machine and I hoped Ox wouldn’t.

  Then I saw it.

  A fifty-foot garden hose was coiled under an outside water faucet.

  I grabbed the hose and uncoiled enough of it to reach across the driveway.

  I figured I had time for one throw before the guy came roaring out.

  I pitched the hose like a lifeguard throwing a ring and Ox grabbed the end as the garage door swung open.

  We heard the engine rev up and the guy came flying out the door.

  I braced my hundred and forty-five pounds against the back of the house, but when the perp hit the hose it nearly jerked my arms out of their sockets.

  The perp flipped into the air and landed flat on his back and the Harley crashed into the fence on the far side of the alley.

  Winkler and the rest of the crash team came rushing around the house.

  When they saw the perp lying unconscious under a green garden hose, they all applauded.

  Buster came trotting up to me and licked my hand.

  What more could a guy ask for?

  The drug dealer was Damien Price.

  A search of the home found a working meth lab in the kitchen and a hundred and twenty live marijuana plants being cultivated under grow lights in the basement.

  We had taken down one of the biggest drug dealers in Kansas City.

  The department had been crucified in the press for the Grimes screw-up and its’ inability to catch the vigilante, so they wasted no time in making the bust front-page news.

  A picture of Winkler and Buster accompanied a heartwarming article about man’s best friend aiding in the war against crime.

  The department needed a slam-dunk.

  They couldn’t have scripted a better one.

  Price was being held in County lock-up until his arraignment.

  Because, technically, Ox and I had collared the perp, we had been subpoenaed to appear in court.

  Lights, cameras and on-the-spot reporters lined the stairway leading into the courthouse and clogged the hallways.

  It was standing room only inside the courtroom.

  Even though the case had generated a lot of interest and Buster had won the hearts of the community, it seemed that all this attention was a bit overboard.

  A bailiff led us to our seats and when I looked at the defense table, I realized why this case was the center of attention.

  The defense attorney was none other than Suzanne Romero.

  Romero rarely lost a case and why she would represent a douche bag like Price, especially in a trial where the outcome was a foregone conclusion, was a mystery.

  The chatter in the courtroom ceased when the bailiff announced in his big boy voice, “Hear ye! Hear ye! This court is now in session, the Honorable Fr
anklin Bush presiding. All rise!”

  Suddenly I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Judge Bush, while fair, was known as a liberal and quite the antithesis of a hanging judge.

  Now, with Suzanne Romero at the defense table and a liberal, individual-rights judge on the bench, the outcome on this proceeding was less certain.

  The bailiff announced the case and asked both counsel if they were ready to proceed. Both indicated that they were.

  The prosecutor began by stating the charges against Damien Price, drug trafficking, unlawful possession of a controlled substance and resisting arrest.

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Romero rose from her chair, “Objection!”

  “On what grounds Ms. Romero?”

  “Evidence against my client was obtained as the result of an illegal search and seizure.”

  “That’s not true!” the prosecutor bellowed. “The search of the premises was conducted only after a valid search warrant had been issued by Judge Durbin.”

  “We’re not questioning the search inside the home,” Romero shot back. “We’re questioning the search prior to entry into the home.”

  Judge Bush heaved a big sigh. He could tell it was going to be a long day.

  The prosecutor requested that the officer in charge be allowed to testify and the judge granted her request with no objection from Romero.

  Sergeant Winkler was called to the stand and sworn in.

  For the next half hour, the prosecutor quizzed Winkler about the events of that morning which led to the arrest of Damien Price.

  When she was finished the judge turned to Romero. “Your witness.”

  “Sergeant Winkler, what exactly led your task force to believe that there was illegal drug activity in that neighborhood?”

  “Phone tips from neighbors that there were a lot of strange people coming and going late at night and in the wee hours of the morning, warning people to ‘mind their own business’.”

  “Is there a curfew in that neighborhood?”