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    Vigilante: Shortz!Series
    Vigilante: Shortz!Series
    Vigilante: Shortz!Series
    Ebook115 pages1 hour

    Vigilante: Shortz!Series

    By DAVID PHILLIPS

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    About this ebook

    The law tracks down the criminal and charges are laid. The courts place those found guilty in prison. In time, the criminal convinces a board that he, or she, is reformed and ready for release. Often, this is not the case. Some ex-cops decide to watch known repeat offenders and take justice to its full extent if the re-offend.

    A novella in the Shortz!Series

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavidRPhillips
    Release dateFeb 27, 2017
    ISBN9781386939900
    Vigilante: Shortz!Series
    Author

    DAVID PHILLIPS

    David Phillips, FCPA (ret.) is in his mid-seventies and lives just out of Melbourne, Australia. He began writing in his early seventies and found an enjoyment in putting ideas together with research to come up with stories, often linked to historical events of interest. He finds writing a labour of love and spends time at the keyboard every day.

    Read more from David Phillips

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      Book preview

      Vigilante - DAVID PHILLIPS

      CHAPTER 1

      Hal Spicer was fuming.

      Geez, Hal, what's upset you this morning?

      They let the bastard out on parole.'

      Which bastard?

      That bloody rapist. Offends, found guilty, in for five years with parole in two, out in one and a half. So, naturally, does it again within three months, caught, found guilty, this time ten years with a minimum of four, and now he's out on the street again. It gives me the shits. He'll kill one soon after he’s raped her. He's got away with it so far and now he'll go for more. No bloody wonder I'm livid this morning.

      Rick had no response, reached for his coffee and took a sip.

      Hal Spicer was ex-cop, retired, sixty-one with a good pension. He was six feet tall, sturdy, strong, fit, still going with the crew-cut hair-style, now grey-silver, tanned, tough, uncompromising. If you knew him well enough you'd know what he would like to do about the serial offenders that kept escaping through the weakness of judges and the pathetic parole boards.

      Rick Pacey was also retired. He was taller than Hal at six-two, thinner, wiry, dark-featured, fit as anyone who ran three marathons each year but a peacemaker, ex-solicitor and good mate of Hal.

      It's the system and the might of the do-gooders, Hal. They seem to think everyone will learn from their mistakes and that the help they offer in the jail system can cure offenders. It's a load of crap but they get a hearing.

      Hal continued his rant.

      Mostly, offenders re-offend. Rapists are about the worst except for the one-timers where they didn't understand the rotten thing they were doing. And they get off far too lightly. Judges see a lot of the remorse but they don't see enough of the shattered life of the woman or girl the offender has despoiled. And the perverts and pedophiles, how come these judges let them off so lightly?

      Yes. I often wonder about that.

      The whole set-up stinks.

      I know, but what can you do, it's the bloody system.

      Well, as I've said many times before, the system stinks.

      So? Rick was in lawyer mode.

      So, what?

      Rick locked eyes with Hal.

      So. What are you going to do about it?

      Do about it? What can I do about it?

      Well, if you can' t do anything about it, stop killing yourself over it.

      Hal sat there, stymied yet again, following his morning rant. The two men sat in silence as was often the case after a discussion of a serious matter.

      Do about it? What can I do about it? Nothing? No. Not nothing, I can't accept nothing any more, but what?

      When Rick left to head off to the gymnasium, Hal ordered another coffee. The conversation today was different from the countless others they had shared on the subject because Rick had raised a question, maybe even a challenge and, for once, it had sunk in and taken hold. The rest of the day was taken up in re-visiting the morning chat with Rick.

      *

      Hal Spicer had always wanted to be a cop. As a youngster, he had watched the crime shows with high interest, always siding with the detectives as they strove to solve the murder case, always trying to remember the clues or motives they found that led them to the arrests. He noted, even then, that knowing was not enough. You had to make it stick and that meant that you needed irrefutable evidence.

      When he matriculated, he applied immediately to join the police force. Following successful aptitude tests and profile analysis he was accepted in to the Police Academy and passed through its processes with flying colours. He was bright, he was dedicated and he had always imagined himself a cop.

      His dreams were interrupted by years of shit-kicking; answering calls to domestic upheavals, drunk and disorderly behavior, drug pusher arrests, brawls and street prostitutes and juvenile offenders and parking offences and so on. He was impatient to be noticed for advancement but he contained it and waited in the knowledge that, one day, he would be picked up by Homicide and be on his way. And, in time, it happened.

      Of course, for a while, he was still the shit kicker. The cups of coffee, the carrying of messages, the midnight call-outs and so on but he didn't care. It was all preparation and, one day, Clyde Hammond called him in to his office.

      Clyde was a well-regarded detective with a long list of arrests.

      I've been watching you for a while, Spicer, and like what I have seen. I've requested that you join my team and, today, I got the okay. So, you're going to have to satisfy me that I was right about you. Our job is tough. Finding the guy who did it is often not too difficult, but the smart ones make it hard. Understand what I'm saying, son?

      Yes, sir. Knowing is one thing, proving is altogether another.

      Right. Give me a hypothetical example.

      Yes sir. The husband murders his wife. There are no physical clues in the house or the car he used to dump her by the side of the road. Nobody else has a motive. The bloke is nervous and shifty. The cops know he did it after a few interviews. Now they need to search for motives, for eye witnesses, they will need to be able to prove that he did it with evidence that the defence lawyer cannot break down. It could take years and, all the while, the murderer is walking the streets.

      You do understand. Good. I think we'll get along okay.

      *

      Over the years, this conversation would return, time and time again, to haunt Hal Spicer. There were so many times when the guilt was as clear as day to the investigators but the lack of conclusive evidence saw the party free to walk the streets, to re-offend, to sneer at the cops as they passed by. He watched as offenders walked from the courts on a technicality or a single stubborn juror. He fumed as offenders he had succeeded in having put away were released early by naive and gullible parole boards, only to re-offend, sometimes at the cost of an innocent person's life.

      By the time he retired from the force, these miscarriages of justice, as he saw them, had left a huge black hole in his career as he looked back over his time in the law.

      He had often reflected as to what could have been done better, what errors could have been avoided in the processes of the law but always concluded that, basically, guilty people had avoided the penalty that was due and warranted. He was forced to conclude that a significant part of his career had been wasted and this left the rancid taste of failure for him to bear for the rest of his days.

      The life he had chosen had also left him on his own. His wife of twenty years and two fine offspring was, in the end, unable to adapt to his obsessive chasing down of the clue that might bring some crook to justice and his moodiness when a criminal walked free after Hal had, in his opinion, nailed the bastard.

      *

      CHAPTER 2

      Sondra Desmond worked late. Always. She had taken the job in a city diner because she loved the city and she could take her break wandering the streets and staring in at the windows of the department stores and specialty shops as she ate her lunch. This broke up the day for her and fed her dreams that, one day, she might be able to work as a sales person in one of the up-market stores. To this point, she had always been too terrified to apply for such a position.

      She was pretty. She even admitted it to herself. Blonde, blue eyes, clear skin, five feet five, slim, not too bad she

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