NO CLOSURE NO FORGIVENESS
Read NO CLOSURE NO FORGIVENESS Online
Authors: Pawan Verma
NO
CLOSURE
NO
FORGIVENESS
Pawan Verma
Contents
Prologue :
No Justice, No Forgiveness
Chapter Two
: “Because You Love Him Too Much”
Chapter Four
: “Till Death Do Us Part”
Chapter Six
: “Everything We’ve Been Through”
Chapter
Seven : Caught Red-Handed
Chapter
Eight : Special Agent Jessica Galloway
Chapter Nine
: Paradise Regained
Copyright
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, duplicated, transmitted
by any means or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written
permission of the Author or Publisher except for the use of brief quotations or
excerpts in articles or reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this
book would be illegal and punishable by law.
Disclaimer
This book is a work of
fiction. The names, characters, places, events and incidents, appearing in the
book, are the product of the author’s imagination and have been used purely in
a fictional manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events,
incidents or things would be purely coincidental.
This book is dedicated
to my family members who have always been a source of support and inspiration
to me.
To my wife, Neelima,
who has been nurturing our family with love & affection, dignity &
sacrifice and has been a source of inspiration to me in countless ways
To my daughter Shweta
& son Harsh who have always been a sounding board to me for what the next
generation thinks & likes and who keep infusing me with passion and
strength to carry on with my work
To my son-in-law
Subhayu, who instills me with the faith that all is well with the next
generation and also the hope that the future is bright
To my daughter-in-law
Shruti, who has brought about all-round happiness in all our lives
There’s no
such thing as closure, there’s no such thing as forgiveness,
Patrick Brenner thought as he watched
the lady detective from his hiding spot outside her home. Nothing could bring
back his nine-year-old son, especially since one of Baltimore City’s finest had
helped his son’s killer escape justice in one of the most egregious
miscarriages of justice the city had ever seen. Since then, not a day had
passed when he hadn’t thought of pleasant memories of Little David’s cheerful
giggle, followed by torturous images of him being forever taken from the world in
which his son had been raised.
And now revenge
was on his mind as Patrick sat alone in his car, a broken, distraught father
who had worked so hard to build a better life for David. He rested his
binoculars on the passenger’s seat, stretched his short stubby legs, and rubbed
his flaky head. Years of poor dieting and lack of exercise were finally taking
its toll. Not that he cared. In fact, he didn’t have anyone to care for. His
universe had collapsed. The small little world that he had built around himself
had caved in. Nothing mattered anymore.
Detective Jessica
Galloway was on her way to speak with Irene before she checked in to work that
day. Irene. Her name once slipped off his tongue with a subtle sweetness. Now
it filled his mind with disgust. She was the gorgeous redhead he’d vowed to
spend the rest of his life with. Yeah, so he had a few issues and took them out
on her from time to time. But did that mean she had the right to take his son
on a joyride when she knew she was drunk out of her mind?
No. Of course
not.
Upstairs on
the second floor of Jessica’s Canadian Victorian-style home, the lady detective
flinched as she slipped into her shoes. Patrick froze, but decided against
ducking down into his seat for he knew this woman was smart, alert, and a
sudden movement would draw her attention. Patrick couldn’t afford the
attention. That chilly December evening was far too early to give himself away.
Irene,
Detective Galloway, and her annoyingly aloof boyfriend who was now in federal
witness protection would pay soon enough. They would learn what it was like to
have the one thing, the one person you loved more than anything, taken from
them.
Patrick
waited until Jessica dressed and grabbed her police-issued handgun from a
nearby nightstand before he started the ignition of his Toyota Camry and peeled
away from the street. In the upscale side of Baltimore City, he was more than
confident that she’d heard him pull away from the curb in the low-crime area.
Good, he
thought. Let her wonder a bit.
Patrick took
a left at the next intersection and began pulling out of Fell’s Point. He
switched on the radio and rolled down the window to let the frigid air shock
him into oblivion. An old Jimmy Hendrix song blared through the speakers.
Hey
Joe, I said where you goin' with that gun in your hand?
He and Irene had
fallen in love listening to that song. The bitter irony was aggravating. The
anger returned. The time for tears was over. The time to get even had come.
As he drove,
the rest of the world floated by without paying him any attention. He was an
alien among the humans. An ominous sense of despair that threatened to ruin the
city’s holiday spirit. As he pulled the Camry to a halt at the next
intersection, Patrick looked down at the last picture he still had of he and
his son. Resistance was pointless. The tears flowed freely. And he let them.
He sobbed
quietly until the driver behind him beeped his horn, yelling a few choice words
that would normally have inspired Patrick to exit the vehicle and start
swinging at anything that moved. Instead, he continued to the Interstate, towards
the meeting place. By the time Irene realized what was happening, she would be
gone forever…
The sky was
dark. The stars shined bright. And Detective Jessica Galloway struggled once
again to deal with the guilt. She didn’t want to speak with Irene. Not tonight,
not after she’d just earned her badge back following a two-week suspension for
dereliction of duty. That was the term the brass used when they’d learned she’d
fallen in love with one of the witnesses who testified on Irene Brenner’s
behalf, arguing that she suffered from Battered Women’s Syndrome and shouldn’t
be held accountable for wrecking her vehicle and killing nine-year-old David. And
Andrew Hoffman—the man she loved—had been legally compelled to test in a federal
drug case just days after Irene was acquitted.
Now he was
gone, tucked away in whatever safety net the federal government had spent
millions of dollars building for him. But her duty to protect trumped the
desire to wallow in self-pity. Now here she was on this cold, dreary night,
kind of wishing she could exchange her detective shield for laminated teaching
credentials.
Jessica
pulled into the vacant parking lot and waited for Irene to arrive. Her unmarked
vehicle smelled of fresh women’s perfume. Not too much, but not too little.
Sometimes she still missed the nights where she was allowed to be gorgeous. The
nights where she could dress up in her favorite heels and skirt and go out with
a few of the girls. Those days had ended long ago.
It was sad to
think she had so few friends, and even less family. Her mother and father had
handed her over to her grandparents. And both of her grandparents had passed away
as well, leaving her with painful, but fond memories of how the couple had
raised her.
The substitute
parenting played a role in why she was sitting in a parked police cruiser,
huddled down in a dark car, when she was supposed to be attending a mandatory
strategy meeting at the precinct.
Jessica
waited. A homeless man walked slowly down the sidewalk. A laughing family of
four exited a pizzeria adjacent to the empty lot. Five minutes passed. Ten.
Fifteen. She began to grow impatient.
The police
radio garbled out a report of a domestic disturbance, producing a nauseating
wave of agonizing memories from her earlier days working for Baltimore PD’s
recently formed Domestic Abuse Prevention Task Force. After suffering from
flashbacks that haunted her days and nightmares that kept her waking up
repeatedly, she’d chosen to leave the task force and apply for a transfer to
Homicide.
And of course
there were the memories of college days, where everything had gone perfectly
until she’d met the wrong guy. It only took a few days before the beauty and
optimism that had always radiated from her transformed into a constant feeling
of hopelessness and rage.
Knuckles
rapped softly on the car window. Instinctively, Jessica reached for her sidearm
but realized it was Irene. She appeared a little more frantic than usual. Jessica
rolled down the window and stared at the pint-sized redhead who was in fear for
her life.
Reassurances
couldn’t help this woman as she was forever confident that her ex-husband would
try to kill her for accidentally taking their son’s life. Even after half the
squad had assured her he was no longer a threat and had reluctantly moved on
with his life.
“Hey girl,
how you doin’?” the detective asked the distraught young woman. “You still
making it to those meetings?”
Irene’s head
bobbed up and down, her dull, untreated red bangs showing signs that she hadn’t
shampooed in at least a week.
“You sure?” Jessica
pressed. “You know if you miss those addictions meetings you’ll end up in
jail.”
“I know, I
know,” Irene whispered, her eyes frantically darting, searching the darkness
for the stalker she assumed was lurking in the shadows. “Detective Galloway, I
need your help.”
“Honey, I
can’t help you anymore. My commanding officer told me to stay away from— “
“I know, I
know,” Irene repeated. “But I
know
he wants me dead. I ruined his life.
I knew him for years, remember? He ain’t just gonna get over it.”
Same routine,
different night. Jessica attempting to reassure the traumatized woman by
reminding her she needed to take back control over her life. And Irene
reminding her that Patrick Brenner wasn’t a man who allowed a woman to have any
control in the first place. That meant the battle and road to recovery had only
just begun.
“Can you
just…assign a patrol guy to watch over my apartment?” Irene continued. “Please,
Detective Galloway? Just one night and I promise I won’t bother you again.”
Jessica
sighed and checked her reflection in the rearview mirror to see if her nose was
still running from the twenty minutes she’d spent crying over Andrew’s
departure earlier that evening.
“Irene, if
you’re concerned about your safety you need to file a report. And you have that
restraining order. He can’t come near you, remember?”
“It’s not
enough
,”
Irene whined.
Jessica
sighed again. After all, she knew how the girl felt. She’d been there, years
ago when she was studying Elementary Education at the University of Maryland and
had made the silly mistake of falling for the wrong future pro basketball
player. Months of abuse followed. She’d suffered physically, mentally and
psychologically. All in silence. Ultimately, it had been her grandmother who
had discovered the bruising. The wise woman’s response was unexpected, painful,
and as far as Jessica was concerned, the most important lesson she’d ever learned.
Jessica had
learned from that day forward how to stand up for herself. Weeks later, the
wanna-be future Hall-of-Famer’s career was over. Now he was serving hard time
for domestic abuse charges, in addition to the drugs and weapons police had
found.
And Jessica
was now a cop.
Everything that happens in your life, happens for a reason.
It’s your responsibility to learn from it all.
Grandmother’s twist on an
old familiar adage.
“Tell you
what,” Jessica said as Irene’s teeth began chattering from the cold. Let me
drop you by your house before I head in. I’m not supposed to be on tonight.
Just a mandatory meeting.”
Unless
someone gets killed.
Yeah, then she’d be working. Homicide Division was a tough beat to work,
especially in this city.
Irene smiled
weakly and walked around to the side of the car. Jessica truly felt for her.
After all, she knew how it felt to become so frightened and alienated that
anyone you met seemed like a threat. Even as a police officer on the task force
with a few personal experiences of her own to share, it had taken considerable
time for Irene to warm up to her. And now she couldn’t find a way to separate
herself from the past and move on.
Jessica
glanced over at Irene who sat quietly in the passenger’s seat. From experience,
she knew Irene would speak little. The distraught woman and mother of a dead
son sought comfort and safety, not necessarily conversation. So Jessica turned
on the radio and switched through the channels. A newscaster discussed a huge
bank robbery downtown. She switched to a local hip hop station.
Jessica
looked out the driver’s side window at the traffic rushing through the city
streets. Life never slowed down for those who suffered. The world kept spinning
and people kept moving. Even after everything had gone horribly wrong, she
still wished she could be with Andrew. A man secluded in federal witness
protection. A man she’d fallen in love with. A man who made her want to pack up
and run away to a distant island where they could cuddle half-naked on the
beach. Just the two of them. No danger, no misery, just romance, happiness, and
a lot of great sex.
Jessica could
smell the stench of stale cigarette smoke on Irene’s brown fur coat. The
terrified woman’s lips were chapped, her skin dryer than a sandcastle. Together,
physically, the two women couldn’t be more different. But emotionally,
mentally, Jessica knew they were the same. There was no other reason the distressed
housewife would still rely on her companionship three months after the trial
had ended.
The two sat
quietly for a few moments, trying to take in any serenity they could before
both of their lives returned to “normal”. The stars shined brightly that night.
In another day or so, the temperatures would become unbearably cold, but for
that night, Jessica enjoyed the fresh, frigid air and bustling excitement of
the approaching holiday season.
Irene was lost
in fear. Jessica was lost in love. Sitting quietly in the car, she fantasized
briefly about Andrew’s tall, handsome frame. His dark, sexy skin. The man had
such a smooth way of speaking, moving, touching, kissing,
existing
. The
times they’d been together, illegally and unethically making love during the
course of the one month, highly publicized trial.
The late
night daydream was so vivid that Jessica almost forgot about starting the
ignition and taking Irene home as she had requested.
At least not
until the sound of a gunshot penetrated the air. Jessica looked over and saw
Irene’s eyes wide with shock. Her breathing quickened and soon became erratic.
Tears appeared in her eyelids and the detective’s heart sank as she realized
what was happening. Irene had been hit and whoever the shooter was, he didn’t
seem to want to stop firing at the vehicle.
Gunshots
panged off the front and sides of the police cruiser. Jessica counted seven
rounds fired in rapid succession. Clearly, this was a carefully plotted attack
by a shooter who knew what he was doing.
From that
point, everything that was happening seemed to unfold in a confused blur.
Detective
Galloway reached for her radio to call in the shooting.
“Ten-thirteen,
ten-thirteen!”
she screamed, the code for an officer requesting emergency
assistance.
“Shots fired, civilian hit!”
Jessica jumped
out of the vehicle and crouched behind the door, her eyes searching the darkness
for the shooter. But even without a shred of proof, Jessica knew who the
assailant was. She just couldn’t see him.
Screams split
the calm air. Pedestrians ran in the opposite direction from where the source
of the gunfire which had finally just stopped. Sirens wailed in the distance. Jessica
ran to the other side of the car and dropped to her knees. She wasted a few
minutes with resuscitation methods before giving in and realizing that it was
too late to save Irene.
Irene Brenner
had been killed. And as far as Jessica could tell, her ex-husband was a primary
suspect. The tears Jessica had cried earlier returned, more so than earlier.
She tried hard to contain them because she didn’t want other people to see her
temporary vulnerability.
Why couldn’t
God give her Andrew?