The Vigilante (3 page)

Harris pulled a chair from an empty area and sat down, facing him. “So, what happened here? Take your time and tell me in your own words the best you can.” He whipped out a metal covered book to take notes.

Callahan saw the officer’s eyebrows rise slightly when he gave his name. Knowing the police wouldn’t be on his side in this case, his fear rose. He felt sick, and additional hopelessness filled his mind.

“It was hardly an incident!” Callahan shouted, believing the assault on his person had just been belittled. His indignation raised his voice a few more notches. “Somebody jumped me in the jogging park this morning, cut me real bad, and I never even seen him. Bastard sneaked up behind me like a goddamned coward and slammed me one right over the head.” His whimpering rose as he cried his tale of woe to the cool, hazel-eyed detective. “And now I’m ruined for life!”

Denny stayed out of it. In silent commiseration, he intently observed the official’s attitude.
Does he remember Fred as the man they had arrested, but lost the case due to a new officer’s lack of experience?
He smiled quietly to himself.
Stupid-ass rookie forgot to read him the damned Miranda thing.

The detective scribbled his notes, asked several more questions, and took leave of Callahan with a short, “Thanks.” Then he left to question the attending physician regarding the severity of the injuries.

Finding Dr. Graves, he asked, “What’s your take on this? Any feelings about this sort of injury?”

The doctor replied with a shake of his head. “Plenty as a man, but on the medical side, whoever did this, used a bluish solution on the wounds. Looks like Gentian Violet or Gram’s Stain.” He paused then added, “I find it very unusual that someone thought to use an anti-infective if that was the intention. After all, he must have had one hell of a grudge against the guy. Why try to prevent sepsis? He shook his head again. “When we’re sure what the blue substance is we’ll let you know.”

Harris thanked the doctor. “Save that evidence if you will. We’ll have forensics on it right away. Might be our best clue since Callahan never saw his assailant.”

The detective returned to the patient. Callahan lay on his gurney moaning, warm blankets over him, and a bulky dressing fixed snugly between his legs. Approaching, he heard the man cry out from behind drawn privacy curtains, “Oh God, I’ll never be the same.”

Harris parted the privacy curtains, and returned to Callahan’s side. Beneath his blankets, the patient visibly trembled, pale from the shock of what had happened. He whined in despair as Harris said, “When you’re able, come down to the station. We’ll need to get a more detailed report from you. You’re pretty shook up at the moment, but time may improve your recall of events or anything we might have missed in your report today.” He closed his notebook with a snap and saw Callahan flinch from the sound. “We’ll expect to see you in a couple of days. The doc said you’d likely be up and around by then.”

Harris took his leave and both men watched intently as he walked through the wide double doors of the ER. Callahan wondered about Harris’s feeling toward him. He’d faced this man before in a totally different situation.
Did they remember him
?
He dreaded having to see these authorities again for any reason, in any capacity.

“Thanks, officer, for nothing,” Callahan mumbled at the detective’s departing back. His friend, Denny, sat patiently on the hard brown metal chair. “It went okay, didn’t it? What’d you think?” Callahan asked his very quiet friend.

“Seemed to, but it’s hard to tell about those guys.” Denny frowned, remembering a certain light he’d seen flashing in the cop’s eye a time or two, and the twitching of a lip. Silently, more than certain the officer remembered Fred from prior arrests or court appearances, he didn’t want to douse cold water on his friend at the moment. He mumbled a bit under his breath, but voiced nothing further on the subject.
Time will tell, won’t it
?

The attending nurse, Helene, came to say, “Mr. Callahan, you can go home as long as you won’t be left alone. We could admit you but you might have to wait most of the night on this gurney because all our beds are full at the moment, might be one later.” She shrugged. “Sorry, it’ll be your choice. We’ve been crazy around here the past few days.” She went on to say, “I have your prescriptions and follow-up care ready when you decide.” With that, she left to attend someone else.

“The place looks like a damned nut house, kids crying and people in wheelchairs, moaning and groaning,” Callahan muttered. “But dammit all to hell, I’ve got complaints, too.” He tried to understand that the staff did their best, triaging the worst of those seeking care according to the severity of their complaint. But in his mind, his immediate, personal worries took precedence over any of the others. He’d been severely injured and these other creeps sitting around meant nothing to him.

“What do you want to do, Fred? I’ll stay with you if you want to go home,” Denny offered.

“I want to go home. This damned cart is hard as a rock and I hurt like hell. If there’s something good and strong for pain in one of those prescriptions, let’s get it on the way home. I want to pass out and forget this fucking nightmare. I can’t believe this! I just can’t!” Callahan felt tears sliding from his eyes as he struggled to sit up. At the sudden onset of fresh pain, he cried out, “Son of a bitch, my ass hurts!” He slumped back onto the gurney, remaining on his side, tears sliding down onto the pillow.

“
I’ll tell the nurse we’ll be leaving and go bring the car around,” Denny said. “Maybe the nurse will know how to get you on your feet.”

She returned in a few moments with his paperwork and, placing a sturdy four-legged stool close, instructed him gently, “Just stay on your hip and slide off the gurney,” She said, steadying him as he moved carefully to the side.

Whimpering in renewed pain, he gingerly edged his way off the miserable hospital gurney and, finally, onto unsteady feet.

“Your jogging pants are not useable,” the nurse said. “They were very soiled.” She handed him a blue-striped, hospital issue robe to wear over his hospital gown. “You can wear this home.” She held his shoulder to steady him, helped him into the garment, and carried his soiled clothes in a bag.

Callahan felt dizzy and hung tightly onto the gurney to stay upright until Denny came for him. “I hope I don’t pass out,” he gasped through clench teeth.

The nurse said, “I’ll steady you a bit.” She indicated a wheel chair. “Here, Mr. Callahan, sit in this if you can.”

Callahan refused the appliance. “Hell no, I can’t sit in that damned thing or anything else,” he moaned loudly. “Oh God, I’ll never be all right!”

Fear and misery were permanently etched on his features as Denny came up to him. “Car’s right outside, Fred,” he said frowning. He’d already had a belly full of Callahan’s endless whining and moaning.

Together, they walked out of the hospital. Denny held Callahan’s arm on the right and the nurse took his left. They assisted him onto his side in the back seat of Denny’s old green Pontiac. The nurse handed him his soiled clothing and hospital paperwork. The two men drove away.

***

The attending doctor sat at his desk. The nurse, Helene, moved close to him as he wrote his notes. “What do you suppose that man did that someone would mutilate him in that way?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “But someone had him in their sights. It’d take a fiend or somebody with a damn big grudge to do that to a man. My God! I’ve never seen anything like that.” He shuddered. “Fred Callahan sure made someone mad as a hornet. Hell of an enemy!” Somewhere in his mind he had the feeling of familiarity regarding the man, or his name—something rang a bell. He wasn’t sure enough to speak of it, though it nagged the far reaches of his consciousness as he turned to the onrush of other patients.

CHAPTER 4

Martha Lavery heard the phone jangling, loud, insistent, and irritating. Her senses struggled against the depths of a drugged-like slumber. Fumbling about, she reached for the phone, lifted the receiver, and mumbled, “Hullo?”

“Mom, where were you? You were supposed to come for dinner today. It’s Sunday or don’t you remember?” Martha heard her daughter’s insistent voice on the other end of the line. She worked her mind upward from a heavy, fatigue-induced fog, trying to regain her senses.

“Oh, what time is it then?” The encroaching darkness outside her window brought her awake with rising alarm—she’d slept the day away? “Jeannie, I must have been really tired. I think I was up earlier and fell back into bed. Slept too long I guess. How’s Will doing?” she added as memory of her grandson’s plight reached her consciousness.

“About the same—listless, doesn’t play, or want his friends over. No change there.” The pain and tenseness in Jeannie’s voice revealed a mother’s deep pain regarding her emotionally damaged son. “You don’t know if you were up earlier or not? Mom, are you okay—you’re not working too much, are you?”

Hearing tears in her daughter’s voice, Martha felt her guts twist into a knot so hard and tight, she gasped for breath. “Uh, I’m okay; don’t worry about me, still sleepy I guess.” Fully awake now, she deftly turned the subject from herself. “Is the therapy helping him at all?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s hard to see any real change, not yet anyway. It’s been so long now, three months, isn’t it?” she asked. “How can he ever be normal again? How can he? I know I’d never feel the same if that happened to me. I couldn’t, oh my God, never!”

Her heart ached for her daughter and her five year old grandson, Will. “No wonder people took vengeance in the old days. At least they could, but our laws consistently favor the criminal, certainly not people like us.” Saying that brought back the helpless anger at the rape and sodomy of her only grandchild. This excessive rage was entirely new to Martha, and experiencing it, she felt helpless and uncomfortable because of it.

Recalling that day so well—it burned forever in her memory and always would—she remembered replying to her daughter’s frantic call. “What do you mean that man has gone free?” With tortured breath, she’d cried into the phone. “Jeannie, how can they
do
that? How can they let a monster like that loose to prey on other children?” Her mind had gone spinning into a bottomless black void that day, as she’d prayed, “Please, tell me it isn’t true.”

The speaker phone had rung in her ears as her daughter’s tear-filled voice related the sick details. “Yes, I’m afraid it is. A detective, Ryan Mapus, said the arresting officer forgot to read the man his Miranda Rights. A new rookie, who’d just completed training, overlooked that little detail. He just forgot, Mom, and because of that mistake, the evidence is inadmissible in a court of law. They can’t even use the DNA!”

“What are we to do if the law won’t protect us? How are we to save our children from people like that sick pedophile, Callahan? He’s out again, free to savage another child. My God, Jeannie, Will is only five years old. What horrors must haunt his little mind?” After a few more words, filled with hopelessness and despair, Jeannie hung up. Oh yes! Martha remembered that day all too well.

Her mind filled with foggy dreams of sickening content, seeing images of the things she feared Will had endured, until she’d cried out, “Oh, I can’t stand it! But what the hell can I do?”

Boiling rage and helplessness tore at her mind that awful day until at the end of her strength, she’d been forced to down a sedative and seek her bed in search of the soft swirling reprieve of blissful sleep.

Forcing her thoughts away from the memory of that haunting exchange, she returned to the present. “Honey, I’m coming over. Sorry about dinner. I want to see you and Will. Is Martin home today?”

“No, he had to be out of town for another conference over the week-end so we’re alone again. It makes me horribly nervous anymore. I hate being afraid like this, but some days that’s all I do. I want to move away from this town—this place.”

“I know, girl, I think of it, too. Like we have to uproot our whole family because the law can’t put these people away. It’s just not right.”

After her conversation with Jeannie, Martha was fully awake. She glanced at her bedside clock. The numbers said seven. She felt puzzled.
It’s dark outside. Where has my day gone
?

She stumbled into the bathroom, and looked in her mirror. Seeing purple stains on her right wrist, she stared at them. “How did I come by these?” Shaking her head, she realized she’d lost track of several hours again, beginning sometime in the night. She remembered going to bed, but not with purple stains on her wrists. That knowledge made her feel unsure of her thinking and gave her a
distant, fuzzy feeling inside.

Something’s happening to me. I know it, have known it for the past two
or three months.
Tears of fear and frustration went sliding down her cheeks.
Oh, Lord, am I going
crazy
?

Martha paced about her small, snug home, looking at her things. Those comforting, solid, and real things were where they always were, but she couldn’t shake her feeling of unreality. Her furnishings, her desk, sat in their normal places, but somehow, nothing was right.

She returned to her bed and lay there for a few moments, trying to put the past few hours together, and failed. “If I see a psychiatrist, everyone will think I’m crazy.” She punched her pillow. “But I have to, or I’ll really go mad!” Thinking about how her situation would be perceived at work, she knew she could never tell anyone about it. “Who on earth would hire a crazy nurse? They’d never give me another shift!”

Suddenly she started, heart hammering. “Have I missed my shift at the hospital?” She hastened to her heavy oaken desk and checked her work calendar. “No, thank God. I work tomorrow, but if this keeps on, I’ll mess up. How could I help it?” She hit the shower, laughing at herself. “And now I’m talking to myself!”