Cruel Justice bk-5 Read online

  Cruel Justice

  ( Ben Kincaid - 5 )

  William Bernhardt

  A ten-year-old case puts Ben Kincaid on a collision course with a serial murderer

  Ben Kincaid's air-conditioner is on the fritz, his staff is on half-pay, and his sister has just disappeared, leaving him holding her baby. He needs fast money, and a quick-and-dirty personal injury suit could do the job. But what looks like a sure-fire case turns out to be something far more complicated. His prospective client hopes to rescue his son—a twenty-eight-year-old with the mind of a child. Ten years earlier, Leeman was accused of murdering a woman with a golf club, and he has been locked in a mental institution ever since. Now he is finally about to come to trial, and Kincaid sees no way to save him.

  But when a young Tulsa boy goes missing, Kincaid senses a connection between the two cases. Finding the abductor and could mean saving lives—Leeman's, the kidnapped child's, and those of the countless victims to come.

  Cruel Justice

  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

  “IT’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.

  TWO

  Ten Years Before

  SERGEANT 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.”

  Sandstrom winced. “Her father’s a doctor?”

  “Cardiologist.”

  “Rich?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  And you’re going to keep her happy on a cop’s salary? For the first time Sandstrom’s heart went out to the poor schmuck. This marriage was even more doomed than he had realized.

  “Julia keeps buying all those home pregnancy test kits. She does about three a night, just to be sure. So far, no luck.”

  Sandstrom tried to sound reassuring. “Don’t worry, pal. You’ve still got lots of time.”

  Mike shrugged. “I suppose.” He sank down into his seat. “I sure would like to have a kid, though. Our kid.”

  The police radio crackled. Sandstrom picked up the handset and exchanged a few words with the dispatcher. To Mike’s inexperienced ears, it all sounded like unintelligible squawks and static.

  “We’re on our way.” Sandstrom snapped the handset back into place, then bore down on the accelerator.

  “What’s up?” Mike asked.

  “Sounds like a one-eighty-seven.”

  That meant homicide. “Seriously? Who took out who?”

  Sandstrom whipped around a corner, almost taking the car up on two wheels. “No one seems to know yet. On both counts.”

  “Where did it happen?”

  “Utica Greens Country Club.”

  “Really!” Mike’s eyes glistened. “What was the weapon, a polo mallet?”

  “You’re close. A golf club.”

  “A golf club? How—”

  Mike didn’t have a chance to complete his inquiry. Sandstrom soared through the main gates, parked in the front lot beside another patrol car, then jumped out of the car. “Ever seen a murder before, Morelli?”

  Mike hedged. “Well, I’ve seen pictures.”

  Sandstrom clapped him on the back. “Brace yourself. It isn’t the same.”

  They were greeted by another police officer, a man only slightly older than Mike. He pointed toward a small building at the crest of a hill near the first tee of the golf course. “It’s a caddyshack,” Patrolman Tompkins explained. “The victim is still inside. I haven’t moved her. I was the first to arrive. Homicide hasn’t made the scene yet.”

  As they mounted the hill Mike saw something move about fifty feet away, on the pillared porch behind the main country-club building. The moonlight glinted, and he had a fleeting impression of blonde hair.

  “Look over there,” Mike said, pointing. “See? A woman, I think. Moving away from us. Fast. I think she’s wearing a white dress.”

  Tompkins squinted. “I don’t see anyone.”

  Sandstrom grinned. “He’s been fantasizing about his gorgeous wife all night. Now he’s having visions.”

  “I saw someone,” Mike insisted. He ran into the shadows, trying to find a trace of the figure he had briefly glimpsed. But by the time he arrived, there was no one there. After running all over the general area, he returned to the other officers just outside the caddyshack.

  “No gorgeous woman in white?” Sandstrom asked.

  “No,” Mike replied. “A phantom of delight.”

  “More literary lingo—la-di-da.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” Tompkins told Mike. “We’ve already got a suspect.”

  Sandstrom and Mike followed Tompkins into the caddyshack. A black teenage boy cowered near the front door. His face was streaked with tears. He seemed terrified.

  “That’s the suspect,” Tompkins explained.

  Mike’s eyes crisscrossed the room. “Yeah, so where’s the—”

  The question caught in his throat. The north corner of the room held all the answers.

  Blood was everywhere.

  Sandstrom was right. It wasn’t like the pictures. Not in the least.

  “Oh, my God,” Mike mouthed. His words seemed to evaporate bef
ore they were spoken. He felt his gorge rising. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

  He stood there, transfixed, repeating himself until Sandstrom finally led him away to a bathroom where he could be sick.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Sandstrom said gently. ‘Try to forget about it.”

  Even as he hunched there over the porcelain throne, Mike knew he would never forget what he had seen in that caddy-shack. No matter how long he lived, no matter how many corpses he saw.

  Never.

  Gnats swarmed around her head and the thick clotted blood on her neck. Even in death, she stood erect, pinioned against the wall, as if crucified for unimaginable sins.

  THREE

  Now

  HAROLD RUTHERFORD MET HIS wife, Rachel, at the front door of the elegant main foyer of the Utica Greens Country Club. Sweat dripped from his brow, and a golf club was cocked over his shoulder.

  “Where’s Abie?” he asked.

  “I sent him in to have his picture taken,” Rachel said. “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

  Rutherford pressed his lips together in that subtle and thoroughly annoying way he had of expressing irritation. “I wanted us to have our picture taken together.”

  “The group portrait was scheduled for ten. You’re fifteen minutes late,” Rachel said sharply. “And you’re a mess.” She had a few ways of expressing irritation herself.

  Rutherford checked his watch. “I was in a board meeting.”

  Rachel’s eyes conveyed her disbelief. “You’ve been outside.”

  “We decided to take in nine holes while we talked.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re late.”

  He stared at her uncomprehendingly. “Well, I couldn’t just leave.”

  “Why not?”

  He cast his eyes skyward. “You don’t understand.”

  “Hal, Western civilization wouldn’t crumble because you left a country-club board meeting a few minutes early.”