William Bernhardt - Cruel Justice

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?”