Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

R.W. Doyen graduated from the University of Maine and then from the Pennsylvania College of Pediatric Medicine in Philadelphia. For twenty-four years, he practiced podiatry in Towanda, Pennsylvania. He relocated to North Carolina, founded a sea wall construction company, and began to write about this devastating episode in his life.

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A Father's Anguish

By R.W. Doyen

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 R.W. Doyen
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-7061-4

Chapter One

Jim Eaton sat and brooded and gnawed his pencil, lost in thought. Once a week, duty dragged him from the streets to his glass-enclosed cage for the paperwork of a detective unit whose budget and manpower was stretched too thin. Jim knew that such shortages translated into the lengthening list of unsolved cases that cluttered his mind and his desk. He was, however, mandated to work within the monetary restraints imposed by the city council, and he did his best.

"When things get bad enough and the crimes on the street get close enough to their front doors, then maybe," he had once said, "the money will be available."

Between rising unemployment and the expansion of the local college, with its rising student population, Jim Eaton of the Springdale Detective Squad felt like the Dutch boy with too many holes in the dike. New violent crimes were being reported faster than they could be resolved. Unemployment bred poverty and poverty bred crime, but it wasn't that simple, and Jim Eaton knew it. Poverty wasn't what it used to be. Just within the past six months, he had finally caught up with, and arrested, Desmond Kirkland, who had broken into a warehouse and killed a guard before making off with ten top-brand computers.

The social critics noted that Desmond was economically disadvantaged and that this poverty was the driving force behind his crimes. But when a search of Kirkland's home was carried out, drugs, guns, and a television in every room belied that hypothesis. Captain Eaton had a theory too, and he considered it just as valid as the sociologists'. Driving, unbridled ambition was Desmond Kirkland's downfall. He had the ambition that society likes to foster, and so often rewards, but not the moral restraint to channel his ambitions within the confines of the law. "So maybe he had ethical poverty," he chuckled to his wife, Sue, who for years served as a conduit to drain away the bile of his frustration.

It was 8:00 am and time to address the men. Jim stood, stretched his back and leg muscles with a delicious isometric contraction, and made his way around the desk and into the hall. The distant din he had been vaguely aware of while cocooned at his desk was suddenly bedlam as he opened the door. Clots of people stood in groups while others moved, seemingly at random. Most of them were talking, nearly shouting, to be heard above the general uproar. Jim pinballed his way along the corridor to the squad room and entered. The detective squad, overseen by Jim Eaton, was composed of four men besides himself. Evenly split between junior- and senior-grade detectives, they were this morning gathered behind closed doors, as they were every Monday morning, being delegated the week's work while trying to resolve any hang-ups from the week before. Fresh cases were worked on first, as older ones sank to the bottom of the pile. Except for one.

"Listen up, everyone;" called out Eaton, establishing order in the room. "We've got twenty unresolved, open cases on the book this morning." The assignment of cases sometimes generated groans denoting complaints, while others brought forth excitement and an eagerness to get at it.

The men were paired into teams, with a senior- and junior-grade detective working together. "Thurman and Lasko, close out the details on the check-writing artist, and get busy on the string of gas station holdups."

George Thurman was a senior-grade detective who was breaking in Frank Lasko. Frank had the makings of a fine detective, if one of his several girlfriends didn't shoot him first. His amorous escapades were famous in the department.

"Captain, your wish is our command," grinned Frank. "We, my partner and I, picked up that little paper-hanger Sunday morning. In bed, no less, in flagrante delecto, if I'm not mistaken. Or is it coitus interruptus? Something like that. Anyway, he's downstairs in lockup." Gales of laughter from the others nearly drowned out his next remarks. "And we have a positive ID on the gas station heister."

"Good job, fellows." Jim smiled. "It looks like I'll have to farm you out to the fire department for a few days."

"Oh, Captain, we're going to be tied up in court on Wednesday, the way it looks right now," said Thurman.

"There's a string of arson cases the fire marshal wants some help with," continued Jim. "I'll hold him off 'til the end of the week, but we've got to nail this guy before he kills someone. Right now, he just seems to be into slum clearance. All right, quiet down," he commanded, as the din was becoming too loud to compete with.

"Morgan and Spence. Anything new on the rapist?"

"No, sir. This guy is slick," spoke up Detective Senior Grade Robert Morgan in his rich baritone voice that complimented his rich, black skin. The color of ebony, Morgan had finely cut features and a long, lanky frame.

Morgan was teamed with Detective Junior Grade Dale Spencer, who was as long and lanky as Morgan but possessed a tenor voice that seemed to jump up an octave whenever he became excited. Spencer was as white as Morgan was black, and within the department, they had been labeled Salt and Pepper. The pair had worked well together for more than two years and had become personal as well as professional friends.

"Whoever this guy is, he doesn't leave much."

The assailant had struck three times between September 19 and October 29, and as Sergeant Morgan had said, there wasn't a clue.

"We know of three," said Morgan. "We don't know how many more." He continued with foreboding in his voice. "Since the first, he's been getting busier. His frequency seems to be stepping up, and he's certainly getting more violent."

"I want him, gentlemen. I want him real bad before he kills someone," said Jim Eaton. Raising his voice again, he said, "All of you, I want updates on all current cases on my desk by tomorrow, end of shift." The meeting broke up as each of the men drifted off to their own cluttered desks.

Paperwork, a drudgery in any occupation, was especially so for modern-day detectives. The rules of evidence, so exacting as to be the fulcrum upon which the scale of justice tipped, required recording every moment, every change in direction, every thought, and every provocation for the thought.

Jim left the meeting and returned to his desk. Much of his beloved job had boiled down to making sure that each case he brought before the district attorney was correct as to form; evidence properly catalogued and stored; documentation properly recorded; and the accused's rights protected. All of these items were essential to the justice process even in the face of overwhelming guilt. Common sense was out the window, rebutted with "whose common sense?" Everything had to be recorded. The result was the proverbial cluttered desk piled high with notes and memos. For every hour of detection, a detective spent equal time recording his movements, observations, and conclusions, all of which had better be defendable.

The rules, devised by fair-minded men to protect the unjustly accused, had piled one upon another, creating a maze of point, counterpoint, which a skillful lawyer could navigate through to exonerate even the most blatantly guilty. Confessions could be, said the court, trashed for lack of proper form and recanted for lack of representation. The rules of evidence were making a mockery of justice, and every cop from the "beat" to the commissioner felt betrayed by the system he defended, often...