Justice Unserved, Nadia Siddiqui [brene brown rising strong .TXT] 📗

things over. He can remember standing there, watching that fire in Doris’ eyes, not because she was happy that she thought that she was winning and certainly not because her allergies were anything at all. Obviously her neighbors weren’t out to kill her like she had claimed on the phone. No, he watched the light in Doris’ eyes because that old bitch loved chaos. She was a miserable soul and she wanted everybody else around her to be just as miserable as she was.

Usually it worked.

Thomas sat in his car for hours afterward, thinking about all of the ways that he would have liked to shut her up for good. All of the ways he never wanted to have to listen to her speak ever again. He knew that by the time he got back to the station, she would likely have called in a complaint about the fact that his squad car had been parked out front of her house and it was annoying her and making her paranoid. Thomas Crane decided that enough was absolutely enough. That night, he would go back to make a house call in uniform but out of his squad car so none of the neighbors would think anything of it. He borrowed a car from the impound lot and drove back to her house, parked right in her driveway and stomped up her front steps. He didn’t say a single word as she opened the door and started barking about the indecent hour, he just pushed his way inside of her house and started checking rooms while she stomped along behind him insulting his job and asking annoying questions the whole time. He knew then that he could do anything to her and nobody would care. She couldn’t even manage to tell him to leave her home with any conviction. So he did do as he liked, over and over, and the satisfying rush of power that it gave him was unlike any other that he had ever experienced.

It started a pattern.

Just like today, he was called to Doris’ house the week after. She didn’t have any living relatives that were going to check on her but some of the other officers noticed that she had stopped calling because they had a hell of a lot less paperwork to do and one had gone to check on her. Stealing her jewelry was another thing that nobody noticed. It was certainly easy enough to make friends with the pawn shop dealer a couple towns over. He takes a small percentage of whatever each item Thomas Crane brings him and he doesn’t ask any questions. Usually he can fetch an alright price for just about anything that Thomas brings him. Though things like lockets with pictures in them and the old brooches are things that he likes to keep from the women; with men, he likes anything engraved, watches or cufflinks, things that would have been of sentimental value; the rest is only things taken to cover his tracks, to throw people off the scent. It is a process that over time he has learned to perfect.

Which led him down this path to today. Most of his victims he meets because they are either called on for a welfare check and he can follow back up with them as his victims a couple weeks later, having already checked their house and living situation, or sometimes he likes to stop down at the local hospitals, hospices or nursing homes. He gets the layout of the buildings and comes back after dark. Nobody ever thinks that he’s doing anything but looking out for all of those involved. It’s the perfect setup.

“Sir, over here please.” The deputy calls him over in the direction of the bedroom and Sheriff Crane heads over quickly, as if he doesn’t already know what’s waiting for him inside. Just as he left it, the bedcovers are all in disarray and some of her personal belongings have been upturned. They hadn’t even made it into the bedroom here but he has trashed it anyway. Her jewelry will all be missing of course. From this particular victim he took a small jewelry box covered in silver spray-painted elbow noodles. It was obviously dear to her, she had cried so hard when he took it. Apparently it was the last thing her granddaughter had ever given her. Which was all the more reason for him to keep it.

“Anything taken?” Sheriff Crane asks.

“We will cross check everything with her insurance tomorrow to find out one way or the other for sure, but it does seem like there was a struggle of some sort in here.”

Sheriff Crane nods. “Very good. What about—” He stops because his phone starts to ring in his pocket. The number isn’t one that he recognizes at first. As this is his personal cell phone he doesn’t like to keep numbers saved that might be used later to get him in trouble. The phone in his hand vibrates twice and then the call cuts off. Three seconds then pass before the phone starts to ring again. A secret pattern that he teaches all of his informants to use whenever they really need to talk. “I’ll be right back, I have to take this.” The deputy nods that he has heard him and goes right back to work on whatever item he was inspecting first.

“Yes?” Sheriff Crane spits the moment that he’s in the quiet, empty hallway.

“The loud mouth is back,” a voice from the other end of the phone whispers. Crane is struggling to put a name to her face right away.

“And?”

“And she’s not alone.”

Crane pauses, putting the mental pieces together. “What do you mean she’s not alone?”

“I mean she has some man with her, on the tall side, seems to be recording just about everything the two of them are saying. I think I heard her introduce him