A Father's Anguish - Softcover

Doyen, R. W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1440170614 ISBN 13: 9781440170614

Publisher: iUniverse, 2008

Synopsis

Springdale Detective Jim Eaton really wants to catch the serial rapist who's on the loose in this small town. The perpetrator has already brutalized and raped three women from the local college, and the crimes are escalating.

The crimes become personal when John Stratton's twenty-year-old daughter, Laura, comes home-her face bruised and swollen after having been raped. The rapist knocks her unconscious and takes her to his home where he repeatedly assaults her. While she is still only semiconscious, he drives her back to where he had grabbed her and dumps her on the ground. He simply drives away. Though she is two hours away, Laura manages to get her car and heads home.

The beating and rape devastate her father. The police are never notified. After months of physical and psychiatric therapy, Laura recovers but John does not. He is haunted by his anguish. Sleepless nights and tortured days nearly make him insane. Laura remembers something about the exterior of the rapist's house, so for weeks John crosses and re-crosses the residential neighborhoods of this small city until he finds the house.

About this title

About the Author

R.W. Doyen graduated from the University of Maine and then from the Pennsylvania College of Podiatric 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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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 with his life.

Jim Eaton, a short, thick-shouldered, streetwise detective, had quickly risen through the ranks during his ten years on the force. An outsider might have thought that this would have caused dissention in the ranks, as he had obviously gone over the heads of other men who had been there longer. But that wasn't the case. Everyone in the department recognized the unique talents of Jim Eaton and the excellence with which he did his job. He not only made connections between seemingly unconnected bits of information; he also seemed to know and have a rapport, if that was possible, with every lowlife and scumbag on the street. As a result, he made more solid cases than anyone else in the department.

To the civilian population, he was a dedicated policeman. To the men on the force, he was a driven man. For long hours, including weekends and even a few holidays, he would be camped in his office or on the streets, at the expense of his wife and two teenage daughters. And now, Jim Eaton had set his sights on a rapist, who on at least three occasions had brutally beaten and raped coeds from the local college campus.

"Who knows," he stated more than once, "how many victims this animal has chalked up. We all know that sixty percent or more of rape cases go unreported. Who can blame them when every time these girls go to court, the defense lawyers make them look like whores, and seventy percent of the time, the assailant walks."

The first victim, Lisa Johnson, age twenty, was tiny, with an almost pathological thinness. When questioned, she was timid and soft-spoken. Over the course of several interviews with Lisa and the victims that followed, Jim began to get a feel for this guy on whom his sights were set. He pictured the rage that boiled within and knew instinctively that this man, turned animal, would strike again and again until he was caught. The scenario he envisioned frightened Jim. He knew that it was only a matter of time before he began to kill his victims, no longer able to get a sadistic thrill from beating and raping.

It had been difficult for Jim to get an accurate statement from Lisa, but with his gentle probing questions, he was able to put together a picture of what had taken place.

The assailant had quickly walked up behind her on a dark section of sidewalk, just a few streets from the campus. He simply wrapped his right arm around her waist and, clamping his left hand across her mouth, picked her up and walked to the car with her.

"If you make a sound or try to run, I will kill you," he had whispered softly into her ear.

At the sidewalk adjacent to where Lisa was abducted stood a late-model, dark-colored hatchback car.

From visiting the scene and reenacting the sequence of events, it was evident that the assailant had timed his attack to coincide with the victim's approach to the passenger side of the car. At this point, the assailant had simply opened the passenger side door, folded the front seat forward, and thrown her in. He had dragged a piece of blue tarp up over her head and again repeated, "If you try to look out or attract any attention, I promise I will kill you." Sobbing hysterically, the first of his victims did exactly as she was told.

"Shut up. Stop your crying. No one is going to hurt you if you do as you are told." He repeated these same words twice on the ten-minute ride. The car eventually pulled to a stop at what she thought to be in front of garage doors. The car started forward again, slowly, over a hump and then came to a stop. She described the sound of a motor starting up and then stopping after a few seconds.

The detective conjectured that the car had been pulled into a garage whose doors were controlled via a remote-controlled door opener. When the tarp was pulled from her head, the victim was in total darkness except for a penlight shining into her eyes.

"Put this over your head, and don't make a fuss," she was ordered.

"I can't," she whimpered, and with that, she received a sharp, open-handed slap across the face.

"You will do as you're told. Now do it!"

Without further argument, she complied and allowed the cloth bag to be slipped over her head, after which she had been led from the car, up three steps, across what was probably a breezeway or porch, and into a house.

The bag over her head was removed in a bedroom whose walls were covered with pornographic filth.

Her assailant now had something on over his head, so that she couldn't make out any of his features. They were all blurred and run together. The room had no furniture except for a bed. It had corner posts at the headboard and was located in the middle of the room. The pictures were everywhere and more disgusting than anything the poor little mouse of a girl could ever even imagine.

"Undress!"

"Oh, God, no. Please, no," she begged as she collapsed, weeping and sobbing, onto the floor.

"I said undress!"

She was dragged to an upright position and once again slapped with an open hand, this time directly over her left ear, the concussion of which sent a shockwave through her brain that caused her eyes to see jagged splinters of light, and her hearing was impaired with a ringing that would be weeks before it subsided.

Standing now before the full-length mirror hanging from the back side of the closed door, she slowly began to undress. Like some grotesque, Victorian minuet in three-quarter time, he watched her and mimicked her every move with his own disrobing, slapping her and dragging her to her feet each time she could not continue. He was like a spider playing with a fly caught in his web. Her pleading only spurred him on. Tears of shame, embarrassment, and fear washed down her cheeks and mingled with the mucous discharge from her nose. As her blouse dropped to the floor, so did his shirt. His pants immediately followed her skirt, and so on until they both stood naked in front of the mirror; she, pathetic in her small, undernourished body, he disgusting in his obesity.

From everything Jim could gather about the rape itself, it was as though the assailant was acting out a love scene, lying beside her, softly murmuring endearments, stroking her, and then slapping her if she resisted in any way.

Penetration was brutal, quick, and incomplete. He apparently ejaculated the moment penetration was initiated. She was handed a towel, told to wipe and get dressed. The bag was then relocated over her head.

She was led from the house to the car and, lying under the tarp, was returned to the same spot she had been abducted from an hour or so before. She was released, told to walk without looking back, and the car drove away as she complied.

The second of the three rapes happened the same way almost movement for movement, as did the third with only three exceptions. They were becoming more vicious. Each succeeding rape was more violent than the previous. A broken nose on the second and a broken jaw on the third testified to the increasing brutality that the victims were being subjected to. Another exception was that the rapist never truly completed the rapes, displaying premature ejaculation and immediate flaccidity. This, Jim reasoned, may account for the increasing degree of violence. If this was so, it was quite probable that soon he would resort to ultimate violence-murder.

If he can't get his kicks one way, then he will another, Jim thought fearfully.

The last change in the MO was also foreboding: the assailant was now taking pictures of his victims.

"What the hell is he doing, keeping a scrapbook of his dates?" queried Morgan, brimming with sarcasm. Little did he know just how accurate his off-handed observation would turn out to be.

A large four-feet by nine-feet blackboard was located on the far wall of the detective squad room, and on it had been outlined all the information available on this case. Pictures of the victims were posted on an adjacent bulletin board.

The three detectives, Eaton, Morgan, and Spencer, had walked off a pair of shoe soles looking for a witness. Not one could be found. Jim Eaton normally let his men handle their own cases, but this one was not normal. The more men on this case, the better. Every conceivable stone had been turned. Anybody with a parking ticket in the area on the days of the rapes was questioned. Everyone with a speeding ticket on those days was checked. The reasoning: if their man was nervous by what he did or was about to do, then he might make a mistake.

After three months of feverish activity, the detectives still had only a single piece of physical evidence. The blood type of the assailant was AB+, too common to be useful in itself. If a possible suspect was found, a genetic match could be run. Nothing had been found on the national database. The incriminating sample had been recovered from the first victim in the form of semen removed from her pubic hair.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from A Father's Anguishby R.W. Doyen Copyright © 2009 by R.W. Doyen. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1440170614
• ISBN 13: 9781440170614
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220