Vengeance is Mine

No one who knew him believed he could be involved in those crimes. Not rape, he was too lovely a person to rape anyone. The tie between the two men was a tenuous, thin thread. They appeared to have frequented the same bar during the nights of the rapes and murders. But no one would even admit to seeing them sitting together.

Even the detectives doubted her identification, and I had other plans for Boss Man. The meeting between him and I was short and sweet. I apologized for the miss identification, dismissed the charges and explained to the girl she was mistaken that he had an ironclad alibi. She reluctantly accepted my explanation, and I convicted the other man.

The judge passed a sentence of life with the possibility of parole.

Therefore, Boss Man went on with his life, confident in his faith that, once again, he had gotten away with rape and murder.

As an aggressive prosecutor, I cultivated relationships with criminals over the years. Some were violent, malicious men I used to execute vengeance when justice was impossible. On this occasion, I enlisted such a man. Even among his friends, he was called a mad dog. Therefore, we shall call him that.

A year passed, and the bastard never spotted the man watching him. In June 1993, your mother turned twelve. I planned a special day just for her, followed by a special day just for me. Her father, your grandfather, had taken his departure several years before for parts unknown, leaving us alone with just ourselves to depend on.

So, I worked hard to make your mother's life the best possible, though you must ask her how well I succeeded in my efforts.

A few days before your mother's birthday, I had a meeting with Mad Dog. We discussed my plan the 'what and where' of it all. Several years before I saved Mad Dog from another prison sentence, I had him flip on his employers for a free ride.

An enforcer with a nasty side habit that got him into trouble from time to time. He violently raped women or men for pleasure. Usually, I would have sent him away for a long time, but I saw him as a means for vengeance on rapists that we couldn't send up the river, as the saying goes.

As for Mad Dog, well, he enjoyed working for me.

The birthday party went without a hitch, and then your mother was off on a group trip to Hawaii with some of her friends from school and their parents. I begged off the trip. We were quite busy still dealing with the fallout from the Rodney King issues.

As for me, I had cases in progress and a specific matter of righteousness indignation that needed attention. It was June, the same day my life changed twenty-five years before, and it was a day of reckoning.

The beach had changed little in twenty-five years — I had, but not the beach. It had been so long coming, and I had planned so well. They diverted the highway around this area, construction from either end of a long stretch toward this place. They would meet here in a few weeks. The traffic detoured east, so the cars were nowhere near here. I came into the location via boat, beaching her next to the small vessel Mad Dog had run aground.

Mad Dog was waiting for me on the beach, and he helped me out of the boat. As we walked up to the rocks, he talked in an excited rush.

"I was waiting for you, MS Dyer. Beat him a little, but not bad, and I ain't fucked him yet. God, I'm ready to, though. I want to smash that ass," he said.

"Good," I said in a soft, low voice.

There he was, an old man, the Boss Man. He whimpered, lying naked on the sand. Handcuffed and shackled, he looked like dead meat to me. I wore big steel-toed boots. I sauntered up to him and kicked him several times in the ribs. The snaps were loud and pleasing but not as enjoyable as his screams.

"Please, please stop," he begged like my brother.

"Fuck his face," I told Mad Dog.

But Mad Dog didn't stop at his mouth. And me, well, I enjoyed the man's pain, shame, and suffering perhaps as much as he once enjoyed mine.

After he finished with the old Boss Man begging and pleading for mercy. After the fifth ass fucking, I told Mad Dog to wait at the boats. I made Boss Man stay on his hands and knees and asked if he remembered me?

"You're the DA woman from last year," he said.

"Before that," I said.

"Did I meet you at the bar?"

He still didn't understand.

"No, we met here twenty-five years ago. You raped me and had my brother raped and murdered," I said. "Don't you remember me? I'm Shortcake, the 'little girl.' That's what you called me. You destroyed me on that sultry June night. Right here on this sand."

The look on his face as the memories flooded him was a combination of awe, wonder, and fear.

"That little girl. Jonesy told me I should've killed."

"Jonesy tried to tell me he told you that but died before he got it all out."

"You were the one who... killed Jonesy?"

He ducked his head to the sand.

"Yeah, you remember me, don't you? I remember you. Every fucking night I remember you. Every time I fucked a man, I saw your face." I reached behind my back and pulled the .45 automatic out of my waistband. Kneeling behind him, I shoved the barrel against his temple.

"Please stop, don't do it," he begged. He begged me not to pull the trigger.

"I'm so close, baby. Maybe if you say pretty, please with sugar on top, I won't kill you," I said as I squeezed the trigger.

The gun barked out, blood and brains around the weapon over my hand and arm, some splattered over my chest.

Mad Dog howled in the distance, amused by the show I put on for him.

I returned to my boat, depositing the gun on the stern as I waded beyond it until the water was up to my chin. There wasn't much of a surf that day, but the water covered me, washing his disgusting, diseased blood and brains from my body out of my clothes. I stayed there for a long time, letting the water cleanse me. I waded back, and Mad Dog helped me into my boat. I then retrieved the gun from the stern.

"Push me off, would you, sweetie?"

As he did, I pushed the start button. The engines barked like the motorcycles had years before, and the boat bobbed up and down on the gentle waves.

"Did you enjoy that, ma'am?" Mad Dog questioned me. He grinned like some lunatic. I knew this was something he could hold over my head.

"Yeah," I answered. "Vengeance is mine, not God's," I said.

Pointing my gun at his head. Squeezing the trigger, I watched the hole appear in the front of his head as the gun barked and kicked up. The back of his head exploded, spraying blood, bits of bone, and brain over the water and sand behind him. Mad Dog fell backward on the beach, face up, as dead as the Boss Man.

Waves rolled in and out, washing over his body as he lay on the soaked sand, going nowhere. I backed away from the beach, turned the boat around, and sped into the ocean.

Dropping the gun in the water several miles off the coast, I fished until sunset. After darkness covered me, I made my way back to the Marina. They did not find the bodies for four days. A rainstorm followed by a high tide washed all evidence away from the beach. It's still an open case in the CBI's files.

I'm sixty-five years old, and I have no remorse for anything I have done in my life.

****

"And in my sixty-five years, I have imprisoned over eight hundred men and women for rape or murder. Thirty-three served life sentences for murder, and twenty-five of them went to death row. Not that the state ever executed any of them. And sent a host of men and women away for other crimes."

She stared into the young woman's eyes, "When the law couldn't get them, I did. I killed five men myself as vengeance and had sixteen others executed, and I have not one ounce of remorse for anything I have done. I have ..." she paused, "enjoyed the killings."

The woman looked at her granddaughter and lifted an index finger to her lips. "Shhh, this is between you and me. Remember, most men aren't worth the skin hanging on their bones."

"Yes, ma'am," she said, "where did Grandpa go?"

"Grandpa was never a particularly observant man nor very careful. The last time he went fishing for a shark, and she ate him," she said with a smile and a wink. "Do you want to follow in my footsteps, child?"

"Yes," she said.

"Then, my dear girl, you have much to learn."

"No time like the present to get started," she said.