A Dark and Stormy Night

"Failing to get a confession or a signature after 20.5 hours. Mr. and Mrs. Palmer arrive with a lawyer to force the Police to release their son. Detective Spalding realizes that he'll have to release Kevin Palmer. What's the first thing that he does?"

"Calls his brother, Here Your Honor on flash drive recording of a 7:34pm cell phone call from Benjamin Spalding to his brother David Spalding. Telling David to get an unmarked gun to Jolene and have her get to the Police Station and she'll have her shot at her son's killer. A distraught mother will get a hell of a lot lighter sentence than either of them would. But she had to wait until they let him go before she tries shooting him."

"This all started with a 911 call at 9:47pm the day before, that draws Medical and Police responder's to a field where a girl's been stabbed and possibly dying. Her attacker was killed in the fight to save the girl and her rescuer. By 10:17pm the Spalding's have Kevin David Palmer; tried, convicted, sentenced, sent to prison, only to be murdered in that prison. Seventeen minutes, start to finish, convicted and execution planned. 1+1=2, James Paul Lane aka Jimmy Hansen is killed, his killer will die. No reasons, no laws, nothing considered. I thin...k..."

I was sitting, listening to Mr. Chopin rip Detective Spalding a new one. When his cell phone started vibrating and shaking like a Mexican jumping bean on the table top. We'd talked about it before, because he was expecting this call. So I banged my knuckles on the table hard and he stopped in mid word.

"Your Honor, I have an incoming call that is imperative to this Inquest. I know that it's 'highly irregular' to allow an incoming cell phone call, but I really need to take this."

Then he looked at me and motioned for me to answer the call and tell them to wait for a minute.

"Prosecutor Parks?"

"No objections. In fact Your Honor if I might have the court's indulgence for some time. I'd like to address the court, if you please."

"Proceed Prosecutor Parks."

"That title is not what my supervisor at the Department of Justice indicated my duties here were to be. This is not a trial, even if Mr. Palmer came in here with the proverbial 'smoking gun in hand and confessed. The most that could legally happen here today would be for us to ask that he be arrested by Police and remanded over for trial. Or we could release him and notify him that a trial would be called. The last option is his release without prejudice."

"This inquest was presented to me as a fact finding assignment. I've tried to do that. The Department Of Justice was asked to investigate allegations by a Police Detective that a murder was being overlooked. So this Inquest was set up by the Department. That Detective was Detective Spalding. In listening to the evidence presented here today. I find that to not be the case, in fact the case might be of a Police Detective using the power of his position to have the Department of Justice act as his personal avenger."

"That is a gross misuse of the Department of Justice and of his position as a Police Detective. With the evidence presented here today I have serious doubts as to why he even tried. In my view as the representative of the Department of Justice this young man should have never had to even go to the Police Station. A good senior officer on site would've sent him home for a shower and a good night's sleep. Then asked if he'd come to the station tomorrow with his parents, and a lawyer if they so chose, to give a statement."

"As the legal Representative of the Department of Justice in this matter of the Inquest into the conduct of Kevin David Palmer be ceased and ruled to be without reason or merit."

"As the presiding Judge in this matter, I so rule. This Inquest is closed."

"Wait a minute please Your Honor, I'd like to approach the bench to request a favor."

"Permission granted come ahead Mr. Chopin."

I could see all three of them with their heads together. It looked like Mr. Chopin was doing most of the talking. Judge and Mr. Parks seemed shocked for a couple of minutes. But soon all heads were nodding and smiles all around. Then Mr. Chopin went up to Curtis and his camera crew and talked to them, heads nodding again and they started moving the camera to the center aisle looking at the Judges bench. When everything was ready Mr. Chopin got in front of the camera.

"Good afternoon everyone, to those of you here in the court room and those at home, thanks for your attention. For almost a year now this town, valley, and county have been under an investigation by a joint task force of combined; FBI, DEA, ATF, and NSA Officers and agents. This task force was charged with investigating suspected violations of Federal RICCO statutes. Statutes against organized crime and racketeering."

"For the period of almost a decade the FBI has suspected an organized group operating a clearing house for the shipment and dispersal of several types of illegal goods and materials. Those materials include several types of drug traffic, shipment of both illegal and stolen weapons and guns. Some of that ended up in Middle Eastern conflicts and terrorist activities. Also they provided transportation in human trafficking. In short they were the UPS of the criminal organizations in this area of the world. That group appeared to be operating in and around this immediate area."

Looking away from Mr. Chopin for a few seconds. Brought my eyes onto Detective Spalding. He had looked so big in interrogation room 3, now a small and beaten man watching as the story of his life fell into a thousand pieces. I suppose that part of his resignation had to do with the large agent parked at his elbow.

"It has only been in the last year that the FBI and others of the task force have been able to get agents inside both the organization and the Police Department. In years past it was determined that the Police had to be helping the group. Several agents were lost before it was realized that the Police had to be notifying the group of those brave agents, and we honor their memory."

"Getting an agent inside the Police Department made a lot of difference and opened up a lot of opportunities, getting two agents inside the group itself opened the whole case up. As a result today has this task force entering its final phase."

"At present 73 individuals have been placed under arrest. 8 have died resisting that arrest, among those killed of concern in today's inquest are Papa Spalding and Officer David Spalding. One DEA agent has been killed in the line of duty. Principal Lane has been arrested too, for his part in the group's activities."

"The task force commander has tasked me with a special task. Mr. Parks had it right when he stated that this whole affair and Inquest over Kevin Palmer should never have happen. We could never have gotten people onto that field while Kevin and the EMT's and Police were there. But other parts of this ordeal that Kevin went through could have been stopped."

"Agents tried but couldn't find Jolene that night. They did find Edward Hansen up a tree with a high power rifle watching the Palmer home. Fortunately he was taken without a struggle."

"But Task Force Commander Special Agent Gerald Talon realized right away just how much and how quickly this incident overcame caution and common sense within the group of criminals. It quickly became a very emotional issue, and the Commander realized that we could capitalize on that. At that time I was brought in to help Kevin and his parents control the attempts that the Spalding's were making through the court and justice system. Throughout today's Inquest I've been able to present recording of a lot of calls. Those calls were all gathered as part of the task forces' information gathering system and all done through Federal warrants.

"Commander Talon has estimated that because of letting this farce of an Inquest continue he's arrested 17 more criminal here in this county and another 12 outside. Some of the ones from outside were a very big bonus and very high up in several criminal organizations."

"But my task from Commander Talon today is to you Kevin, and its two fold. The first is a very formal and public apology to you for any trauma that you've gone through because of his decision to allow this inquest and all that led up to it to continue. He very sincerely wishes that you'd never have had to go through that. BUT he also said that even though you were under almost constant surveillance, you conducted yourself with nothing but honor, intelligence, and compassion."

"Through that constant surveillance he knows that your greatest worry now is your schooling, graduation, university and the scholarship that you have earned there. He wants me to reassure you that it's being worked on by none other than the Governor. Furthermore your humble servant myself will stay and help you through those many civil suit we filed."

So ended the punishment phase of my good deed. Would I do it all over again? You bet your damn sweet bippy I would, in a half a heartbeat I'd be running.

It's a dark and stormy night, it's not raining yet. But it will be, I can smell it, feel it on my skin. Feel the static charge of it in the air. I'm here again at farmer Ted's ten acre field, by the pond, and standing on the spot where it all went down five years ago.

I came here after I got back in town, came to this spot. I needed to see if I'd gotten rid of all my demons from that night. Mr. Chopin had called it, he said that I'd have some nightmares, I did. Dreams of rolling or lying in blood trying to move, trying to help, but I can't. Jerking awake to the taste of vomit in my mouth and the crunch of Jimmy's face on my knee, the smell of shit, piss, and blood in my nose.

It's just a spot in the grass on a shitty night now. No blood in the grass to mark the spot, no tire tracks through the grass, no torn paper from the EMT's. Just a shitty night, quiet grass, and the smell of rain, but no demons.

But I'll be out of it soon, getting together with a bunch of my buds. I'm going to a party and drink some beer, and hopefully not get too shit faced. Probably a couple of strippers will drop by. That's what usually happens at a bachelor party, yeah it's mine.

I'm marrying Kelly Ann Franks tomorrow.