Frontier Justice

It was a hot Thursday in August just after noon and I decided to start the laborious task of sorting and cleaning the garage. My wife, Natalie, and I were going to put the house up for sale after John Jr., our only child, went off to college the following month. Nat was inside our air conditioned house, I might add, doing the same thing, sorting and boxing stuff in our closets. It's amazing how much junk you can accumulate during twenty- four years of marriage. I had only three categories in mind as I weeded through the numerous boxes and cartons: Donation, Relocation and Disposal.

Since I didn't have the luxury of working in air conditioning I had left the double garage doors open in an attempt to get, at least, some ventilation. I was descending a ladder with a large, heavy box in my arms, thinking that I should have started this project in the cooler morning hours. Just as my left foot touched the cement floor I felt a tremendous pain in my head and saw a blinding flash of light behind my eyes.

I had no idea how long I had been unconscious but when I awoke I had an excruciating pain in my head and I felt like I was going to vomit. It took a moment for some semblance of cognitive thought to return but I did remember coming down the ladder and immediately thought that I must have misjudged my step and fallen backwards on to the cement floor and hit my head. The throbbing in my skull continued as I took stock of my surroundings. I wasn't in the garage. I was sitting in a chair in my bedroom. My first thought was "why am I sitting in a chair when I should be lying in bed."

At first, I thought I might be paralyzed because my arms and legs did not respond to my commands. I was sitting in a straight back, rickety, wooden chair that was normally situated in front of our desk top computer in the guest room. The chair had been placed near the foot of our king- sized bed. I tried to move again and then realized that I was not paralyzed, I was bound hand and foot to the chair.

The room was empty and undisturbed as my head began to clear and access the situation. My next thought was Natalie and I started to try to shake my arms free and move my legs. My ankles were securely fastened to the legs of the chair; my left arm was similarly duct taped to the arm and my right wrist was secured to the chair with a set of handcuffs. Despite some limited mobility of my right hand because of the handcuff chain I was stilll not able to dislodge the arm of the chair.

The only assumption that I could think of was that this was a home invasion and to hope that Natalie was similarly bound elsewhere as the thief or thieves looted the house for valuables. I stopped moving against my restraints so I could hear any noise that might offer a clue as to what was happening. My main concern was for my wife Nat is still an extremely attractive woman with a great figure and if the scum bags had the balls to invade a house in broad daylight they might not hesitate to take Natalie as an unexpected bonus.

I prayed that they had surprised her and she had not seen their faces. I knew all to well that low life's with this much audacity would not leave an eye witness. However, the possibility existed that she was bound and gagged in another room and the thieves had already departed. With that thought I started to again struggle against my bonds as I yelled Nat's name several times. I stopped moving to listen for some type of acknowledgement but heard nothing immediately. Then to my relief I heard footsteps on the stairs and Natalie's muffled voice. My relief quickly turned to despair when I heard an angry male voice growl:

"Shut the fuck up bitch and keep walking."

The door was opened roughly and Nat was shoved backwards through it, almost stumbling to the floor. She was bound with her wrists in front of her and I saw the tears and abject fear on her face. She just stood there staring at the opened door for a moment or two before the intruder walked in and shoved her again causing her to careen into the night stand, knocking a lamp to the floor.

********************************************

I met Natalie while I was still a patrol officer with the city police department. I had been on the job for almost ten years when she was transferred to my precinct. She was a new officer, one of the few female on the job at that time. One night after a 4PM to 12AM shift I ran into her at a bar the cops hung out in.

Kenny's bar was owned and mostly operated by Kenny himself who was a retired police officer. I had not yet been partnered with Natalie but that would be inevitable since she was new in the precinct she would have to double up in each and every patrol sector in order to get 'a lay of the land'. I introduced myself, we talked, had a few beers and generally hit it off. All of the guys in my squad were either married or in committed relationships so, fortunately for me, I had no competition.

The details of our courtship are unimportant. Suffice it to say It was short and hot and we've been married for twenty- four years. John Junior (Johnny) is our only child. We bought the house we live in now just after Johnny was born.

Shortly after our son was born I made detective and worked a steady 5PM to 1AM shift. Natalie was shortly thereafter assigned to around the clock shifts, 8 to 4; 4 to 12 and 12 to 8. Nat was forty- two when she got her twenty years of service in and opted to retire. The job had gotten more dangerous and I was glad to have her off the streets. I had planned to work a few more years before retiring but when Johnny got a full ride to Penn State we decided that the annual savings in tuition would allow me to pack it in and for us to move to a warmer climate.

********************************

Natalie remained sitting on the floor as I yelled: "what the fuck do you want, you mother fucker?"

He had positioned himself between me and the bed and holding a knife to my throat he grinned an evil smile that showed several missing teeth. Leaning close to my face he laughed and in a menacing low voice said:

"You got that right shit head. I'm a mother fucker and I'm gonna be one again real soon."

"I don't know what your beef is Bud but if it's with me, leave my wife out of it.

He must have seen Nat struggling to stand out of the corner of his eye because he wheeled around and growled:

Sit on the bed cunt and if you move, even a little, I'll cut his throat."

For emphasis, he pushed the knife a little harder under my chin forcing my head back. Nat sat quietly on the edge of our bed looking terrified. I knew that the only ploy I had now was to make him talk and keep him talking so I asked:

"Why are you doing this? I don't know you and I'm sure my wife doesn't know you. Why don't you take what you want and get out. Leave us alone and I'll forget you were here."

"Oh yeah, he said sarcastically. Then leering towards Natalie he continued: I'm gonna take what I want, all right. You can bet your ass on that and you can bet her sweet ass on it too. I'll tell you why I'm here. I'm here because for the last fourteen years seeing you again was about all I thought about. Fourteen years behind bars, caged like an animal. Fourteen years during which I got beaten nearly to death. Fourteen years of having to be somebody's bitch in order to survive. Fourteen years of cockroaches and shitty food. Fourteen years without pussy."

Still pushing the knife into my throat, he turned and looking at my wife, yelled:

"Take you clothes off cunt and do it quick."

When Natalie hesitated, her terrified eyes darting from me to him, he screamed:

"Fuckin now, bitch, as he pushed the blade in under my chin hard enough to draw blood which I could feel running down my neck. He eased the pressure off the blade slightly but my head was still so far back that I could not see Natalie and it was difficult to talk without further impaling myself but I managed to ask:

"Why her?" Obviously you and I must have a history but she didn't do anything to you."

"She was a cop, wasn't she? All cops suck and that's exactly what she's gonna be doing real soon." As an afterthought he added, tauntingly: "Should I turn your chair around? That way you don't have to watch." Then he laughed and answered his own question. "Nah! That would be too easy, you watching us is part of the payback." Looking at Nat who had only unbuttoned a few buttons on her blouse, he hissed: "you got one minute to get the rest of your shit off or I'll cut off one of his ears."

My wife removed the rest of her clothes and stood shame faced staring at the floor.

*******************************

There was something familiar about him but I couldn't place it. He was short, maybe 5'6", one hundred forty pounds. He had the gaunt face of a meth head and his grey hair was mostly receding in the front and when he turned his head he had a bald pate. He didn't have a beard but rather a four or five day growth of stubble. Both of his arms were covered with tattoos and the knuckles on one hand was tattooed with" H A T E" and the other: C O P S."

Then I saw it and I remembered. There was a tat on his left upper arm depicting a skull with a red and black snake running through the oral cavity, out of the nostril and back through an eye socket.

"Mongrel Meyers", I spat out, with disgust laced in the words.

He smiled like a Cheshire Cat and winked at me but said nothing.

His name was actually Sidney but his bike moniker was Mongrel. He belonged to an outlaw biker gang called, Tombstone. When I had arrested him fifteen years ago he had long hair and a full beard which is probably why I didn't recognize him at first. I guess due to his small stature and the need to prove himself to his much larger compatriots he earned the reputation as the cruelest and craziest of the bunch. The skull was the gang's logo and each one of them had it emblazoned somewhere on their arms.

All of the details of the case came back in a rush. It was on the south- east side of town in an area rapidly being gentrified from the slum housing and boarded up stores that it had slowly become over several decades. The row housing was either being demolished or being renovated into co-ops or condos. Some of the stores had already been renovated and reopened to cater to the ever increasing young professionals who could not afford to live on the pricy north side of town. A Starbucks had been erected on one of the empty lots Another older brick building had been renovated and was opened as an Ale and Chop house. There was even a rumor that the county was considering opening up a branch library in order to help speed the gentrification and lure businesses into the area.

There were still remnants of its seedier days, however, one of which was a biker bar called, "the Cave,". The Cave was a hang -out for druggies, hookers and a rapidly diminishing chapter of the "Hells Angels." A young couple, Joe and Mary Ellen Connity, had purchased the failing business along with the building with the intention of systematically renovating it while it remained opened in order to generate some income. Their plan was to turn in to a trendy cafe to cater to the lunch crowd that would draw people from the existing businesses as well as the businesses that were steadily moving into the area.

To that end Joe had erected a tarp from floor to ceiling in order to separate the bar from the rear dining area so that he could do the necessary demolition and reconstruction required without saw dust getting into the bar. Mary Ellen was a stay at home mom to their eighteen- month old son, so Joe had retained the previous barmaid, Kelly, to attend to the limited bar patrons during the day while he worked in the back renovating the future dining area and the long neglected kitchen.

The biker patronage had been slipping away slowly, partly due to Joe's "take no bullshit attitude" with them and partly due to the gentrification. Joe was an ex-marine, 6'2", 240 pounds and the local low- life's soon learned, the hard way, that he didn't take any shit. Unfortunately, what Joe didn't know was that Kelly was the girlfriend of one the Hell's Angels that occasionally still came into the bar, mostly because Kelly was still there.

The bar didn't open until 10AM and Joe had been working in the back since eight in the morning, ripping off smoke stained panel walls; removing tarnished and broken lighting fixtures. When he realized that it was after eleven and Kelly had not yet opened the bar he called her cell phone but it went right to voice mail. He was annoyed to say the least. He had a time table in his head for the grand reopening and he hated having to stop while he was on a roll to tend the bar for the few customers who still came in. Besides, he was in his dirty work clothes and despite the sparsity of patrons he did not want to present such a shabby image, much less loose valuable time on his remodeling efforts.

Reluctantly he called his wife, explaining the situation and asked if she could drop their son at her mom's and fill in at the bar. Mary Ellen had filled in for Kelly a few times when Kelly had needed time off to tend to personal matters. His wife arrived just before eleven and after unlocking the front door went in the back to tell Joe she was there and would be tending the bar.

It was about three o'clock that afternoon when Mongrel and two of his buddies came in. There were two regular old timers sitting at the bar drinking their beers and an occasional shot of whiskey.

Mongrel's pals were large and intimidating guys with full beards and numerous tattoos, including their necks and faces. Like most of their ilk they were more fat than muscle but their imposing size combined with their surly loud attitude had the desired affect and the old timers finished their drinks and left.

Shortly thereafter, one of the bikers headed towards the men's room which was located just past the end of the bar and when Mary Ellen was distracted with the drink orders he slipped behind the bar, grabbed her from behind and clamped his large hand over her mouth. Mongrel joined him as Mary Ellen struggled fruitlessly, unable to scream. He fished around in her pockets and removed the front door key from her jeans. He then locked the front door and replaced the "closed' sign in the window.

Joe was working with a skill saw and never heard or saw whoever hit him from behind. When he came to he was bound hand and foot, lying on the kitchen floor in a puddle of his own blood. His assailant had tied his arms behind him and around a cast iron pipe preventing any movement. Despite his pain all he could think of was his wife and what might have happened to her. He was scared to death for her because he realized that if she weren't in trouble she would have come back to check on him. He screamed her name over and over but there was no response. He desperately tried to free himself from his restraints, but to no avail.

At three thirty seven, a patrol car operated by a rookie cop noticed the three "Tombstone" bikes parked in front of the bar. He was a smart kid and knew that outlaws did not patronize one another's hang outs and this was a Hell's Angels joint, or at least had been. He noted the plate numbers and time of day in his memo book and was about to exit his vehicle to take a closer look when he got a call to respond to a domestic dispute and had to abandon his quest.

When Mongrel and his sick buddies left the bar Mary Ellen Connity was lying naked on the blood soaked pool table. She had been raped, sodomized and her throat had been slit. When the perps left they didn't bother to lock the door and around four twenty a customer came in and upon seeing the carnage called the police. The unit that got the call was the same young officer who had less than an hour before had been thwarted from his investigation by the domestic violence call.

A patrol supervisor and a detective unit was dispatched. I was in the detective unit and when I arrived the uniformed cops were just starting to preserve the crime scene. The patrol sergeant advised me that when they entered the premises, before they could do anything, they heard screaming from the back of the bar. They cautiously went to the rear and found a man bound to a sink pipe. He was screaming Mary Ellen, Mary Ellen,- - - - where's my wife?" Despite the size of the officers they could not restrain him when he bolted to the front. Upon seeing his wife, he fell to the floor and began to vomit.

They had him sitting in an old booth behind the tarp when I sat across from him. This was a cop's worst nightmare, having to listen to the gut wrenching sobs and still having to ask questions that would only exacerbate his grief. It didn't take long to realize he couldn't be of much help in identifying the killers. The only thing useful I got from him was that the regular bar tender, a girl named Kelly Porta, had been scheduled to work but she neither showed up or called.

What later became known, through investigation, was that a week or so before Mary Ann's murder one of Tombstone's women was cornered one night in a parking lot and was beaten and raped by two Hell's Angels for some unknown slight to the club. Unfortunately, gangs don't report things to the police, they have their own form of vigilante justice, so there were no police records regarding the incident, it was just the word on the street.

So, Mary Ellen Connity was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The butchers had assumed that she was Kelly Porta and they were looking for revenge. The question was did Kelly know she was on their hit list and was that the reason she didn't show up for work. We would never know because Kelly Porta fell off the radar.

Due to the young officer's diligence Mongrel and his buddies were apprehended the same day. The DNA evidence was overwhelming and it was determined that although all three had raped her, Mongrel was the one who slit her throat. After trial, all three got twenty five to life and how this piece of shit got out in fourteen, I have no idea.

**********************************

I was scared to death, mostly for my wife and even though bound, my hands were trembling. I knew, as I'm sure Natalie knew, this murdering bastard was not going to leave any witnesses. I had seen first- hand what kind of animalistic savagery he was capable of.

I also knew that I needed time, time and a miracle. He had pushed Nat into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and he was squeezing both of her breasts when I yelled:

"What are looking for payback for? For killing and raping an innocent young wife and mother?

For leaving an infant child without his mom? For causing a father to have nightmares for the rest of his life? What? What did you think, that you shouldn't be punished for causing such destruction on innocent people? Pay back for what, Sidney?

He seemed to pause for an instant but I wasn't sure if it was because of my tirade or my use of his real name, which he despised.

"Fuck you, he hissed, you fucking knew it was a mistake."

Sarcastically, I replied: "So what was the judge supposed to do, cut you loose because you butchered the wrong woman?"

He stepped around the bed and slapped me hard across the face. So hard that I couldn't imagine where the puny little meth head had got his strength.

Without another word he walked back to Natalie who was sitting naked and defeated on the bed and said:

"What do you cops say? Assume the position?"

He grabbed her by the hair and pulling her off the bed, forced her to her knees in front of him. Nat tried to slide away but he pulled her hair again and screamed:

"You look straight ahead bitch and don't even think about closing your eyes, I want you looking at me while your sucking my cock."

He undid his fly and pulled out his semi erect penis and continued in a low menacing voice"