a vegetable, unable to talk properly, or even feed herself, he sometimes wondered if it would have been better for her to fall the other way. It would have been quicker, and more humane. She had been such a strong woman, to see her as she was in that last three months she lived, was heartbreaking.
The doctors told Laney to hold on to hope, that’s sometimes people came back from worse strokes than Joyce had suffered, but Laney doubted it. She dribbled constantly, and looked at him out of her one good eye and looked so pitifully sad. He knew there was no way back for her, and deep down, he hoped she wouldn’t come back permanently like that.
In need of constant care; she couldn’t wash, feed or clothe herself, she couldn’t even go to the toilet, and where was the dignity in that kind of life? A woman so strong and proud shouldn’t have to live a vegetative life. She, who had raised two beautiful sons and who had never missed one of their sports carnivals, or prize giving’s, as they had grown up. While Laney had been working shifts it was Joyce who took them to football training, was there to wipe their tears, and cheer their successes, it just wasn’t fair that she had been struck down so young, way too young.
Laney felt the tears in his eyes as he remembered how the kids rallied round, and spent as much time as they could with her, in her dying days. And then, how heartbroken they were at the funeral, how they wished they hadn’t moved away, but spent more time at home, while they could have, and enjoyed their mother more. But real life gets in the way, and after the funeral, they both went back to their lives, saying they would return as soon as they could, but since they buried Joyce he had seen James twice, and Rupert, named after Joyce’s paternal Grandfather, three times.
They used to call him often, make sure he was ok, and coping on his own, and of course he told them he was doing just fine. Secretly though, he wept most nights, alone in his bed that Joyce and he used to share. Tears that were born out of loss, boredom, and misery of what his life had become, once he lost his whole reason for being; Joyce. He didn’t want to be a burden to his children; they had their own lives to lead, so he pretended he was in a good head space, and they believed him, so they called less, and less, and even less as the months turned into years.
For a while he did come good, got back into fishing, but then came, what he called ‘The Chelsea Incident’, and that, really and truly summed up how shitty life had become, not just for Laney, but for everyone, in what football commentators loved to call ‘the modern era’.
Chelsea Graham lived with her parents on his street, and he had watched her grow from a spotty faced, pigtailed skinny girl, to a young and beautiful woman. Chelsea was always polite, always called them Mister and Mrs L, and always said it with a smile; she was a gem. When she finished school she knew what she wanted, and she used to speak to Laney all hours of the day and night to pump him for information about the police force. She wanted to study criminal psychology and work as a profiler, or with the prisoner parole board. She was drawn to crime like a moth to a flame, and how ironical it was that it had been crime that took her life away.
While she went to university to study for her double degree, she worked nights on the cash register at the local small, family owned supermarket. She was working on the night that three thugs burst in and demanded the money from the till. Being such a good person she tried to talk them out of it, show them they didn’t have to turn to a life of crime, that they had other options. One hit her across the face with something, thought to be part of a fence picket, while another slashed at her with a straight razor.
She opened the till, distraught, and terrified, and the three masked young men ran off into the night with the grand total of three hundred and twenty-six dollars. But Chelsea recognised them, two of them had tattoos and in the scuffle she had seen them and knew who they were. Because she knew two of the men it followed that she knew the other, who always hung around, and made up the terrible trio, as they were known.
They hung out with some other no hopers at Rosie’s Seven Eleven, where in a side room they had some old fashioned pin ball machines, and space invader type consul games. It was there the three of them were arrested, based on Chelsea’s statement, and right then, was where things went from bad to very bad, to even worse, for Chelsea.
Between them, their parents could afford a decent lawyer, who argued that Chelsea couldn’t possibly identify the third man just because he hung out with the other two. That simply wouldn’t fly once it got to trial, and the judge agreed and ordered his release. Next the lawyer presented affidavits from tattoo parlours within a ten kilometre radius that said the tattoos in question were not personal, but very, very common. It was estimated that in the preceding five years in excess of two hundred similar tattoos had been engraved on young men, all of similar build and height.
Without a confession, and as each gave the other an alibi, it came down to Chelsea’s word and the tattoos. The judge threw out the charges, and released the men, and once again, as far as Laney was concerned, it proved what a mockery the law had become.
A week later, Chelsea was walking home after work, as she had for months quite safely, when she was set upon by three men who dragged her into the bushes in a park. She was then repeatedly raped, before they strangled her, and left her naked, for her body to be found by a jogger the next morning.
The offenders wore condoms and had not left any DNA or any other evidence, and naturally, there were no witnesses. Everyone knew who had done it, of course, but the three men were supposedly in the Seven Eleven that night. Numerous witnesses, mainly their friends, saw them there, though Rosie herself couldn’t be sure they were there all night. Her murder eventually was put into the ‘Cold Case’ file and it was then, that Laney decided enough was enough; it was time to make his stand, and then go and be with Joyce.
So here he was, on his last shift, walking his old beat, heading toward Rosie’s to make amends for a beautiful life that had been taken too soon. He walked past the old butcher shop that had been closed down for a number of years; the supermarkets had made it too hard for him to stay open. On the other side of the road was the take away Chinese Restaurant, with mesh and steel bars over the windows, which gave testimony to how the neighbourhood had deteriorated.
Earlier in the afternoon Laney had put into the mail box two letters to Rupert and James, explaining his actions, and asking them not to judge him too harshly. He told them about Chelsea, sure that they too would remember her freckly smiley face as a child, before they left to go and build their own lives, and forge their futures.
Senior Sergeant Gordon ‘Laney’ Lane had no regrets; it had been a good life, no matter how you defined it. He had been a good husband, and father, and an honest cop who had given his whole life to doing good for other people, now it was time for it to end.
He looked through the window of Rosie’s Seven Eleven, and saw the three men leaning over a brightly coloured pin ball machine chiming out AC DC’s Highway to Hell, and Laney thought that was very appropriate. He took off his rain poncho, and straightened his hat. He drew his revolver from the holster and stepped through the door, to the sound of a buzzer announcing his arrival.
The sound of four gunshots rang out through the damp night air, and then two minutes later, a fifth.
It was after all, Laney’s last day.
The End
Stephen B King
Perth Australia
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