Durango – Installment 3

Durango

By

D.M. KURTZ

Installment 3: All That, & For What?

The picture might have been overdoing it, but he kept it on the desk as a reminder. Fuel for the fire, motivation to continue, etc, etc. The captain had urged him several times to take it down, that it was too dark to leave so openly on display, but Rodie disagreed. Without it, he knew he’d begin to forget, and then he’d start to slip and lose focus. Sara and Jasmine both deserved justice for their husband and daddy, respectively, and Rodie hadn’t stopped his search in the three months that had followed Don’s sudden murder. Though it had taken him only three weeks to track down the thug that had pulled the trigger, that had only been the beginning of a much larger scheme.

Besides, he needed the image to ensure that he never forgot his own failure. The brief hesitation that, had he not frozen, could have perhaps led to Don still going home to his family each day.

“This is garbage!” Rodie was saying. He was engrossed in a heated argument with Valenci, the captain of precinct three on Washington Boulevard. “Stokes and Harvey deserve to be deep fried, switch flipped, DEAD. You know it, I know it, and that sackless sap of a DA knows it too.”

“It is what it is, Rodie,” Valenci told him. His face was more than a little perturbed, and Rodie knew that he was pushing the line by speaking so openly, but he couldn’t help it; his blood was boiling.

He cursed.

“Three months!” He exclaimed. “I’ve built a bulletproof case against the two of them for what they did to Don and that poor girl. That with the drugs and other assaults and we’ve got enough for not one, not even two, but three consecutive life sentences, and now you’re telling me they get to walk away, just like that?”

“They’re small fish, Rodie,” Valenci replied levelly. “You knew as well as I that when you chose to hang that badge around your neck, it meant you’d do stuff you didn’t like for the sake of the greater good. This,” he added with an exaggerated wave of one arm, “IS that greater good. Taking down the boss will ruin the whole network of these nutbags, and that’s that. If letting a couple of lowlifes move on to the bigger and brighter will get it done, then that’s how it’s going to be. Besides,” he added as he moved to stare into the dark outside of the second-story window to the city lights beyond, “you and I both know it’ll be a matter of time before they get what’s comin’ to ’em. The life they live… It always catches up to ’em, in the end.”

“Not good enough.” Rodie shook his head. “See that?” He pointed to the crime scene photo he’d framed and placed on his desk, of Don’s cold, bloodied corpse. “A shotgun, Captain, that’s what they used. Dead before he even hit the ground, heck probably before he even heard the shot. Just like that,” he snapped his fingers, “he’s just gone, and Sara and Jazzy are alone in this crapfest of a world. Now, all they have is knowing that they men responsible for taking their husband and father away from them will fry.”

Valenci sighed deeply.

“Don’t you think I know that?” he asked softly. “What happened to Don… It haunts me too, you know. But it’s already done. Deal’s been cut.” He turned to face Rodie. “You have until the end of the week to wrap this up.”

Keep Reading!

Copyright © 2018 D.M. Kurtz

All rights reserved.

No part of this installment may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.