Statute of Limitations -- a Story

This is a story I once posted on Facebook, because not all my readers are friends on Facebook, and some of my Facebook friends may not have seen this.

Note: There are references to sexual assault/rape in this story. If this will cause PTSD, I understand if you don't read it.

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In a small town in the Missouri Ozarks, Chief Hayes took the call – a B & E at the high school. He met Superintendent Reeves at the back door, and they walked through the whole three floors and annex of the building. Hayes observed no signs of entry, no footprints, nothing missing. Signs of breaking –that was another story entirely. Almost every window down the glass corridor that led from the main building to the gymnasium was shattered. A cracked baseball bat lay discarded at the foot of the building, and one glass pane remained unbroken and with a smudge of blood across it.

“Can you get a print on that?”

“What the hell do you think we are – CSI?” Hayes found his voice reverting back to the local accent out of aggravation, the one where “hell” was pronounced in two syllables. He hated that accent, because he felt it made him sound like a stereotypical hick cop on TV.  “That’s likely as not an arm print, smeared,and no, I am NOT going to run a DNA check on a vandalism case.”

“Not breaking and entering?” The chief thought Reeves always sounded like he wore his tighty whities too tight.

“I see breaking. I don’t see entering. Breaking without entering is called ‘vandalism’, and that’s what we’ll investigate. That should feed your persecution complex well enough.” And Hayes left the superintendent gaping like a snagged bluegill.

As he wrote up the report in a room otherwise occupied only by the night dispatch, Chief Hayes pondered: Who would break the windows out at the high school? Teen vandals were always the obvious culprits – a few teens go out drinking and then break into the high school, where the security cameras record them kicking in lockers and raiding the cafeteria. But there was no entering, as he had pointed out, only breaking. Not business as usual.  What else wasn’t business as usual? He couldn’t think of anything except the 20th reunion of Mays Corner High School class of 1994 –

Long shot, he thought, but possible. It would be easy enough to find them, he thought. He was having breakfast with his high school class reunion tomorrow morning. And if one of them was stitched up, there was his culprit.

No one sported a gashed arm or hand the next morning at Mary’s Diner, but several sported hangovers. If they awarded degrees in heavy drinking, he knew some likely candidates sitting at the table. Most of the survivors of the 20th reunion were locals, though, and he highly doubted that paunchy, middle-aged locals were smashing windows at the high school.

“Where were you last night, Hayes?” A man with a ravaged joker’s face waved from the far end of the long table. The half-dozen or so survivors of the reunion watched avidly, probably looking for a fight. “Losing your virginity?”

“To your mom, Saunders.” Hayes often fought the urge to kill Brent Saunders, but the latter was doing a good enough job on his own, mixing booze with diabetes. “I’m on duty, so no remarks about my sex life. But please tell me you bashed some windows at the high school with a baseball bat so I can feel free to arrest you.”

“No, SIR,” Saunders shot back with a mock salute. “I was here at the party all night. Obviously.” Bleary laughter greeted his revelation.
“Who wasn’t at the party last night who should have been?”

Jane Trevino Goodin, halfway across the table, jumped in with her nasal voice. “Well, Dave Winston was doing emergency room duty. He doesn’t hang with us hill rats anyhow, ever since he got that MD. And I think I saw a car with an out-of-state plate at the Reszniks’ place. Maybe Crystal came home, but she wasn’t at the reunion.”

On a hunch, Hayes had watched Saunders rather than Jane, and at the mention of Crystal Resznik, he thought he saw a flash of almost suppressed fear. Interesting.

If Crystal Resznik was in town last night, would she have bashed in the high school windows? She was an odd one back in high school, Chief Hayes thought. Honor student, brilliant even, but a bit -- different, almost like what they called Asperger’s now. Nicest girl in the world, but – the only politically correct word he could come up with was different. He hadn't seen her in twenty years, because she'd gone off to college and didn't seem to want to be seen. Different for sure, but certainly nothing to inspire that look of fear on Saunders’ face.

He drove up to the Resznik’s house and noticed that there was no out-of-state car in the parking lot. Her father's car was in the drive,so he parked his ride and knocked on the door. Mr. Resznik answered the door in a sweatshirt and jeans with a polite but wary expression.

“You would be Todd Resznik? Mr. Resznik, I’m Police Chief Hayes. I expect you know this.”

“Is there anything wrong?” Polite but wary.

“Not that I know of, but I would like to ask you a few questions." He paused, more for effect than anything. Resznik did not invite him in, but that wasn't unusual. "I saw a car with an out-of-state license in your driveway last night. Was your daughter Crystal here to visit?"
"Yes." Resznik's chin tilted up slightly. "She left this morning."

"Was she here for the reunion?" Innocuous beginning, after which he would follow up with the standard whereabouts questions.
"She'd just as soon see you all burn in Hell first," Resznik responded, his voice suggesting he preferred an icy Hell."Starting with Winston and Saunders."

Resznik’s response caught him off guard. "What do you mean by that?"

"It's not my story to tell. You might ask Winston and Saunders." With that, Resznik closed the door, and Chief Hayes felt so disoriented that he momentarily forgot about vandalism, broken glass, or blood.

A different mystery was developing than the one he was trying to solve, Chief Hayes suspected, and it gave him a headache. Something was hinky here – Saunders looking scared about something to do with Crystal Resznik, who had been in town but had not gone to the reunion. Todd Resznik implying an unsettling connection between Crystal and Brent Saunders and Dave Winston. Winston was a respected doctor, although he always was a bit of a mommy’s boy, and Saunders was – well, disreputable. Never got caught doing anything illegal enough to lock him away, but that didn’t mean he didn’t do anything illegal. What was the connection?

It didn’t make sense. What bugged him most was that he fel tthe whole situation – situations? – were getting away from him. Obviously, though,Winston was the guy he needed to talk to, because he had been the ER doc on duty last night, and because his name kept coming up, sometimes with sinister implications. He might be able to take care of both mysteries with one visit.

Dave Winston lived in one of the few McMansions in Mays Corner. Chief Hayes felt intimidated walking up the front porch stairs and facing the front door, which had a knocker, for God’s sake. He comforted himself with the reminder that the house reportedly was as shoddy as it was ostentatious.

Dave’s wife, a gracefully aging former cheerleader, answered the door. “Chief Hayes!” she exclaimed in that high-pitched coo that sounded like she hadn’t quite made it past age 7. “What brings you here?”

“Is your husband in, Mrs. Winston?”

“He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?” In the distance, a dog barked.

“Not that I know of. “ A common reassurance, but in this case no more than the truth. “May I speak to him?”

“I’ll go get him. You come right in and make yourself comfortable.” A few minutes, and a feminine but very unchildlike “Ginger, DOWN!” later, and Dave Winston, clad in sweats and a t-shirt, stepped into the living room.  “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks.”  Hayes' first impression of Dr. Dave Winston was that the man didn’t look well. Twenty years before, Winston was a track star, tanned skin and sun highlights in his hair. Now he looked pale, mouth pinched. He looked thin – no, attenuated,stretched taut.  Hayes settled for a moment on the too-soft couch and gathered his thoughts. He knew that there were better ways to get information from doctors than asking direct questions whose answers would violate HIPPA. “We had some vandalism at the high school last night.”

“Really?” No tells, no clicks, just puzzlement. “You’re telling me this for a reason, right?”

“Maybe. Nearly every window in the first floor hallway of the high school had been busted in by a baseball bat. The last window wasn’t busted because they broke the bat. And it looks like they cut themselves up pretty good. Would you have stitched up any gash type wounds last night?"

Dr. Winston pulled himself upright, "I am not permitted to give you that information under HIPAA rules. If you have a specific suspect in mind -- "

"I can file the appropriate paperwork," Hayes finished. "Let me ask you a totally unrelated question. When was the last time you saw Crystal Resznik?"

The effect of the question was like shaking up a can of beer and then pulling the tab. "I hadn't seen her since high school, honest,and then she was in the ER last night and she stared me down and told me I owed her one --"
"Owed her for what?"

But Winston shook his head. "I can't talk about it. Christ, it was over twenty years ago. I didn't do anything. The statute of limitations --"
Hayes figured that if he pursued the line of questioning further, Winston was going to start talking lawyers. "Here's my card, and if you can get around to remembering what it was you did or didn’t do over twenty years ago that I might care about, give me a call."

As he pulled into Brent Saunders' driveway, he noticed two things: Saunders was sitting in the driveway sobbing, and his pet project, the maroon '74  Mustang Fastback, looked like it had been beaten with a baseball bat. All the windows were shattered and the body had broken out into fist-sized dents.

"Are you drunk, Saunders?" Hayes gave the man a hand up and set him on a nearby lawn chair, then pulled up another. "Does this have anything to do with Crystal Resznik?"

"Resznik? She's such a bitch ..." Saunders trailed off into his near stupor, and Hayes hoped the man wouldn't up and die on him.

"Why is Crystal Resznik a bitch?"

"She was so much smarter'n the rest of us. Nothing we did to her ever bothered her. You'd call her nasty names and she’d give you this look like you was a bug. I had to do sumthin' to get in good with the guys..."

"What. Did. You. Do." Chief Hayes bit out, fearing that the anger that was greying his vision would break out as violence.

"I got me a piece of Crystal after school freshman year,” Saunders chortled.

"Jesus CHRIST!" Hayes stood up abruptly, spilling his lawn chair backward. "Do you mean to tell me you sexually assaulted Crystal Resznik in high school? Why the HELL would you possibly think this was okay?"

"Because she thought she was too good. Because someone had to bring her down to our level," Saunders sniveled – there was no other word for it.

"Was Dave Winston involved?"

"Pretty boy? Hell, no. He walked in on it and ran out. I was always afraid he was gonna call the cops or sumthin' but he never did. Prolly afraid his parents’d worry about their reputation." Hayes began to understand, but in a way that made his stomach burn.

"You bastard. I don't think Crystal Resznik did enough damage. I think she should have taken that baseball bat to your balls."  Chief Hayes slammed his foot into the side of the battered Mustang and stalked off.

On his way back to the Resznik residence, Chief Hayes put together the pieces, and more. Brent Saunders raped Crystal Resznik in high school because she was "too good". The reputable, law-abiding Dave Winston didn't report the violent crime -- to protect his reputation? It was entirely possible that other classmates knew about it even back then but didn't report it -- why? Because somebody had to bring Crystal down to their level.Saunders became a hero, in other words, because he raped Crystal Resznik.

Hayes parked the cop car at a small neighborhood park, opened the door, and vomited on the curb. Wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, heglimpsed the heart of the bucolic town he had come back to and made his own. The comforting exterior, the rotten bleeding heart.
Why had he never heard the rumors? Why had he never seen this? He cast the net of his memory back twenty years, and saw himself standing somewhat separate from the others. He heard Saunders singing an unfunny ditty:"Marty Hayes sucks brass donkey dicks ... He bites their balls..." Hayes had ignored it.

That, of course, was the answer: He had ignored the rumors,ignored the hints, ignored the times when Saunders openly harassed Crystal Resznik and others (yes, there were others) between classes. Just as he had ignored anything that would disrupt his peace.
Too late for arrests; let him make his peace the only way he could.

He pulled up to the Resznik's battered little house at the bottom of the hill. Some called it a shack, but it was plenty safe against the elements. Mrs. Resznik had died years ago, when Crystal was in fifth grade; Mr.Resznik and his daughter were a tight family. He would have to proceed cautiously.

"Mr. Resznik, may I come in? I need to speak to you about Crystal." He flashed his badge, all official.
Todd Resznik glared as he opened the door and indicated  a seat at the kitchen table. "If you've come to accuse her of the vandalism at the high school, you have the wrong culprit." He held his arm up, where a two-inch gash sported stitches. "I think this is the smoking gun you've been looking for."

"Then why was Crystal at the emergency room last night?”

"You don't think I could drive with this, do you? If you check my truck, you'll find a rolled-up shirt with blood on it I've been meaning to throw away. I could barely drive home, and then Crystal drove me to the ER." Resznik’s words fit the remaining pieces together, but Hayes saw no reward for himself.

"But why the hell did you do it?" Hayes shouted.

"Do you know what it's like to have a daughter who tries to fit in, but she's just a little bit different? Not retarded, so she feels and understands every slight delivered to her, but just different? She finally has some guy paying attention to her, and she believes he wants to go out with her, but instead he uses her trust -- " Resznik clenched his fists and did not continue.

"Saunders," Hayes offered.

"Yeah, Saunders. And the rest of that school who knew about it, including Superintendant Reeves, who told me it was his word against hers and since she was a little different anyhow, she was unreliable."

"I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry." Hayes wasn’t sure he felt sorry. He wasn’t sure he felt anything.

"Damn it, I'm not the one who needs the apology. Where were you to apologize when she just wanted to fit in?" Hayes couldn’t remember.

"I could apologize now --" The words fell like lead in the small kitchen.

"It's too damned late. Arrest me or get out of here." Resznik crossed his arms. End of discussion.


Statute of limitations, Chief Hayes thought as he stood in front of the high school.  What's the use of justice if all that's needed to derail it was a statute of limitations? Too late to arrest Saunders. Too late to make amends.

This damn town is a caramel-covered rotten apple, he thought.Candy on the outside, worms on the inside. The worms wear the names of the seven sins -- Greed, Avarice, Envy. And I'm one of those damn worms --  only I'm wearing a uniform. My name is Sloth.

Hayes took his truncheon and busted out the last of the windows that had started the whole damn thing. "Hell," he said, pronouncing it as two syllables. "Now I can arrest me for it." He walked off, but part of him could never leave the scene of the crime.