JUSTICE

Chapter 3

The 8th of January 1980. It had been over a week since the murder of Winchester Hill, but with no headways being made the trail had started to go cold. The media hadn't really expressed much of an interest in this case. The brothers had become repetitive and no one really paid much attention to the same news dragging on and on. So the channels had moved on to newer things.

The only place where it still existed was in our collective minds. The four of us, we were not yet ready to just forget and move on. And that night we were the only ones present in the station.

Timmy was turning over the case files on the brothers. Davey and Hodgeson sat facing each other on the table, deep in a game of cards. Meanwhile I sat glued to the telly watching one of those crappy slasher movies that get broadcasted at this time of the night, 11:00 pm.

It was proving to be a bore and my attention was constantly drifting away.

That was when I heard the sound of tires screeching to a halt outside. Someone had arrived. I looked up at the door and so did Timmy.

First came the sound of the approaching footsteps, steps that were mildly hurried, accompanied by the breathing of someone who had just been through a highly strenuous work.

A tall fellow materialised, dressed casually in a loose fitting t-shirt, all crumpled up and with dirt marks on it. The hair was all messy, as he entered in with a slow strut, his hands raised above his head.

'I surrender, I surrender,' he spoke as he fell on his knees.

'Well who are you?'

Davey had already arrived near the man with his gun pointed out.

'It's me Jack Hill.'

'Jack who?'

The man looked up, a weird smile on his face.

'Jack Hill, the elder of the brothers.'

Hodgeson was the only one in the room along with Jack, or so it was made to seem like. A single overhead bulb glowed casting light enough for only the both of them.

I sat in the shadows looking closely at the man claiming himself to be a brother.

'What proof would you provide to back your claim?' Davey had asked him when he had told who he really was.

'Well officer, feel free to disprove my claims.'

'We could lock you up as a common miscreant.'

'Not after you've heard my side of the story,' he smiled as he went on to recite from memory the names of all the cases the brothers had been registered for, some known, some unknown, some in public domain, others only in police files.

'Well Mr. Hill do you realize you could be put to death if proved to be a brother.'

'Now officer you wouldn't want to lose a goldmine of information, would you now?'

'Seems like you have thought this out real thorough, eh?'

And now me, Hodgeson and Hill we sat in an outhouse, a place designed especially for criminals whose arrests couldn't be made public. Harvey Richardson had set it up at the time of the gangwars when a lot of the arrests had to be kept secret, and at any given time only seven officers had the privilege of knowing of the existence of this outhouse, when one died or retired the information would be passed on to some other officer.

We couldn't let the news of this arrest leak into the media. All the lost interest in the brothers would be reignited, and the people, they would be braying for blood.