Season of the Vigilante (David Joseph Mysteries Book 3)

Book summary

In Season of the Vigilante, psychologist David Joseph assists the police as a surge of violent crimes against women shakes the nation. As justice falters, a secret group of survivors and their families emerges, seeking retribution on their own terms. But their true purpose remains unclear, raising unsettling questions.

Excerpt from Season of the Vigilante (David Joseph Mysteries Book 3)

The Present - Pratap

If anyone was observing the man and woman walking down the street of the small town in the northern part of India, they would not have realised that the two were together. The woman was almost five feet behind the man and both were occasionally stopping and looking into the windows of shops; they appeared to be tourists. The woman was dressed in a neat pantsuit and her hands were gloved, while the man was casually dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and carrying a backpack. The woman had an ornate-looking sling bag slung from her shoulder which was decorated with small spikes and decorative decals. But the two were actually together, and when they occasionally stopped to window shop they were conversing in low tones without appearing to do so. While they appeared to be looking all around at everything as tourists are wont to do, they were actually following one man who was walking along the pavement on the opposite side of the road. The man and woman team had booked into a local hotel more than a week before this day. They had booked in separately, and as far as the hotel staff was aware, they were just tourists seeing the sights of north India as it was quite obvious from their speech that they were from the south. The two had been stalking this particular man, whose name was Pratap, for nearly four days now, and they had established that, regularly at this time of the day, he would be walking down this road to go to a bar to meet his friend Rajnath. Their course of action had been planned long before they had arrived in this town, and they had been following him for days only to select the right opportune moment and place to act. Today they had chosen that moment and place.

As they left the busy shopping area, the crowds thinned out and the man left the woman behind, started walking faster and drew far ahead of the man they were following. Then suddenly, as if on cue, they both crossed the road, and while the woman remained close behind their quarry, the man turned around and began walking rapidly towards them. Nearing their quarry, the man did not slow down his pace but appeared to be looking for something across the road. To anyone who might have been watching, it appeared that the man accidentally slammed into the quarry, but as he did so he managed to give him a strong push, causing the quarry to fall backwards into the woman who was following close behind. But no one would have seen the rapid movements of the woman as she appeared to clutch at the quarry to keep from falling and then actually fell down. Her right hand had come out of the sling bag holding a small hypodermic syringe in the palm of her hand, which she jabbed into the quarry’s right buttock and pushed the plunger. In a flash, the needle was withdrawn and capped with a small rubber that she held in her left hand and then dropped into her bag.

The man who had slammed into the quarry was very apologetic, “I’m so sorry, so sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going, are you hurt?” Before the quarry could say anything, the woman shouted at him, “What do you mean by falling on me like that? I think I’ve hurt my leg!” The quarry looked from one to the other as he rubbed the site of the injection. “I did not do anything!” he snarled. “This idiot walked right into me and I fell back on you.” He continued to rub himself and said, “Something pricked me!” The man had helped the woman up and was apologising to her as well. She looked at the quarry and shrugged, “Must have been my bag.” She showed the spikes and decals on the bag and then dusting herself off she walked away. The man again apologised to the quarry and they parted ways. Dismissing the incident from his mind, the quarry continued on his way but soon found that he had difficulty in walking and even breathing. By the time he reached the restaurant he was staggering and gasping for breath. His friend saw him staggering and rushed to him, but before he could reach him, Pratap dropped to the ground like a stone. His friend bent down and tried to lift him up. “Hey!” he cried. “Are you drunk? What happened, Pratap?” But Pratap did not answer and would never answer again. His friend, Rajnath, suddenly realised that something was very wrong and shouted out for help. They rushed him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Cause of death was given as sudden cardiac arrest.

Long before his death was pronounced, the man and woman were racing out of town in a taxi to the nearest airport. The taxi driver who had picked them up from the hotel was under the impression that the two were strangers who were just sharing the taxi to get to the airport as they were silent for the entire long drive and did not converse with each other. At the airport the man proceeded to the check-in counter while the woman went into the restroom where she took out the syringe and a pair of scissors and carefully cut it into small pieces and flushed it down the toilet. She did the same with the piece of rubber that she had used to cap the needle. Then she carefully removed her gloves, taking care not to touch the outer surface, and together with the scissors, wrapped them in a piece of paper which she took from her bag and she disposed of them in a garbage bin. With a small sigh of relief she went and carefully washed her hands thoroughly for at least five minutes before leaving the restroom to join the man. They still did not converse with each other and appeared to be just fellow travellers. Within two hours their flight was airborne and they were on their way home.

The Past - Maya

Pratap belonged to an influential family in his village which was just 10 kilometres away from the town where he died and 30 kilometres away from the capital city of the state. He was an arrogant and ruthless man and walked roughshod over anyone who antagonized him. He was tall and well built with a face that showed signs of dissipation. As his family was rich and also politically well connected, no one was willing to stand up to him. Almost a year ago, a girl from the lower caste community in the village had the temerity to slap his close friend Rajnath in full view of everyone on the village main road. He was incensed when he heard about it, and the fact that his friend had tried to molest the girl in public was immaterial to him. He himself had been eyeing the girl for some time because he thought that she was a headstrong girl who did not know her place in society. She walked the streets with her head held high and never gave way for the upper castes in the village.

He had berated his friend, “How could you let her get away with slapping you? What the hell is wrong with you; you should have thrashed her!” His friend, Rajnath, shrugged and said, “I would have, but there were around twenty people from her community there and they all saw me catch hold of her and…” But Pratap was still in a rage and said, “Just because she has finished her schooling and her parents are going to send her to college she thinks she is our equal! That’s the problem with educating these people, they forget their place!” Rajnath shrugged again and said, “Anyway, just forget it, will you? Someday I will get a chance to pay her back for that slap.” Pratap stared at him for a moment and then slowly said, “Not someday my friend. I have been watching her and I know that she goes to the fields in the afternoon with food for her father and brother. There is a grove of trees on the route she takes and we will catch her when she is returning.” Rajnath looked at his friend and said a bit reluctantly, “Well, okay, we will see in a few days.” Pratap glared at him and snarled, “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you a man? We will catch her tomorrow! Come here at 1 o’clock in the afternoon and we will go there on my bike.” As Rajnath started to protest he snarled, “No arguments! You hear me!?” Such was his reputation that even his close friends were a little scared of him and so Rajnath just nodded in agreement and left.

The next afternoon both of them were waiting in the grove of trees for the girl to return from the fields, and as soon as she entered the grove Pratap stepped out from behind a tree and confronted her. She stopped and turned to run back but Rajnath was behind her and gave her a violent push which sent her sprawling. Immediately Pratap jumped on her, and sitting across her stomach, he slapped her face hard. “That is for the slap you gave my friend,” he said. He slapped her again even harder, “And that is to teach you your place you low caste bitch!” The girl was at first stunned and scared by the violence, but then her anger got the better of her and she raised her head and spat in his face. “You are the actual low caste,” she shouted at him. “You just cannot bear it that I am educated while you have only passed the tenth grade and that too because of cheating!” She struggled to free herself, but the truth of her words enraged Pratap and he hit her with his closed fist and she fell back semiconscious. In the struggle her blouse had torn, and now in a rage he ripped it off her, and then getting up he stripped her of all her clothes. She regained consciousness, and seeing the look of lust on his face and becoming aware of the fact that she was naked, she started to scream, but he stuffed her torn blouse in her mouth and fell on top of her and raped her. When he was finished he got up and told Rajnath, “Go ahead, rape the bitch so that she will always remember her place!” But Rajnath looked a bit sick and just shook his head. He had thought that they would abuse the girl and maybe slap her around a bit and that would be that. He had not bargained for rape and now he just felt sick. Pratap gave him a scornful look and shouted, “You are not a man, you coward! Come on, let’s get out of here!”

The sound of the motorbike was fading in the distance when the girl finally came out of her swoon and slowly sat up and gathered her clothes together and dressed herself. She sat there for some time staring at nothing until finally her brain started to function normally again and she stood up. She started to go home but then stopped and thought about it. She knew that her family would not do anything as they felt powerless before Pratap’s family, but she was determined to get justice for what he had done to her. So she turned around and went instead to the house of her school headmaster. When her headmaster opened the door he was shocked to see his former student with her torn clothes and swollen and bleeding face. “My God! What happened to you, Maya?” he cried out. “Come inside, come inside, my child!” His name was Hari and he was a decent, kind man whose one aim in life was to educate the backward classes in the country. He had been the headmaster of the local school for more than ten years and was well respected in the area for his dedication to his students, rich and poor alike. Even the local tough guys left him alone because of his standing in the community. Maya was his prize student and he was confident that she would go on to complete her college education and become the first graduate in her family.