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Later that evening, as Jason and I sat on the couch in my tiny apartment over the Bird Cage, I bemoaned the fact that even though we all now knew (more or less) who’d been responsible for all the horrible happenings around Amatista of late, only Blake Vance had yet been brought in by the powers that be.
“The wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceeding fine,” said Jason.
“What?”
“Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”
“Oh.”
“The poet.”
“I see.”
“Not a direct quote. Just the gist.”
“Well, I hope Mr. Longfellow is right.”
It would take a week for the wheels of justice to catch up with Jimmy Throckmorton. He’d be found hiding out at a friend’s place near Flagstaff.
When the trial came around nearly six months after Duke’s death, Jimmy would testify that he’d gone up to Duke’s, and they’d gotten into a fight.
After trading punches, Jimmy had landed a blow which had caused Duke to reel back. When he’d lost his balance, Duke had struck his head on the corner of the coffee table. Evidence from the crime scene was consistent with Jimmy’s claim.
Jimmy insisted that Duke had expired on the spot and that his only crime had been disposing of the body.
I didn’t buy it, but the jury seemed to, and there wasn’t much hope of proving one way or the other if Duke might have survived had Jimmy called for help.
Jimmy was also frustratingly vague on the reasons for the altercation between him and Duke, but given that several witnesses for the defense testified to years of bad blood between the half-brothers, the jury declined to convict Jimmy on murder.
Jimmy was charged and convicted of negligent manslaughter and desecration of a corpse.
Blake, who’d been called to the scene by Jimmy to help him get rid of Duke’s body, was also charged and convicted of desecration of a corpse.
Who’d attacked Reba remained officially unknown, and I don’t think any of us who had figured out Duke had done it were eager to see him posthumously brought to account on the matter. We’d probably never know if Duke had intended to murder Reba or if he’d simply hoped to injure Reba and frame Crystal for the attack.
I think everyone who was in a position to bring Duke’s involvement to light believed that Roberta Bagley had already been through enough.
In the case of Dale Dundee’s impersonation of Rex Popov, the wheels of justice took even longer to get in gear.
By the time a lengthy investigation, mounds of paperwork, and preliminary hearings resulted in the issuance of an arrest warrant for Dale and Tilda, they’d disappeared without a trace.
Ironically, it would be Dale’s coconspirator, Tilda, who’d become the weak link.
Almost a year later, Tilda resurfaced at her mother’s home in Phoenix, and when she was picked up by the police, it emerged that her relationship with Dale was on the rocks, and she agreed to lure Dale back from where he was living a life of ease on his considerable ill-gotten gains in a swanky beachfront condo in Cancun.
Tilda agreed to testify against Dale in return for immunity. One reason Tilda had decided to leave Dale in the first place was that she’d discovered she was, in fact, not actually Mrs. Dundee. Unbeknownst to her, she and Dale had never been legally married, a revelation that understandably made her hopping mad. Apparently, Tilda had been operating under the delusion that Dale might cheat all and sundry, but not her.
Tilda’s testimony resulted in a lengthy prison sentence for Dale and restitution to his victims. Unfortunately, Hank was only one of the scores of Dale’s victims, and there was far too little left of Dale’s takings to cover everyone’s losses. Hank never saw his shipment of “diamond detectors,” either.
Fortunately, Phyliss’s financial resources were substantial enough to take the loss, and after considerable wrangling with the various credit cards in question, Jason managed to whittle down Hank’s debts by half.
Jason and Mr. Longfellow had been correct; the wheels of justice do turn slowly, and although I was not completely satisfied with the fineness with which they’d ground, a measure of justice had been served.
“Forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge,” Juanita told me when I bemoaned the fact that I felt like all parties involved had not completely gotten what was coming to them.
The aphorism that forgiveness is more satisfying than revenge, I supposed, summed up the matter, and adhering to it could have prevented the whole tragedy from happening in the first place.
The End