Third Time, Not A Charm

Chapter 2 Josie

Chapter 2

JosieJosie Du Puy had many thoughts about the assignment she was given by Jim. She tended to be a little defensive at work, about work. She was, after all, a woman, in fact the only woman who had achieved the status of Detective of Homicide. The history of Phoenix P.D. indicated a reluctance, if not a downright unwillingness, to bring women onto the force. But once it began to hire women the numbers began to rise. It was only a matter of time until someone happened to make Detective in one or more of the various units. It just so happened Josie was the first in Homicide.

She was always worried she would not make a good impression on people. She knew her physical beauty created an impression which was positive. It was not the problem, or maybe it was part of the problem. She was a pretty woman. She was five feet seven inches tall and weighed a constant one hundred forty pounds. Her weight fit on her frame in all the right places. Her medium length brown hair was lightly flecked with a few spots of blonde to gray hair. Her blue eyes were penetrating when she looked directly at someone and could be frightening to a criminal.

Josie possessed a medium bone structure so she didn't look overweight at all. She was muscular but not in the same was as a body builder. She lifted weights regularly if she had time to do so. She ran at least a mile every day she could find the time. She ran most days. She always sprinted the last quarter or so. It was a way to try and prepare herself for the “runners” she might encounter on the street. She would always have more stamina than those fools, if not more speed. It had proved to be true on more than one occasion. She was not fearful of men. She began studying Karate when she was a young girl and had a black belt by the time she was seventeen. She had some full contact fights when she was a Karate student and didn't mind the physical contact. In the right circumstances she even found it to be something of an aphrodisiac.

As a patrol person she had been required to hold her own physically on several occasions and had no problem doing so. One half in the bag guy who was about six feet two inches tall and weighed about two hundred, fifty pounds, said to her one night, “No way I'm going to let some skinny assed little broad take me down.” He grinned at her and threw a roundhouse right hand at her. He woke up on the ground, on his stomach, cuffed and leg ironed, trussed up like a chicken with a very sore jaw. When she finally got him into her patrol car and was on the way back to the station he asked her in a sheepish way, “What the hell did you do to me?”

She responded simply “Not as much as I could have you fool now shut up and let me get you to the jail.”

Josie's parents were middle income Americans. She was born in Arizona and raised in the west valley. They wanted her to go to college. She grew up in the western part of the city, far out in what was then termed the boondocks, went to Dysart High School when it was a brand new school facility. She thought as a girl she might attend ASU in Tempe. But she went to Phoenix College for a semester just to see what might interest her.

There she met a young man with whom she was taken immediately. He was a police science student (law enforcement), He encouraged her to try one of the classes. She did and she loved the notions it presented. She was a little rebellious in her early years and the “authority figure” aspect of being a police officer was a little intimidating at first. After some consideration she thought she could handle that okay. She did. In her days as a patrol officer people complimented her on being direct and forceful without being a storm trooper. The arrests she made stuck. Her arrest to conviction record was one hundred per cent.

She had a friend of the family who kept an eye on her without her knowing that to be true. He acted, as a leader of the department, as an unofficial “rabbi” for her as she began to gain experience and reputation. He was a closet feminist in some respects and wanted to see more women in highly visible positions in the department. Eventually with her reputation being the primary basis for the promotion, fitting into an opening a the right moment and her “rabbi” giving her just the right amount of boost she was promoted. Her promotion, with the blessing of the Captain of Homicide Division, James Cade, brought her to the position of Detective of Homicide.

It was a moment of some magnitude in the department. Some did not agree with the promotion. They thought it was too soon. Or they thought no woman should be in the position of homicide detective. Some were sure she would fail. Some were expecting her to make a gaff which would return her to the streets. Again she stuck. She worked. She studied. She pored over the files of unsolved murder cases, gaining even the slightest insight into the minds of the killers if she could.

Josie's first murder case was a horrendous home violence situation she fathomed right away. Luckily she had never seen violence in her home as a girl. She had a very normal childhood in a home where her parents loved each other. They were loving to others as well, leading them to wonder why she chose her job. But she had heard about domestic violence from others with whom she went to school. She went to the scene of the shooting with some worry about how bad the body would be. It was not her first stiff. It was her first murder. It was not terrible but certainly she didn't think she would want to spend the rest of her life looking at stiffs.

The wife, the shooter, was named Phyllis. The dead man's name was Henry. When Josie got to the scene the patrol people had Phyllis separated in a bedroom away from the body. Josie went directly to Phyllis after looking at the shooting scene in the kitchen and said to Phyllis, “I have to advise you of your rights, or have the others already done that?” Phyllis replied one of the other officers had already done that.

“Is there anything about the Miranda warnings you don't understand?” Phyllis said she understood and wanted to talk about the situation. Josie repeated the warnings nonetheless out of an abundance of concern for the wife. She did so out of concern for Phyllis more than out of it being a means of preserving testimony that might incriminate her.

Phyllis told Josie that her husband had been beating her for at least twenty years. She said to Josie that he had broken her right arm once, had broken a collar bone once, had broken her nose once, had knocked out all her front teeth which had to be replaced with a prosthesis and the showed Josie bruises all over her back, abdomen and the area of her breasts that were in various stages of healing. Phyllis had a huge hematoma on her right eye at the time Josie spoke to her. Phyllis cried softly the entire time she was talking and kept saying in between describing what had happened, including a full description of the shooting and how it had come about, “What are me and my kids going to do now? He was a royal asshole but at least he worked. What the hell are we going to do now?”

Josie took Phyllis back to Homicide, had her make a complete statement in front of a court reporter, the court reporter being hauled out of bed to take the statement, and then took Phyllis back to her house where the kids had been kept. Josie transported the entire family to a shelter for abused women and their families for the night while the necessities were finished at the scene. Phyllis was never charged, never booked into jail, eventually made her way back to Texas from which she and her family had come to Arizona and was never heard from again. All this had been done with the specific approval of Jim Cade. It was the only other time he had seen Josie at work. He thought she was a caring person who had a recognition of life in the world as it was, not only an outlook that sought the application of the law.

Josie had faced some discrimination early in her days as a rookie officer. There seemed always to be one guy around who was a smart a*s or a “ladies man.” The comments would come occasionally. She didn't always hear them but sometimes she heard from other women officers what was being said. Josie had a good figure. She was lean, slightly on the buxom side. Her breasts were hidden by her sports b*a and her protective vest ninety per cent of the time she was at work. She didn't flaunt herself, didn't want to get involved with another cop, especially some rookie whose macho necessities had not yet been sated.

One day she happened to overhear one of her fellow rookies talking in the locker room about what a beautiful set of “t**s” she had. She confronted the guy. He was just macho enough to buck up when she braced him. She invited him to the exercise mat in the gym next to the locker room and kicked his a*s. He thought she was just pissed and would get over it if he sparred with her for a minute or two. She kicked him directly in the stomach and while he was bent over she knocked him down on the mat with an uppercut that would have been envied by Muhammed Ali.

He got up but was a little unsteady on his feet. She knocked him down again with a focus force punch which hit one of his gloves first and then connected with his chin. He stayed down for a little longer. He shook his head while she danced around him, got up and rushed her. It was strictly the wrong thing to do. She stopped the rush with another kick to the stomach which he blocked partially leaving his guard somewhat lower than it should have been. She planted a punch right on the end of his chin. He woke up a couple of minutes later. She was back in the locker room already. As he staggered by her, reeling from the a*s kicking she had administered to him, on the way to his locker she said to him, “Still like my t**s so much?”

It was legendary through the department within a week. Jim Cade heard about it two years prior to Josie joining homicide. When he knew she was about to join his division he put the word out to his troops through their supervisors if any s****l harassment occurred he would simply send the offending person to the gym with Josie. After Josie was done with the offender then the guy would have to take on the boss as well. No one wanted a piece of either one of those two. Jim was legendary in the department as a martial artist and Josie's legend was growing.

Now and again Josie would wonder about whether she might face any additional s****l harassment. She knew it would not happen within the homicide unit. She didn't do anything which might provoke it either. She dressed and acted professionally at all times. She didn't allow any cop, not a homicide d**k nor a patrol officer to get close enough to her personally for there to be any gossip about a relationship. Her treatment of all people in the public made Jim proud of her as she progressed as a Detective. She was equally open to all in terms of receiving information. She didn't seem to have any prejudices of her own. He thought it would be a really good thing for her to break out in communication with the departments dealing with the three killings.

She called Maricopa County S.O. but missed the detectives in the first attempt. She left a message asking they give her a call. She identified herself as Phoenix Homicide in her message. She called Pinal Country S.O. and got hold of a detective named Cosworth who was not involved except peripherally in the Portales case. Cosworth told her he would pass on the word to the detectives in charge and to his Lieutenant she had called, thanked her for the offer of help and hung up.

Josie called Glendale P.D. and talked immediately with the Lieutenant in charge of the investigation. He was an older officer of the department. He had been a police officer for nearly twenty-five years and was about to retire. He believed the investigation into the death of Johnny Campbell would be resolved by reference to a spouse, a lover, someone who was jealous, anything but a group of vigilantes. She didn't mention the idea but suggested the availability of some additional minds might help. He said he would think about it, hung up and said to himself, “She was pretty presumptuous. Goddamn Phoenix P.D. is always looking to grab some glory.” He didn't mention the call to his detectives for weeks.

The note Cosworth left for his boss at the Pinal County S.O. got hidden under some others that received little attention for a number of weeks as well. The call to Maricopa County S.O. was answered by an abrupt “If we want your help we'll ask for it,” when her call was returned. She dutifully reported the results to Jim and went on her way taking care of her own caseload. So much for interdepartmental cooperation she thought as she made a final analysis of her initial efforts.

Does crime justify death, or is

death prematurely created

by man, really a crime?