Criminal Justice by Barbara J. Olexer
A careless bureaucrat has unjustly removed Virgil and Rhonda Thwait’s two small children from their custody. A series of mishaps makes the mistake final and they are given up to adoptive parents. The stress drives the Thwaits apart and costs them their marriage, home, and business. Realizing that the law will not help her and that she will never see her babies again, Rhonda devises her own brand of justice. Working outside the system, she finally achieves Criminal Justice.
Soft cover, 200 pp., large print, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9800514-2-1
pBook $17.95, eBook $4.95
Review
Criminal Justice is about how a woman fought back and saved her sanity. Through no fault of her own, Rhonda Thwait lost everything – children, husband, home, and business. Out of the wreck she saved only her sanity. When she realizes her situation is hopeless, she sets out to destroy the social worker who set in motion the horrendous injustice that eventually caused her losses. With almost no resources, she cleverly stalks her prey using the Internet and several technological gadgets. She also invokes the martial arts trick of using her enemy’s strength to her own advantage. This is a morality tale of arrogance run amok. An exciting page-turner. Reviewed by Ruby Doyle.
Excerpt from Criminal Justice A few days later, FOR A GOOD TIME CALL ZUZIE MILLS 555-6689, was written in big black letters on the wall of the boys’ locker room. The graffiti got uglier, nastier, and more frequent. Mr. Willis was upset. Elsa and Paul were angry. Zuzie was hysterical. Elsa and Paul had sent Fern and Paulie upstairs to do their homework so they could talk to Zuzie and, hopefully, get to the bottom of the problem. “You can’t just drop out of school, honey,” Paul said. “You won’t solve anything by running away.” “You don’t know what it’s like. My friends look at me funny, like they believe the stuff on the walls. And the real whores have started acting all friendly and that just makes the boys believe it more. Today that Carl Mercer asked me to go out with him tomorrow night.” “What’s so bad about that?” Elsa inquired. “He seems like a nice guy.” “Mom! He’s not a nice guy. He all but raped
“You’re not going to drop out of school, either,” Elsa decreed. “Your father and I will go in and talk to Mr. Willis.” “What good’s that gonna do? You already talked to him nine times. He can’t do anything about it.” Zuzie pulled away sharply. “Don’t touch me. You don’t care. My life is ruined and all you can say is, ‘Zuzie, don’t exaggerate.’ I hate you!” Zuzie ran upstairs and slammed the door to her room. Feeling that it didn’t do justice to her rage, she opened it and slammed it again. She kept slamming it until Sam began to cry and Fern and Paul came out to see what was wrong with her. “Stop it, Zuzie,” said Fern. “You’re upsetting Sam.” “Yeah,” Paulie chimed in, “I can’t do my homework with all this door-slamming.” “That’s right, it’s all about you,” Zuzie raged. “It’s all about Sam. Nothing about me. You don’t care what I’m going through. All you care about is yourselves. Fuck you.” She went to the stairs and leaned over the banisters to shout down at her parents. “Hear that? I said ‘fuck you.’ Fuck you both. Fuck this whole family. I hate you all!” Zuzie ran into her room and slammed the door one final time. She was too angry to sit still or read or even watch her little TV. She picked up her phone and called her best friend. Darla would understand. Darla was the one person left in the world she could talk to. Darla answered on the second ring and Zuzie poured it all out – her unfeeling family, her false friends, the principal and teachers who did nothing to help her. “Not what,” one of the girls giggled, “who?” Miss Streatham tried to shush them but they were having too much fun. “Do me next.” Mark Pierce put his arm around her, letting his hand casually cup her breast. Zuzie wrenched herself out of his embrace and Miss Streatham twittered ineffectually. A couple of the girls grabbed a long streamer of butcher paper from one of the teachers and unfurled it so Zuzie saw it. In bright red letters a foot high it screamed, “Zuzie Mills fucks good.” There was a crude, in every sense of the word, drawing to go with it. “How about it, Zuzie,” Alison Drury asked, “do you fuck good?” Mr. Huerta grabbed the paper and wadded it up, telling the kids to go on about their business. Boys and girls both ignored him, joining in to taunt Zuzie. Zuzie dropped her backpack and knocked Alison to the floor. Alison tried to fight back but Zuzie was too angry to even protect herself. She didn’t even feel Alison’s fingernails on her face. She connected with a hard, solid blow to Alison’s mouth and kept flailing away with her fists. “Get some help,” Mr. Huerta said to Miss Streatham. “Get Mr. Dillingsworth.” Only too glad to get away from the melee, Miss Streatham fled down the hall, calling urgently for the vice principal. Mr. Huerta tried to break up the fight, without perceptible effect. The noise and excitement attracted a lot of attention and there was a sizeable crowd pressed around the two girls when Mr. Dillingsworth arrived. He was a big, muscular man and in addition to being a vice principal, he was assistant coach of the varsity wrestling team. He didn’t even pause to identify the combatants but immediately lifted Zuzie off Alison and set her on her feet. Alison was weeping copiously and the tears mixed with the blood from her mouth and nose made her look like a war zone casualty. Miss Streatham led her away, bound for the school nurse’s office, crooning sympathy all the way. “Zuzie!” she screamed. “What happened? You’re bleeding. Your face!”
Mr. Willis reflected that it had been awhile since the last outbreak of such graffiti. There was always some, of course, popping up all over the school, but such specificity was not so usual. He knew Zuzie Mills slightly and had thought her a fairly good student with a good family background. He hadn’t expected her name to appear in such a context. Still, it didn’t necessarily mean anything. High school age boys didn’t know much about whores, not, he reflected, that principals and teachers probably knew much about them, either. But to an adult a whore would be a professional while to a boy a whore was more likely to be “easy.” Mr. Willis sighed. He asked his secretary to bring him a list of Zuzie’s classes; he would talk to her teachers and the coaches, see if any of them had heard anything.
“I’m not going back to school,” she cried one evening. “Everyone thinks I’m a whore and the boys are treating me like one. I’m not going back.”
"Zuzie,” Paul began, putting his arm around her, “don’t exaggerate...”
The next morning, the first thing Zuzie saw when she walked into the school was a group of kids and a couple of teachers clustered at the intersection of the two main hallways, near the big double front doors. Her way to her locker went right past them so she set her teeth and tried to ignore them as she went by. But the teachers were so embarrassed and some of the kids were so interested in her that she unwillingly slowed down and looked at them. One of the boys laughed.
“Hey, Zuzie,” another boy called, “what are you doing Friday night?”
Darla Welch pushed her way into the center of the crowd, having heard that Zuzie was fighting with Alison.
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