Chapter 9
Thirty-three months after being hit by a speeding car, Stanley Lewis was walking normally without a cane. His spine and vertebrae healed nicely. He had added a lot of muscle and lost a lot of weight, and had gotten a job at a fitness center. At home he developed his mind and spirit by reading literature, philosophy, and science books. He liked to spend time escaping from his loss by taking flight in great books, abstruse thought, and the world of the future.
He’d healed his damaged brain, but the hole in his psyche was still open and raw. The police were no closer now to finding the person who was responsible for the death of Toni Chapin than the day it happened, while the images of her body being picked up and tossed, broken, to the side of the road like a car-crash dummy, continued to plague him.
Shortly after the accident, paint chips and scrapings from the car that hit Lewis and killed Toni Chapin were confirmed to be from a 1997 Ford Mustang Coupe. At that time there were three of them registered in the state; the police quickly determined that none were found to have scraped paint or body damage. The news stations asked the public to contact the police if anyone saw the accident or knew of anyone who drove a car like that. No one stepped forward as a witness, but the police got seventeen calls about the car. They, too, proved to be dead ends.
The state police quickly expanded their search into the neighboring states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. No promising leads came from them, either, in spite of the initial burst of news stories.
The driver of the truck who witnessed the accident eventually posted a video on YouTube of him describing what he saw, and even that didn’t help locate the car or driver. All of this happened three years ago.
Lewis wasn’t a vindictive person by nature, but his initial thoughts of bringing the driver to justice when the accident happened had evolved into an obsession to find him and deliver the Lewis personal brand of justice. Some people are capable of forgiving those who hurt them or those they love. Maybe the people who can forgive like that are healthy mentally, Lewis thought. He knew he was not like them and he didn’t think it made him any less human. He knew his ideas about justice were the opposite of Sharon Chapin’s because his weren’t justice at all. He intended to take the actions of a vigilante.
Lewis spent much of the next three years searching for every bit of information on 1997 Mustangs that he could find, regardless of where they were located. Finding none, in exasperation he talked to Sharon Chapin who agreed to have her contacts check the country for all registered Mustangs.
“Stanley, this will take time,” she said.
The next morning she was pleasantly surprised to learn that three Mustangs had been registered within the past month: two in Florida, one in Michigan. Her people were en route to check things out.