Cold Justice

Probably thinking he’s the cat’s whiskers, and imagining his next Oscar performance on MySpace, a drunken idiot, the level of alcohol in his blood four and a half times over the legal limit, speeds along the Lungotevere, the street that coasts the River Tiber, and in the blink of an eye snuffs out two innocent young lives – two Irish tourists on holiday in Rome - the impact so violent their bodies are tossed through the air like limp rag dolls to land fifty yards away!
Eyewitnesses watch the driver get out, stare in horror at what he has done, then jump back into his Mercedes and speed away from the scene of the crime.  A kilometre later, after hitting a garbage bin and a traffic light, he is picked up by the police and, refusing a drug test, sent home.  No arrest?  The father tells the newspapers his poor son is devastated.  He even has the gall to suggest that the lives of three families – not TWO families, THREE families - have been destroyed.  How can he compare his feelings with the suffering of two families who have each lost a daughter, neither one of whom had a choice, unlike his son, who (still very much alive) could have chosen not to drive, could have chosen to go home by taxi, could have chosen to have ‘Daddy’ come pick him up, could have chosen to do anything but get behind the wheel of a car?  Those two girls will not be going home.  He is already home.   If his banal contribution to MySpace is anything to go by, where one can watch footage of the laughing idiot driving his car with ‘Look! No hands’, he was already a walking advertisement for death.
Why was he sent home?  He had just killed those two girls!  Why wasn’t he arrested and jailed?
... Unlike the woman who lived in Latina, an hour’s drive south of Rome, with her four dogs.  The police searched her house after receiving a tip off (from her jealous ex-lover) that she was laundering money and running a counterfeit ring – false passports, ID cards and the like.  True or false, one didn’t know.  Having found nothing even remotely incriminating, the police apologized for causing the woman any inconvenience and were about to leave when she, remembering her good manners, asked the officer in charge if he would like a cup of coffee.  Yes, indeed, he would.  Thank you very much.
So off to the kitchen they went, the atmosphere now decidedly more relaxed.   When they entered, the coffee pot was standing on a huge freezer in a corner of the spacious room.   While the signora made the coffee, the officer’s eyes kept drifting back to the freezer.  Maybe, just maybe… No!  Yes!  Unable to resist any longer, he finally ordered one of his men to check its contents.
Horror of horrors; the naked body of an elderly man lay in the bottom of the freezer with a couple of frozen chickens, a lamb chop or two, a joint of beef and packets of frozen vegetables.
The woman gasped.   “What is this body doing in my freezer?” she cried.
Despite insisting she was innocent, that she had never seen the dead man before, that she wouldn't have invited the police in for coffee had she known of the body in her freezer, she was immediately arrested for murder and concealment of a corpse, and dragged off to prison, where she remained, despite the fact that - yes, the body was found on her property, which is pretty damning in itself, 'almost conclusive', one could say, but not absolute proof of guilt – the ensuing autopsy failed to find any signs of violence, or even the cause of death.

And what about the ex-boyfriend?  Did he have anything to do with the body?

In prison, the woman's chief concern is her four dogs who, she hopes, are being taken care of by friendly neighbours.

One thing's for sure; next time, if there is a next time, she will want the police out of her house as quickly as possible, and to hell with the cup of coffee!
Two culprits, each one treated differently by the law.  One is seen killing and is sent home, the other isn’t and is sent to prison.  I don’t get it.   Do you?

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