HUNTER

by Bidinotto, Robert

  The men looked at each other and got up to leave.

  “Adrian, if I could have a word with you for a moment.”

  So it’s Adrian now. Wulfe sat back down as the room cleared.

  “Let me tell you how much I was moved by your eloquent statement just now. I want to thank you for that, and also share with you how impressed I am by your progress.”

  “I certainly couldn’t have gotten this far without your help, doctor.”

  “You’ve already demonstrated your maturity in so many ways over these many months. I’ve shared with my colleagues the story of your enormous restraint, compassion, and dignity during your meeting with Mrs. Copeland two months ago. You’ve also taken a leadership role here in Group, and your behavioral record in Claibourne has been spotless. Adrian, I want to say that I consider you to be an exemplary client.”

  “Dr. Frankfurt...I just don’t know what to say to that.”

  “I know that it’s highly unusual, given the crime for which you were convicted, but there’s no question in my mind, none at all, that you’ve earned placement in the Accelerated Community Reintegration Track.”

  Yes. Wulfe’s heart was pounding. He did his best to push his face into a humble expression of speechless gratitude.

  “Given the current circumstances,” The Hairball went on, “with all this media sensationalism and vigilante rubbish, I’m not sure how much longer we’ll even have enlightened programs such as this one. So I want to make sure that I initiate your transition right away. And as a first step in your reintegration, Adrian, I’m recommending you for your initial community furlough this coming Christmas.”

  Nobody else was in the room, so it was time for Stanislavsky. The first tears began to flow as he reached out and clutched the shrink’s hand.

  “Dr. Frankfurt, you can’t begin to imagine how important this opportunity is to me. And let me assure you, I know how to take full advantage of it.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Monday, November 17, 2:02 p.m.

  Kenneth MacLean checked his watch as a straggler entered the room at the back, found a chair, and sat down. He turned and smiled reassuringly at Dr. Frankfurt, who was seated beside him, sweating and tapping his foot. Then he rose from his chair and took position behind the podium.

  Before him, nearly three dozen seats in the Murrow Room on the thirteenth floor of the National Press Club were filled with reporters, and no less than five television cameras faced him from the back and sides of the room. It was exactly the kind of media circus he’d done his best to prevent, all along. But the “D.C. vigilantes” story had gone national weeks before, and now the Inquirer had tried to link those lurid stories directly to his foundation.

  To him.

  He fought down his anger while he shuffled his notes. It would be counterproductive to lose his temper here, in spite of how unfair the smear campaign was. He had to remain calm and focus on the facts. For the facts were on his side. He raised his eyes. Many of the reporters were reading the materials in the press packets they had distributed. Good. He knew that much of that information would find its way into the stories they filed this evening.

  He spotted George and Wendy, Congressman Horowitz’s aides, sitting near the back. They would be reporting back to their boss on how it went. He took a deep breath, knowing that his life’s work was on the line. He let it out slowly, smiled, and began.

  “Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. My name is Ken MacLean, and I’m president of the MacLean Family Foundation. Seated to my right is Dr. Carl Frankfurt, chief of the Psychological Services Unit in our Justice Program. We’re here to set the record straight concerning a host of misrepresentations in the media about us. So, we’ll begin by having Dr. Frankfurt give you a PowerPoint presentation to clarify who we are, what we do, and why.”

  Frankfurt took his place at the podium and flipped a switch to shut off the lights in the room. For the next ten minutes, he clicked through the slides, explaining the foundation’s history, objectives, and projects in the criminal justice area. At one point, the door in the back of the room briefly opened and closed. MacLean turned to look, but the brightness from outside the darkened room prevented him from seeing who had entered.

  “As you see, then, the MacLean Family Foundation has developed safe, cost-effective, ground-breaking alternatives to incarceration for minor and nonviolent offenders,” Frankfurt concluded, pausing on a final slide. It showed a group of smiling young men, mostly African-American and Hispanic, posing with him on the sidewalk outside the main entrance to the foundation. “We’ve pioneered inmate therapeutic programs that have reduced their recidivism. We’ve championed the cause of diversionary sentencing, to ease the burden of prison and jail overcrowding. We’ve persuaded many governors and state legislatures to repeal the mindless get-tough crime laws and mandatory-minimum sentencing statutes that they passed in recent years. Besides being the humane thing to do, it’s simply good economics. States are going bankrupt due to an orgy of expensive prison construction.”

  He clicked the lights back on.

  MacLean rose from his seat to stand beside him. “Thank you, Carl. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve shown that we can manage tens of thousands of convicted offenders safely, and far more economically, outside of prison walls. But what primarily motivates us at the MacLean Family Foundation is the moral dimension of our work.”

  He smiled again, his eyes scanning the faces before him. “Our overriding concern is improving conditions for people who are badly served by the established institutions of society. We must turn away from the excessive use of prisons. Our cherished humanitarian values are being corroded by our excessive focus on vindictiveness. And now we’ll be happy to entertain your questions.”

  A forest of hands shot up.

  “Yes, you first.”

  “Andrea O’Donnell, A.P. Dr. Frankfurt, you make a convincing case about the high cure rates of your therapy programs. But how do you answer those critics who point to horror stories like those in the recent Inquirer series: offenders who participated in your programs, were released early, then committed horrible new crimes?”

  MacLean saw Frankfurt’s lips press into a hard line as the psychologist leaned toward the microphone.

  “You’re referring to inflammatory lies and misrepresentations spread by a sleazy, tabloid journalist. Well, all he has managed to accomplish is to encourage a wave of vigilante violence. But let me answer your question directly. Of course, no rehabilitation program, no matter how good, can be one hundred percent effective. You’ll always have tragic exceptions. But wise policy-makers have to weigh their many social benefits against some unfortunate individual costs. And here, I think the conclusion is clear: The good of society, as a whole, must take precedence over these isolated exceptions, because—”

  “—because individual crime victims are expendable.”

  MacLean wheeled around, his eyes searching for whoever had made the loud comment. The reporters swiveled in their seats, looking toward the back of the room.

  He stood leaning casually against the wall between two TV cameras, arms folded across his chest.

  “Excuse me,” MacLean said. “You know the rules here, sir. And Dr. Frankfurt wasn’t addressing you.”

  “Oh, but he was.”

  The dark-haired man stepped forward as all the TV cameras swung his way. “I’m the sleazy tabloid journalist to whom he was referring.”

  MacLean felt something fall in the pit of his stomach.

  Don’t let this spin out of control.

  “So, you are Mr. Hunter, then,” he said, noticing that his voice sounded tight.

  “That’s right. And since this news conference is supposed to be about setting the record straight about your foundation, I knew that I’d better be here.”

  MacLean gripped the podium. “You have your own media platform, sir,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “This is ours. You are permitted here as a member of t
he press. However, if you won’t follow basic journalistic etiquette, I’ll have you escorted out.”

  “And be perfectly within your rights to do so,” Hunter said, smiling. Hands in his trouser pockets, he began to stroll slowly down the outside aisle, moving toward him. “But then, all these fine reporters would have every right to believe that you’re ducking the tough questions. The kind of questions that only I can ask.”

  “Get out of here!” Frankfurt yelled, his face red. “You’ve caused enough trouble!”

  “Easy, Carl,” MacLean interrupted, placing his hand on the man’s shoulder. “We have nothing to hide or be ashamed of. Remember: We have the facts on our side.”

  “Do you, now?” Hunter said. “I wasn’t taking notes, but I recall a number of—well, let’s call them ‘errors’ in your presentation.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as your claims about your success in rehabilitating criminals, Mr. MacLean. Your re-offense statistics—they’re garbage.”

  Frankfurt shouted, “Only four percent of the clients participating in our reintegration programs are convicted of a serious new offense. That’s a fact!”

  Hunter stopped about ten feet from where they stood. A slightly crooked smile formed on his lips. “Doctor, please. I read the study where you make that statistical claim. And it’s phony.”

  “What do you mean, ‘phony’?” MacLean demanded, hearing the edge in his voice.

  “First of all, that four-percent failure rate is based on only one year of tracking your ‘clients,’ after they’re freed—and not three years, as in most recidivism studies.

  “Second, you only track new convictions in a court of law. You don’t bother to count the much higher number of new arrests.

  “Third, you didn’t mention that most of those caught re-offending aren’t even arrested or sent into a courtroom: They’re just returned behind bars for parole and probation violations.”

  “But you—”

  “Fourth and finally, you define ‘serious offense’ so that it excludes all new property crimes, gang participation, illegal possession of weapons and drugs, most domestic abuse reports, and a host of other criminal activity that you people call ‘nonviolent.’ So you don’t bother to count any of those, either.”

  He chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ve recalculated the numbers, gentlemen. And here’s the bottom line. If you include everything I just mentioned, the actual re-offense rate from your program graduates isn’t four percent; it’s over seventy percent.”

  Frankfurt opened and closed his mouth. MacLean jumped in.

  “Mr. Hunter, I don’t know how you do your calculations, but the efficacy of our programs has been independently reviewed by scholars and criminal-justice organizations across the nation. And they emphatically do not support your conclusions.”

  “I’m not surprised, Mr. MacLean. Three of the groups conducting those so-called ‘independent’ reviews were funded by your own foundation. And their statistical manipulations are similar to what I’ve just described.”

  Hunter turned to face the room. “I encourage you gentlemen and ladies to do your own checking, your own arithmetic. I believe you’re in for a few surprises.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Frankfurt yelled. “Why are you targeting programs that help society’s victims?”

  Hunter turned back to look at them both. “Victims?” he said, his voice quiet, cold. “Is that how you think of your criminal clientele, Doctor? Well, they certainly have many champions. Your billion-dollar foundation, for one—and many more like it. Also, defense attorneys and bar associations. Plea-bargaining prosecutors and lenient judges. Psychiatrists. Ministers. Politicians. Charities and advocacy groups. And even more: Criminals get all sorts of taxpayer-funded benefits and help, inside of prison and outside. Yet you call them ‘victims.’

  “Well, I’ve been spending time with a different group of victims. Crime victims. Victims of the predators that you represent. Victims of the thugs that you recycle back onto the streets. You ask why I’m doing this. Because it’s time that somebody represented them.”

  MacLean saw the reporters scribbling furiously on their notepads; saw the operators shifting their cameras back and forth, from Hunter to them; knew they were transmitting the dramatic images down to the satellite trucks on the street outside, and from there to their stations and networks. He noticed the expressions on the faces of Congressman Horowitz’s two young staffers, and he cringed inside, knowing how their boss would react when he saw this disaster unfold on television.

  The whole news conference was slipping away from him. He had to say something, stop the bleeding.

  “Mr. Hunter,” he said as calmly as he could, “you seem to believe that we have no concern for crime victims. But we do. In your article yesterday, you attacked H.R. 207, the model legislation that we helped to frame. Are you aware that this bill will add billions of dollars in grants from the federal government to the states, earmarked to aid crime victims?”

  He saw a glint in the man’s eye.

  “That’s great, Mr. MacLean,” Hunter said. “Because if Congress passes your early-release bill, there will be thousands more crime victims. And they will need every penny of that aid.”

  CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Monday, November 17, 2:35 p.m.

  “And they will need every penny of that aid.”

  She felt the impact of his words like an electric shock, transmitted to her right through the TV screen by the stunned look on her father’s face. She watched in helpless, unblinking anguish, witnessing his dreams, his ideals, his soul being crushed.

  Crushed ruthlessly by the man she loved.

  Dylan—stop! Please stop!

  She had slipped away from her office to this small conference room to watch the live broadcast of the news conference, which was being carried by a national cable news channel. She had hoped that her father could somehow reclaim the personal reputation that Dylan’s article had so badly damaged. And for a while the whole event went smoothly—until she was startled by the familiar voice, strong and deep:

  “...because individual crime victims are expendable.”

  She gasped at the words, disbelieving. Then stared at the screen as the camera swung to him.

  She saw the familiar tangle of thick, dark curls, the hollow cheeks, the proud thrust of his chin. Saw the fearless flash in those eyes, the mocking twist of those lips. Then the camera pulled back to reveal his body, lean and relaxed, the body she knew so well, now moving forward slowly, deliberately toward her father, like a prowling panther stalking its prey.

  She had jumped to her feet and approached the screen. She hung onto every word of their exchanges, terrified to see what would happen, unable to tear her eyes away as the horror unfolded.

  Now there was a commotion. Reporters stood and shouted over each other, directing questions at the three of them. Frankfurt was yelling something at Dylan; her father, his face blank, stood mute and unmoving behind the podium.

  Then Dylan turned toward the reporters approaching him and made a dismissive motion, brushing off their questions. “I’ve given you plenty to chew on.”

  He walked swiftly back in the direction of the camera, his image growing larger until his face nearly filled the screen before swerving past. The camera swung back toward the front of the room, zooming in on her father, who was now gathering his notes and refusing further questions. Then it spun toward Frankfurt, who had stopped halfway down the aisle, where he was surrounded by reporters. He was gesturing wildly and saying things that she couldn’t make out in the din.

  The TV network’s reporter moved into the frame, holding a microphone. “A stunning turn of events here at the National Press Club as Dylan Hunter—the Inquirer reporter at the center of the firestorm of controversy about the criminal justice system and the D.C. vigilantes—crashes the MacLean news conference and confronts him face to face. Let’s take a moment just to recap what we’ve just witnessed....
”

  She pressed the remote button, extinguishing the program.

  She knew what she had just witnessed.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Monday, November 17, 4:02 p.m.

  The phone chirped, and Danika glanced down at the console. Saw that the incoming call was for Dylan Hunter’s line.

  “Mr. Hunter’s answering service. May I help you?”

  “Hello, this is Detective Sergeant Cronin of the Alexandria Police.”

  She recalled the sexy cop with the bright blue eyes and smiled to herself. “I remember you, Detective. How may I help you?”