“Pedophilia isn’t a misjudgment. It’s a psychosexual disorder than doesn’t just go away.”
“I thought so.” Wally nodded. “You’ve put me in a category, made an armchair diagnosis without consulting me. What happened with you hasn’t been going on for all my life.”
“Who in their right mind would be attracted to a child?” More conflicting emotions tumbled inside Shad.
“A confused young man who probably isn’t in his right mind at the time. Listen, what is it you want from me? A settlement?” Wally’s eyes narrowed. “All you’d accomplish is tearing my life apart by dragging me into court. I know you can’t be so angry at me you’d put yourself through that kind of hell just to make me suffer. Extortion, then? Who here is the lawyer?”
Shad frowned. “I’ll do whatever it takes to end the suffering of others.”
“What others?” Wally leaned forward. “My wife? Your wife? Aren’t they innocent? Do you really want to drag them through the chaos you’d put them through?”
Shad realized Wally must have noticed the plain gold band he wore on his own left ring finger. “I know single mothers with young sons aren’t that hard to come by. Why did you marry an older woman with grown sons?”
“Excuse me?”
“Have you decided the gaming store is a better place to pick up new victims?”
“Victims?” Wally leaned back in his chair again. “First, I keep telling you I haven’t done anything like that since your mom threw me out. Second, I can’t believe you would think of yourself as a victim. I never forced you to do anything. In fact, there were times you were the one who started something.”
Wally’s accusation was a bad, bad sign. “I was a child behaving like a child. You were the one interpreting my actions the way you wanted to.”
Wally shook his head. “You’ve bought into the hysteria.”
A chill settled over Shad. “Are you about to tell me that adults and children should have equal access to each other? Are you gonna give me the spin that children should be given the right to express their affection physically?”
“No, no, of course not. But there is a hysteria out there. These days a teacher can’t even put an arm around a student as comfort without getting fired. People condemn everything in one broad sweep rather than looking at individual situations. What happened to you was one situation –”
“Three years.”
“You were the only one.” Wally leveled his gaze with Shad’s. “I was wrong to bring you into my confusion, I suppose, but I never meant you harm. I never did you any harm. So you got some experience maybe a little younger than some other kids. People will experiment, play around. I did nothing worse to you than kids often do with each other anyway.”
“Oh, you did more.” Shad’s eyes narrowed. “Those were no innocent games of playing doctor. You also robbed me of freedom of choice. It wasn’t my choice as a child to engage in the kind of activity that as an adult I would choose to save for my wife. You used me for your own pleasure, plain and simple.”
Wally shook his head. “It didn’t bother you then. It only bothers you now because others have convinced you that you’re supposed to feel ashamed by what happened. Probably have some religious guilt built in there, too. Remember, I was barely more than a kid myself.”
“What was your motivation to change? What steps did you take to bring about that change?”
Wally stared at him for a few seconds before replying. “I don’t go looking for boys. I know who I am now. What happened with us is in the past and has nothing to do with the present.”
“You didn’t answer the questions.”
“Here’s a question.” Wally leaned forward again. “Are you still beating your wife?” In the couple of seconds that Wally waited for his words to soak in, Shad felt a sickening sensation almost like nausea sweep through him. “You see, not all questions have a simple answer. I went through a process, a journey. I can’t recount it off the top of my head because I didn’t have a problem I was dealing with methodically.”
Lies. Bald-faced lies. Shad knew too much about the challenges of pedophilia to accept any of Wally’s claims. He also had studied too much about molestation to doubt his conclusion about Wally.
“If I was so special and the only one, how is it you were able to abandon me so easily?” Shad still tried to pry out a sliver of truth. “You never came back to check up on me or try to reconnect in any way.”
“You got to remember I was still pretty young at the time. I didn’t know what I was doing. And after what we’d done, well, I kind of figured it would be best if we stayed away from each other.”
“You knew what that woman was like. I was practically gift-wrapped for you. Did you really think you could leave me with her and I’d be fine?” An irritation Shad hadn’t experienced in a long time began squirming to the surface of tangled emotions.
“I guess I just figured ... she’d find somebody else to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?” Shad’s voice rumbled lower than he’d expected. “The parade of men that passed through her bed convinced me we didn’t need to keep our relationship such a secret. She did nothing to stop them when I was punched and kicked and burned and strangled.” Shad caught himself. Something too much like rage threatened to break to the surface, and he drew a deep breath to quash the writhing emotions back into the depths of his soul.
Wally stared at him for a few seconds before responding. “Then why are you on my doorstep instead of theirs?”
“Abuse is abuse but the nature of yours is especially pernicious.” Shad was relieved to hear that his voice wasn’t so low anymore. “Yours is one case where I might be able to save the future for others.”
“From what?” Wally sat up. “You rate the care I gave you as worse than the beatings those cretins dished out? You really have been swept up in a witch hunt if you think I’m more dangerous than they are.”
“The ramifications of abuse are all the same, no matter what form it takes.”
“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t abuse you.” Wally leaned forward. “Honestly, Shadow –”
The growl erupted from Shad without warning. “Don’t call me that.”
Wally’s eyes widened for a second before he nodded. “All right. But just think about it. Everything I did with you was an act of love. Everything those bastards did to you was an act of violence.”
“Acting on a sexual impulse doesn’t equal love.”
“I was always careful. Made sure I didn’t hurt you.”
“How gentle you are doesn’t change the confusion, the helplessness, the betrayal felt by those boys.”
“Dammit!” Wally hissed, and the expletive sparked a flash of alarm in Shad as they always did. But then Wally drew a visible breath and leaned back in his chair. “How can I possibly prove a negative to you? There are no other boys. It was you and me. That’s all. If you think you need to come riding in here on some great white horse, you’re wrong.”
“The odds you changed are not in your favor.”
The two men stared at each other for a few seconds, and then Wally shifted in his seat and briefly glanced down before returning his attention to Shad.
“Can’t you at least agree that people can change?”
Of course people could change. Shad himself was living proof that a person’s life course could change a whole one hundred eighty degrees. But Wally had given him nothing to suggest the man had made such changes. Instead, Wally refused to take responsibility for his actions. And his arguments in defense of this “phase” Wally insisted he was done with rang too much like the activist arguments Shad had become familiar with.
And pedophilia didn’t just go away. Wally’s claims of experimentation might even suggest that his condition coexisted with other paraphilias like fetishism or voyeurism, which was commonly the case. All psychotherapeutic studies confirmed it was a markedly pervasive disorder that persistently defied eradication. Wally was still a liar.
/> “People can change,” Shad replied. “But you aren’t one of them.”
“Why won’t you believe me?”
Shad frowned. “I didn’t become a lawyer on a whim. In a way, I have you to thank for my choice of profession. And if I want to see to it that people like you get put away, I have to know what to look for.”
Wally stared at him for a few seconds before replying. “Don’t assume you know everything. You can’t judge me based on books you’ve read. If you bring up charges because you think I still do that stuff, you won’t be saving innocent lives. You’ll be tearing them apart. I admit we shouldn’t have done what we did, but otherwise you have to admit that I did take care of you. On the basis that I was always kind to you, can you at least show a little kindness to me now?”
“You abused me and then you abandoned me. The kindness was just to facilitate getting what you wanted.”
“I didn’t know any better. Your mom made me leave. How many times do I have to say that? I was young and I was stupid. After all, I didn’t come from such a great background myself, you know.”
Part of what Wally said echoed in Shad’s memory. Considering his own background, if Mam and Pap hadn’t brought him in and taught Shad to bend to divine will, his own will would have led him to a much darker place. And Shad could have believed that what he was doing wasn’t really harmful ... just like Wally. It was unsettling they could have that much in common, yet there remained one glaring difference between them even if Wally ever did overcome his disorder.
“Is this the part where you claim you were molested too?” Shad asked in a flat monotone, but he could feel the prickling of something unpleasant beneath the question.
Wally seemed to study him for a few seconds before replying. “There was this cousin who would babysit me. I think he was just ... a confused young man. I don’t harbor any ill will toward him. In fact, I’m glad to see that he moved on with his life, too. Went out and got married. Actually a couple of times, I think. Had kids of his own.”
A ripple of nausea swelled inside Shad. “And you continued to keep his secret, I presume.”
“I didn’t feel the need to rip up his life.” Wally’s gaze seemed to sharpen on Shad. “Have you told anybody ... about me?”
If a bowlful of water left out in the depth of winter, when night temperatures would plunge below zero, could feel the water freeze so hard the container would break, Shad could relate to what that might feel like. A flicker of panic that seemed to hold off the impending hard freeze warned him not to answer that question at its face value.
At least he’d had many “dark watches of the night” when Shad spoke to the only other One who was there. “Yes.”
Wally frowned slightly. “Is this supposed to be part of some kind of therapy you’ve been through?”
“The one thing you and I agree on is that this doesn’t concern us anymore. But I can’t allow you to continue.”
“Continue what?” Wally sat up. “Do you intend to file a complaint against me?”
Shad grappled for a response. Maybe Wally wasn’t entirely familiar with the law, or maybe Wally had already done the math and knew Shad could only file a civil suit against him. But unless Shad hired a private investigator to tail Wally, which also wasn’t an option, he had no evidence to prove Wally was lying to him.
The truth actually turned out to be his best answer. “I don’t know yet what I’m gonna do with you.”
“So you admit it?” Wally leaned forward. “You don’t need to rip our lives apart by accusing me of something I’m not doing?”
Shad decided he’d reached his saturation point. There was no way he was going to extract a confession from Wally, and this conversation would only continue going in circles. He wished he hadn’t come here. Shad wished he’d never opened that newspaper on the train.
“I’ve got nothing else to say to you,” Shad said bluntly as he got to his feet.
Wally’s eyes widened. “You’re leaving?”
“We’re done.”
The man scrambled to his feet as Shad turned away from the desk. “That’s it? You’re going to leave just like that? You aren’t going to give me any explanation? You’re just going to leave me hanging?”
Shad hesitated at the door and glanced back at Wally. When the man had left that seedy apartment over twenty years ago, he left during the night while Shad was asleep. The boy had been given no warning of his departure. Shad had simply awakened to discover that Wally was gone.
“And that still doesn’t make us even.” Shad stepped out the door.
Chapter Nine
I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe – I the LORD do all these things.
--Isaiah 45:7
After Dulsie left for work the next morning, Shad lingered at the house a little longer than usual to review some of his books on psychology and abuse. Everything he read confirmed his prognosis about Wally, which meant Shad needed to act if he was going to stop the man’s predations. But he was still stumped on just how to go about that action when the law stood in his way. Shad didn’t miss the irony that he had become an attorney in order to find ways that procured justice when the law was too rigid, and now he was personally in such a dilemma ... again. And although his role the first time had been more passive, it was those events that led him to this career.
Shad was convinced God had a wicked sense of humor.
His plan to linger involved missing most of the morning traffic, so it was actually ten minutes after eight o’clock when Shad stepped through the door of his office into the reception room. Francine looked up from typing at her computer.
“Flat tire or dead starter?” She asked.
Shad realized Francine was referring to the only other two times he had arrived after his coworkers, and he had been late by a much wider margin than this morning.
“Preoccupied driver,” Shad replied.
“I was wondering at what point do I start worrying about you.” Francine regarded him with a slight frown. “You didn’t call, so I was starting to think you had a bad encounter with a deer or a semi.”
“I’m sorry, but I knew I wasn’t gonna be that late.”
“Do you know how much insurance paperwork I’ll have to fill out if you get crunched?”
Shad smiled a little. “It’s nice to know you missed me.”
“I’m not the only one. You’ve already received two calls this morning.” Francine glanced down at her desk.
Shad’s stomach did a couple of rollovers. Did Wally call here wanting to discover what Shad’s plans were?
“Who are they from?” He asked casually as Shad stepped closer to her desk.
Francine picked up a couple of message slips. “One is from a gentleman wanting to discuss lease termination. The other is from Monica Simms.” Francine’s gaze switched to Shad’s face. “She says it’s urgent.”
Shad was relieved it wasn’t Wally, but also disappointed that he was stuck with expecting a call from the man. Since his home and cellular telephone numbers were unlisted, Shad knew Wally would be able to reach him only at the office. He thanked Francine and took the slips into his own work area. Shad set up his laptop computer, turned it on, and dialed Monica’s number on his office telephone.
He knew it was probably too early in the morning for Vic to be there and answer the phone, so Monica was the one who picked up.
“It’s Charissa,” she replied to Shad’s inquiry. “You said, and she said, that you wanted to listen to her whenever she wanted to talk. Well, yesterday after our meeting with the psychologist, when she was going to bed, she said she wanted to tell you something.”
“Do you know exactly what about?”
“It’s the darndest thing. She absolutely refuses to tell me.”
“Will she talk to me on the phone?”
“I’ve already asked her. She said she doesn’t want me to hear, so no, not on the phone.”
As Shad began pulling up his schedule on the
computer he tried to analyze Charissa’s change in behavior. Was it a change in strategy?
A definite side effect of being away from the office for a day was the pileup of work which would always greet him upon Shad’s return. He also had a court appearance this afternoon. “I’ve got too much going on today to see her this morning or afternoon. I suppose if I must, I could come out this evening.”
Monica didn’t respond for a couple of seconds. “Lawyers will make house calls?”
“This one does.”
“Well, it’s just that tonight we’d promised Charissa to take her out to the movies.”
“Don’t break your promise.” Shad pulled up his schedule for Friday. He knew there would be spillover from today, which made tomorrow’s itinerary chaotic but doable. His difficulty was determining when to make time for Charissa.
“I should be able to fit you in tomorrow, but I’m probably gonna have to grab the first opportunity that pops up, and I don’t know when that’ll be. I think it would be easiest if I just make that house call when the chance comes up. I’ll give you a call when I can head out.”
“That works for me.”
After he hung up the phone, Shad proceeded to plunge into his work, but the matter about Wally kept infringing on his thoughts, making Shad almost cringe every time the phone rang. He was actually glad for the court appearance that helped Shad to stay focused on matters at hand, but that only lasted for a couple of hours. When he returned to the office the work load didn’t seem any lighter, and it was five-thirty before he was able to start wrapping things up. Then his cell phone rang.
Since the office called him on that line only when he was out of the building, Shad knew it had to be someone in the family calling him. When Shad answered it he was pleased to see that it was Dulsie calling him from their home phone.
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