Carolyn’s fingers trembled as she stared at the rapist’s picture. On the street, they called him Fast Eddie. His real name was Edward James Downly. At sixteen, he’d been sentenced to serve a year in the county jail, then placed on four years’ probation. Since the crime had been sexual in nature, Downly had been tried as an adult and ordered to register as a sex offender. Under the DNA Forensic Identification Data Bank and Data Bank Act of 1998, all registered sex offenders had to provide a DNA sample. At present, Fast Eddie was only nineteen years old.
“I…I…” Carolyn stammered, slowly raising her eyes. “I don’t remember, Brad. I’ll have to check his file.”
“Of all people,” he said, dropping down in the leather chair behind his paper-strewn desk, “I never thought I’d be having a conversation like this with you, Carolyn. How long has it been?”
“I told you,” she said, her voice shaking, “I’m not certain. His probation is due to terminate any day. Eddie never gave me any indication that he was a rapist or pedophile. In the underlying offense, all he did was slide his hand up the dress of the fourteen-year-old who lived next door. Eddie swore she was his girlfriend. He claims the only reason he was prosecuted was due to some kind of vendetta between the two families. The last time I talked to him, he was engaged to get married.”
Brad leaned forward, his face frozen into hard lines. “The media’s beating our door down. You’re one of our best officers. Tell me what I want to hear, Carolyn.”
She rubbed her forehead, covering a portion of her face with her hand. He wanted to be reassured that she’d seen Downly that month, that she’d monitored his every move, that there was nothing the agency could have done to prevent him from brutalizing a child. “The truth? Do you really want to know? It’s not what you want to hear.”
“Of course I want the truth,” Brad shouted, standing and removing his jacket, then yanking off his tie. “We have to back up our statements with documentation. I promised we’d get copies of everything in Downly’s file to the police within the hour. The address they have for him is no good. How long has it been, Carolyn?” He walked over until they were only a few inches apart. “Christ, we can’t play twenty questions while a rapist is on the loose. Tell me where we stand, damn it.”
“A long time,” she said, nervously rubbing her palms on her skirt. “Nine months…maybe as long as a year.”
“A year!” Brad exclaimed, his hot breath on her face. “You haven’t seen this man in a freaking year?”
“Don’t forget,” Carolyn told him, “I’m not assigned to field services. I had over forty pre-sentence investigations to complete last month. On top of that, I now have a caseload of over two hundred offenders. To stay on top of everything is humanly impossible. You know that, Brad.”
“When I heard it was your case,” he said, pacing around the room, “I didn’t think there was going to be a problem.” He shook his hands to release the tension. “Get everything you have on Downly to the PD. Don’t answer your phone, and don’t leave the building until we figure out what we’re going to tell the press.”
Carolyn pushed herself to her feet, then stood with her arms limp at her side. “There’s nothing to figure out,” she said. “As soon as I hand over Downly’s file, they’ll know I let the case fall dormant. Even if the brass decides to fire me, I refuse to falsify information.”
Brad pointed at his chest, even more agitated than before. “Did I ask you to falsify information? Are you trying to blackmail me?”
Carolyn fell silent, linking eyes with him. They’d been lovers until Brad’s promotion six months ago. The affair had been doomed from the onset. He was thirty-nine and had never been married. A decent man in most respects, Brad had a wild streak, probably what made him so irresistible to women. He raced cars in his spare time, liked to hang out and drink with the guys, and his temper was notorious. Carolyn could never understand how he maintained a perfect physique and didn’t look a day over thirty. Good genes, she told herself, thinking his lifestyle would eventually catch up to him.
“I don’t want a repeat of the Cully case,” she told him. “It blew up in our faces, remember?”
The situation with Jerry Cully had been similar, yet far more serious. Cully had been placed on probation for indecent exposure. In most instances, men who exposed themselves were not sexual predators. The nature of their crimes was passive. They tended to be introverted, almost pathetic individuals who weren’t known to commit acts of violence. Jerry Cully had been an exception. He’d raped a student the previous year on the same campus where Carolyn attended law school, a few months before Brad had been promoted. His probation officer, Dick Stanton, had been counting the days until his retirement. Unlike Carolyn, who had supervised Eddie Downly diligently for over three years before falling lax, Cully’s probation officer had only seen him on one occasion.
When the rape occurred, Stanton had doctored the files so it appeared that he’d been routinely monitoring the man’s activities. As it turned out, Cully had been a serial rapist. Dick Stanton had unknowingly provided his probationer with an alibi for one of his crimes. Stanton had come forth with the truth, then turned in his resignation. During the time he and Carolyn had been seeing each other, Brad had confessed that he was the one who’d encouraged Stanton to alter the files. He knew what he’d done was wrong, yet he’d defended his position as protecting not only his fellow probation officer, but the reputation of the entire agency. Carolyn wanted to make sure he wouldn’t ask the same thing of her.
“To expedite things,” Brad told her, “bring the file and let Rachel copy it and get it to Hank Sawyer at the PD. If there’s anything you left out, e-mail it to Hank later. I’ll call the boss while you’re gone and deliver the bad news. I have another case I want you to handle.”
“What do you think?” Carolyn asked, worried that she could lose her job once the truth came out regarding Downly.
Brad Preston reached across his desk for the phone. “Do what I said,” he told her, gesturing with his free hand. “The sooner they catch Downly, the quicker things will die down.”
At nine-forty-five, Carolyn handed Rachel the thick file on Eddie Downly. Before she returned to Brad’s office, she darted into the ladies’ room, then burst into tears. Opening her purse, she removed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. She tried to tell herself that even if she had seen Downly every month for the past year, it wouldn’t have prevented him from raping an innocent child. When an offender began to disintegrate, however, telltale signs generally appeared. This wasn’t always the case with a sex offender, though. Many times they came across as model citizens. A pedophile was like a crack in the wall, hidden behind a piece of furniture. Regardless, she would have to live with this for the rest of her life, never knowing if she could have somehow stopped it.
Carolyn propped the paper up on the mirror above the sink. An eight-year-old girl, for God’s sake. Her daughter, Rebecca, was twelve. Downly had not only raped the child, he’d strangled her. When the girl had fallen unconscious, he’d mistakenly thought she was dead. Yesterday while Carolyn and her children were enjoying a cookout with her mother in Camarillo, Luisa Cortez was in a ditch behind an abandoned building that had once been a Dairy Queen.
Carolyn wadded the newspaper up in a ball and hurled it across the room. Years ago, she’d enjoyed her job. Now she woke up every morning with a knot in her stomach. They had to stop giving her more work than she could handle. Before Brad had taken over the unit, she’d lost it one day. The eleven-year-old victim in the case she’d been investigating had been made to bend over the toilet every morning before school while her stepfather sodomized her. When she fought back, he’d twisted off her nipples with a pair of pliers. The case alone had been horrifying. During the investigation, Carolyn learned that the social services agency had failed to provide the child with psychological counseling. While the stepfather remained in the home pending trial, the girl had been placed in foster care, leaving behind her friends, her scho
ol, and even her mother. Her mother continued to reside with the defendant under the belief that he was innocent. During the trial, Cheryl Wright had tried to kill herself.
Carolyn had stormed into her supervisor’s office and demanded that the case be reassigned to another officer. She was investigating four other crimes against children and she couldn’t handle it. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, she’d thought of going to the stepfather’s house and shooting him. Irene Settle, the woman in charge of the unit at the time, had told her that she must finish the case or turn in her resignation. When Carolyn had asked why, the woman had looked her squarely in the eye and told her she was the only one in the unit who was qualified to handle a case of that magnitude.
Carolyn continued to work at her job for the benefit of the victims. In her first year at Ventura College of Law, she attended classes every Monday and Wednesday evening. She was fortunate that her fifteen-year-old son, John, was responsible enough to look after his younger sister. She had enrolled in law school to better herself and increase her income. She was also looking for a way to escape.
At thirty-seven, Carolyn was small in stature, yet possessed a curvaceous and feminine body. Her chestnut hair fell to her shoulders in natural waves, her skin was flawless, and her eyes were the color of molasses. Dressed neatly in a pink cotton shirt and a simple black skirt, she’d draped the matching jacket over a chair in her office so it could dry from the rain. Two identical suits hung in her closet at home, differing only as to color—one navy blue, the other beige. Carolyn varied her wardrobe with six pastel shirts which she ironed every Saturday morning. Now and then she wore a dress, something simple yet tasteful. Her only accessories consisted of a sterling silver cross with a flower in the center given to her by her mother, a Swiss Army watch, and an antique pair of pearl cufflinks that had been in her family for over a hundred years. During the thirteen years she’d been a deputy probation officer, the cuff links had become her trademark.
Carolyn kept her head down as she darted down the hall toward Brad’s office. Rachel wasn’t at her desk, and the door to his office was standing open. He looked harried, yet not to the extent he had earlier.
“Wilson took it fairly well,” Brad told her, referring to the head of the agency. “I just got off the phone with Hank Sawyer at the PD. He was amazed at the amount of work you put in on Downly. You’ve got all his known associates, local haunts, relatives, employers.” He flashed a confident smile, displaying a row of gleaming white teeth. “My bet is Downly will be behind bars before the day is over. Sawyer didn’t even mention anything related to the supervision problem. The average term of probation is thirty-six months. We may luck out on this one. The press certainly doesn’t know what we do. The idiots don’t even know the difference between concurrent and consecutive sentences.”
“You mentioned a new case,” Carolyn said, concerned that there might be repercussions. Brad Preston was a proverbial optimist. And all his emotions were out in the open. If you made a mistake or pissed him off, he pounced on you like a cougar. On the other hand, if he caught sight of a solution, he instantly moved on to the next problem. Although she’d resented the fact that he’d been promoted over her, she had to admit that Brad had been the better candidate for this stressful position.
“Yeah, the case,” he said, handing her a file. “The last thing we need is another parolee, right? The knuckleheads in Sacramento should take the heat for what happened with Downly. As soon as the maximum case levels are reached at the district parole offices, the overflow is dumped in our laps. We work for the county, not the state.”
“Why doesn’t field services handle the parolees?” Carolyn asked him. “Our job is to write court reports, reports that are mandated by law. That’s why the unit is called Court Services, even though no one seems to care.”
“Same problem,” Brad told her. “Field services can’t possibly supervise the number of people we have on active probation.” He paused, then a moment later continued. “Okay, here’s the deal. After twenty-three years, they paroled the man who killed Charles Harrison’s son. This is a famous case. You must have heard about it.”
Carolyn’s jaw dropped. “Are you referring to the deputy chief of the LAPD?”
“Harrison, yeah,” Brad said. “But when his son was killed, he was the chief here in Ventura.”
“But why would you want me to handle this case?” Carolyn asked, glancing through the prisoner’s release sheet from Chino. “Even though the PD didn’t spot the problem with the Downly matter, that doesn’t mean it won’t come back to bite us.”
“You’re the bomb, sweetheart,” Brad said. “Look over the particulars. I’ll get us some coffee.” He leapt out of his chair and disappeared through the doorway.
Carolyn looked up to ask him a question before she realized he was no longer in the room. Another one of the man’s unique traits was that he moved like a bolt of lightning. Where did all the energy come from? She knew he wasn’t on drugs. Brad always said he’d trade his frenetic energy for her ability to concentrate. When Carolyn put her mind to something, a person could drop a brick on her foot and she wouldn’t notice.
She stared at the photo of her new parolee. Whereas Brad looked remarkably young for his age, Daniel Metroix appeared ten years older than his forty-one years. His skin was ashen, his dark brown hair was matted and dirty, and his eyes were lined with dark shadows.
When Brad returned and shoved a steaming cup of coffee into her hand, she accepted it eagerly. “You know why I stopped seeing Eddie Downly, don’t you?”
“We’ve already gone through it,” Brad said. “I was in your shoes until recently. I know how overworked you guys are. Downly left a ton of evidence at the scene. How do you think they fingered him as the rapist so fast?”
Carolyn closed the Metroix file. “I have to take work home with me every night as it is, and I’ve never put in a request for overtime.”
Brad gave her a chastising look. “Now isn’t the time to complain.”
“I’m not complaining,” she said. “I’m attending law school, in case you’ve forgotten. The reading alone is killing me. Last night I fell asleep at the kitchen table in my clothes. And I’m not spending enough time with my children.” She stopped and sucked in a breath. “You don’t assign me thefts and burglaries, Brad. If you want me to do a decent job on the serious cases, you can’t expect me to ride herd on a bunch of probationers and parolees. And especially not a case as sensitive as this one. I know you’re my supervisor, but shouldn’t you rethink this?”
“You’re our top investigator,” he told her, riffling through his desk drawer and pulling out a bottle of Tylenol. “Never drink tequila on a weeknight.” Once he washed the pills down with his coffee, he continued. “What would take another officer several months to complete, you can knock off in a few days. Sometimes I think you know more about the law than half of our judges. When you recommend a fifty-year sentence, it’s a done deal. If you told the court a defendant should be taken out and shot, a few of the judges would start shopping for a shotgun.”
“Don’t be asinine,” Carolyn said, her face flushing in embarrassment. “My recommendations are imposed because they’re well researched and appropriate. The judges know me, that’s all. They know I take my work seriously.”
“No,” he argued. “That’s power.”
“Wielding power in the courtroom doesn’t pay my bills,” she told him. “Why do you think I’m working so hard to get my law degree?”
“Put in for overtime. Are you that much of a martyr?”
“You know what’s going on, Brad,” Carolyn told him, surprised that he’d make such a statement. “With the budget cutbacks, if we start putting in for overtime, they’ll start laying off people. Then we’ll have more work than we have now.”
“I admit I assign you more difficult cases,” he said, bracing his head with his hand. He hadn’t taken the time to get a haircut, and with his blond hair almost reaching his eyebrows,
his face took on a deceptive look of innocence. “Sure, it’s not fair. I don’t have a choice. You’re one of the few people who understands the complexities of sentencing. Assign one of our other officers a twenty-count case, with multiple victims and dozens of enhancements, and I’ll end up doing most of the work myself.”
The cases kept coming like bullets, and the only way Carolyn could meet the mandatory deadlines was to start plowing through them as soon as they hit her desk. Officers who procrastinated either did a lousy job or ended up putting in twenty-four-hour days. With her outside commitments, Carolyn couldn’t afford to let her work stockpile.
Supervising a parolee was not anywhere as complex as handling a pre-sentence investigation, however. Unless the individual violated, the only obligation was to monitor his activities on a monthly basis. On the other hand, supervision was dangerous. After glancing through the file, Carolyn knew Brad was placing her in a precarious position, the last place she needed to be at the moment. “Everyone and his dog are going to be looking over my shoulder with Metroix.”
“Good observation,” Preston said sarcastically, tapping his pen against his teeth. “Metroix killed a kid, Carolyn. The kid’s father is a high-ranking law enforcement official. He falls into a sewer and fifty cops will nail down the lid.”
“I’m aware the victim was Charles Harrison’s son. I even dated Liam Armstrong when I was in high school.”
“Who’s Liam Armstrong?”
“One of the two boys who survived,” Carolyn told him, bringing forth images of the egotistical football player who’d tried to force her to have sex with him on their second date.
“Small town,” Preston said, gulping down another swig of his coffee. “I’m glad I didn’t grow up in this place. Bring me up to snuff on your other work.”
Ventura was a unique city, Carolyn thought. The community had sprung up around the San Buenaventura Mission, and in many ways still maintained a Spanish flavor. Houses with boat slips were now crammed along the ocean side of the 101 Freeway, and the real estate in the foothills offered fantastic views. An hour north was Santa Barbara—home to millionaires, polo fields, and pristine beaches. The citizens of Ventura, however, were mostly hardworking, middle-class people.
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