It’s four in the morning, and despite his exhaustion, Dick can’t sleep. He’s had trouble since Dee called about Otis’s return. At first, he couldn’t sleep because he was stressed over what he needed to do, and now he can’t sleep because of what he’s tempted to do.
The problem is that numbers, like chemistry, are irrefutable. Given enough data, a proper analysis will reveal factual truth not colored by opinion, personal bias, or desire. And the reason his brain refuses to shut off is because of the exhaustive amount of data that exists on pedophiles to which, thanks to Otis, he has now been exposed. He cannot simply dismiss it out of hand, and he knows, if analyzed, it would result in conclusions that are incontrovertible, absolute, and terrifying. The pathologies he discovered are deeply troubling, and even though Otis is gone and the threat to his own family has been eradicated, thousands, possibly even tens of thousands, Otises still exist, along with tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands, innocent soon-to-be victims.
Rationally, he understands the threat has always been there. But now that he knows the statistics, it’s impossible to put it out of his mind. Like trying to unsee the sun, no matter how hard he tries, he knows it is there. He knows its pattern, understands it is going to rise and set each day, and if he analyzed it closely enough, could figure out at exactly what moment. Each night, when he closes his eyes, he sees it—the numbers, the statistics, and the impossible-to-stomach truth that no one is going to do anything about it.
And so, he doesn’t sleep.
Which is why, though it’s still dark, he decides to get up and go for his run. He ties on his running shoes, puts a fresh nicotine patch on his bicep, and walks into darkness. He runs in the direction of his old life—Caroline and the kids. He won’t make it. He’s barely able to go two blocks without stopping, but he runs toward them just the same.
His feet pound the pavement as the numbers spin in his head. Thousands of repeat pedophiles are released each year. Within the first five years of their parole, violent sex offenders of children have a 43 percent likelihood of reconviction. Considering that only 32 percent of sex offenses are reported and that the conviction rate hovers around 75 percent, the actual percentage of re-offense is at least twice that, a whopping 86 percent. There are 98,910 sex registrants living in California, and that’s only the 72 percent that registered, making the actual number over 137,000. Several hundred live here, in Irvine, the town where his kids live, where his baseball team lives, all of them at the mercy of a system that can’t protect them.
Dick stops breathless and, hands on his knees, sucks oxygen into his lungs.
He looks up, pleased to see he’s made it several houses farther than yesterday.
As he walks back toward his apartment, he admires the tidy, buttoned-up houses along the street, basketball hoops and bikes in the driveways, planter boxes filled with flowers, and signs that say, “Home Sweet Home,” the people inside believing they’ve moved to a nice neighborhood and are therefore safe.
When he gets to his apartment, he opens his laptop and logs back onto the Internet, looking and analyzing the numbers that disprove them all.