Dick is sitting in his cubicle at Pentco, staring at the screensaver of bouncing balls on his computer. The lab is deserted and silent except for the buzzing fluorescent lights and soft whirring computers. He’s been here since he left Kiley at the restaurant, his rage at critical mass.
The straw is in a baggie on his desk, and every other minute he looks at it, stunned and disgusted with himself that it took this long before he figured it out, thirteen years of his life given to a lie. He rubs his eyes hard, then rests them on his knuckles, his fists pushing against the sockets. He met Caroline when he was in Boston getting his PhD. She worked at the bagel shop where he bought his breakfast each morning. She was attractive with large breasts, and Dick’s always had a weakness for well-developed glands. One morning, she asked him out. It stunned him, but he said yes. They went to a movie and after had sex. Then she asked him to go out the following week, and he agreed. It had continued that way for about a month when she dropped the bombshell that she was pregnant. It never occurred to Dick it might not be his.
He rubs his eyes again as if trying to erase the memory. Until tonight, he believed his mistake had been having sex with Caroline, now he knows it was believing her when she told him the baby was his, then doing the noble thing and marrying her.
What destroys him is how much he loves Kiley regardless of all that. He would still lay down his life for her. Meanwhile, he now knows the feeling isn’t mutual. She no longer considers him her “dad,” and he wonders how long she’s known. Certainly not as an infant or toddler. In those early years, they’d been close. Caroline didn’t have much patience, and Kiley was difficult, so Dick was the one who rocked her to sleep and soothed away her tears. He taught her to count, to read, and how to ride a bike. He was the one who helped her with her homework, filled out her school forms, took her to the doctor and dentist.
Elementary school graduation, he thinks, the sudden memory like a slap. She refused to take a picture with him.
Two years!
Spots swim in his brain, and sickness roils his gut. For two years, Kiley has known he wasn’t her dad and kept it from him.
Why?
But as soon as he asks the question, he knows the answer. Money. Caroline didn’t want to lose the child support she was going to get for Kiley when they got divorced.
His brain on fire and desperate for a distraction, he pulls a yellow notepad in front of him, feeling like he needs to do something or else go mad.
He starts to write. Doing what he’s been avoiding for more than a week, the numbers burning a hole in his brain. Knowledge is power. And he feels so powerless. He will get it out of his system and be done with it. Figuring it out doesn’t mean he needs to do anything about it. It simply proves it can be done. His pen flies across the page as he exorcises the thoughts from his head.
Statement of problem: Released repeat pedophiles pose an imminent risk to society, and the law is powerless to do anything about it until it’s too late.
Implications: Countless innocent children are being senselessly victimized.
His body buzzes, and he’s slightly concerned by his excitement:
Hypothetical solutions: Theoretically, potential threats could be analyzed, their behaviors predicted, and their crimes prevented by preemptive neutralization or elimination if dangerous, portentous symptoms are exhibited (i.e. predatory or depraved behavior).
He taps the pen on the pad, thinking for a moment before continuing.
Possible contributing factors to irremediable predatory disposition:
- Previous offense(s)
- Boy victim(s)
- Victim unknown to perp
- Never married
- Male
- Level of violence
- Age of perp
- Age of victim(s)
He’s surprised how clear the criteria are in his mind. He thinks about the countless articles he read on the pathologies and continues to write:
- Paranoia
- Low motivation for treatment
- Age of onset of offending
- Negative relationship with mother
- Diverse sex crimes
- Release date
Throwing down the pen like he just completed a timed exam, he blows out a breath and leans back in his chair.
Still pumped, he takes a sip of his cold coffee, wakes his computer, and opens the statistical program he uses for lab analysis. He programs in the contributing factors and sets the Mendoza Line. The Mendoza Line is not a technical term, but it’s the name he uses to describe the breakpoint of a study. The phrase was coined after Minnie Mendoza, a Minnesota Twins player from the seventies who never hit over .200. A batter “under the Mendoza Line” isn’t considered a threat. If you don’t make the line, you don’t belong in the big leagues.
All that’s left is to input the data. The more cases he analyzes, the more accurate the results. Based on historical data, the program will analyze which factors contribute most to future outcomes, ultimately providing an algorithm that can predict the statistical probability for recidivism of an individual. In other words, when he’s done, Dick will know with a fair amount of certainty which recently released pedophiles are most likely to strike again.
The data is at his fingertips. Thirty years ago, the founder of Pentco made an arrangement with the director of the BOP, Bureau of Prisons, that allowed Pentco access to the prisoner database so the company would have a wealth of potential human guinea pigs. There’s nothing illegal about it. Participants gladly sign waivers over the potential health risks of drug trials to receive upgraded housing, better food, or just a break in the monotony of prison life. They never lack for volunteers.
It’s a slow process. First he needs to narrow the search to sex offenders who committed crimes against minors, then he needs to analyze each of those files for the contributing factors. Each file takes twenty minutes to parse, and when he finally shuts down the computer near midnight, he’s only gotten through a dozen of the hundred randomly chosen subjects of his data set.
He returns on Saturday and works all day, only taking a two-hour break in the afternoon to coach his team. There’s no one in the office, and the work is tedious, but Dick doesn’t mind. Methodical researching and analytical thinking are his gifts.
On Sunday, he doesn’t take a break at all, and a little after one in the morning, he finishes. Eyes blurry, and brain buzzing from caffeine, he stares at the buzzing blue “calculate” button in the lower right corner of his screen.
Click and get your prize.
Except, he’s now more certain than ever, it’s a prize he doesn’t want. His self-preservation angel has returned and sits squarely on his shoulder. Knowledge may be power, but in this case, it would be nothing but an enormous burden he wouldn’t have any idea what to do with. He is no hero. What he did with Otis, he did because he had no choice. Otis was threatening his family. Beyond them, none of this is his responsibility, and the only thing knowing will do is make it feel like somehow it is and make it so he never sleeps again. And he really needs to sleep.
With a yawn, he closes the program and drags the file he named “Pepper” for “Program of Predictability of Recidivism” into the “Stuff” folder on his desktop, where he intends for it to remain.