“How long has she known?” Dick says as Caroline scowls from the doorway.
“What are you talking about?”
“How long has Kiley known I’m not her father?”
Caroline’s ruddy face loses its pink, the truth plain in her beady brown eyes. Dick’s never been a violent man, but for the first time, he understands how a man might hit a woman. He thrusts the printout Graham gave him toward her and, when she doesn’t take it, drops it at her feet.
“She’s still my daughter,” he says, “and if you do anything to interfere with that, so help me, I’ll petition for full custody of Jim and sue you for damages for the past thirteen years.”
“She doesn’t want anything to do with you,” Caroline spits.
“Yeah, well, you might want to convince her otherwise, unless you want to lose everything you lied so hard to get.”
He whirls, feeling like the blood in his veins is blistering his skin.
* * *
Dick tosses and turns for two hours, then gets up and tries to read the novel he started a month ago. Losing interest, he tries to sleep again, and finally gets up and packs his bag for Las Vegas. His flight leaves this evening, and he’s heading to the airport straight from work.
As he eats his breakfast of grapefruit and shredded wheat, he reads the paper. As always, he starts with the national news, moves to the local section, and saves the best—sports—for last.
He never makes it to the photo of the Angels’ pitcher concussing the Giants’ catcher as he slides into home to score the winning run. On the front page of Section B is a quarter-page article topped by the photo of a crying woman being held by an older one. In the middle of the column is a smaller photo of a little boy with brown curly hair and freckles. The headline reads, “Missing Irvine Boy Found, Two-Time-Convicted Child Molester Arrested.”
Eight-year-old Jerry O’Neill’s body was found dismembered in a suitcase that had been abandoned in a dump in Santa Ana. Fibers found on the bag led detectives to arrest Leonard Fedorov, a child molester who had been released nine months prior . . .
The shredded wheat sits soggy in the bowl.
* * *
The office is empty except for the janitor running a vacuum over the carpet on the other side of the room. Dick jiggles his mouse to wake his computer, opens the “Stuff” folder, clicks on “Pepper,” and without hesitation, clicks the blue button.
The results are nearly instant. If a subject meets the minimum threshold, there is a 93 percent probability of a positive result within five years of their release. In other words, all the other losers like Otis who are let loose in the world will, nine times out of ten, repeat their crimes within five years of their release.
He accesses the prison database, finds Leonard Fedorov, scrolls through his file for the contributing factors, and punches them into the program as he goes: two previous convictions, boy victims, never married . . .
Twenty minutes later he is finished. If the analysis returns a cumulative score over sixty-three, it’s positive.
Click.
Subject 1: Leonard Albert Fedorov – 67
The number sears into the occipital lobe of Dick’s brain. From the moment Leonard Fedorov was released, there was a 93 percent probability he would strike again. Dick throws the mouse at the monitor, and the screen cracks, the data mutating into a starburst rainbow at the point of impact, the green sixty-seven still glowing.
He thinks of the curly-haired boy in the paper—Jerry O’Neill—his apartment only a few miles from Dick’s own.