“You made a mistake,” Steve says as Dick walks into the bar.
Dick nods in greeting and takes the barstool beside him. Henry-N-Harry’s is quiet, he and Dick the only ones in the place beside the bartender. Country music mingles with the whoosh of the air conditioning.
His text to Dick was simple:
“Good to see you too,” Dick says.
Dick still wears his suit from the funeral. He stood out like the oddball he was among the surfers, holding his shoes, the cuffs of his trousers rolled up. Steve hadn’t expected him to be there. It’s a fallacy that criminals frequently return to the scene of the crime. Most perpetrators steer clear of anything that might implicate them. But there he was among the mourners—bowing his head, punching the air, and looking genuinely moved by the service.
“Nice suit,” Steve says, unable to help himself.
Dick almost smiles but doesn’t quite manage it. His eyes are bruised with exhaustion, and his shoulders slumped. He flags down the bartender and orders the same beer as last time, Hoppy Ending.
“How’d you do it?” Steve asks.
Dick ignores him. Patiently he waits for his beer, and when it arrives, he says, “It was a nice ceremony.”
“Yeah. It sounds like you murdered a great guy.”
“He died of a heart attack.”
Steve shakes his head and feels his blood grow warm. “You screwed up,” he says.
Dick’s head bobs in agreement.
“You know you screwed up?”
Dick’s expression tightens, and his shoulders slump a little more, as if gravity is getting heavier and he’s having a tough time staying upright.
“Actually, I don’t know one way or the other,” he says finally.
“Hamilton was flying straight.”
“I know you want to believe that. So did I.”
“But you killed him anyway.”
Dick winces, and Steve feels a frisson of satisfaction knowing he landed a jab.
“Steve, how old are you?” Dick asks.
“Forty-nine.”
“And in the last thirty years, since you became an adult, how many times have you had sex with a kid?”
Steve narrows his gaze, and Dick looks at him, unfazed, as if actually waiting for an answer.
“Hamilton had changed,” Steve says.
“You desperately want to believe that. And like I said, so did I. But neither of us really knows, and a choice needed to be made. There was a boy, a kid, somewhere around the age of thirteen, who I believed was in danger.”
Steve tries not to react but knows he did by the look on Dick’s face. He thinks of Diego Ramirez. He thinks of Ally. Dick nods as if knowing his thoughts or suspecting them.
“What thirteen-year-old kid?” he says.
Dick drops his gaze back to his beer. “Just a kid. And I tried to be sure, and I tried to figure out how to stop it or warn him, but I couldn’t. And time ran out, and there was no way of knowing for certain.” He stops and blows out a hard quavering breath. “And so you might be right. I might have been wrong, and I might have screwed up. But the combination of Ray Hamilton’s history, along with the statistics, along with his actions were too compelling to ignore, so what it came down to was what I could live with. I don’t like that Hamilton had to die, but I can live with it knowing the evil he’d already done in his life. But had I not done anything, and that boy got hurt, that would have haunted me forever.”
“You’re rationalizing murder,” Steve says, though Ally continues to pulse unwanted behind the words.
“Maybe,” Dick says. “I guess we’ll never know.”
“So, from here on out, this is how it’s going to be? Damn the rules of evidence altogether, you’re simply going to justify your actions whether you’re certain of a man’s guilt or not?”
Dick nods, infuriatingly agreeing with everything Steve is saying.
“You’re not going to stop?” Steve clarifies.
“No. I’ll stop.”
“You will?”
“There won’t be a choice. Eventually, my luck is going to run out. Either you’ll figure out a way to arrest me; or I’ll screw up, and somebody else will arrest me; or I’m going to get myself killed.”
Steve stares at him. The guy is unbelievable. In his experience, murderers fall into two categories—those with motive and those who are crazy. Steve believed Dick was squarely the first but is now beginning to wonder if he’s not equal parts of both.
“So what you’re saying is, until you get yourself arrested or killed, you’re going to keep at it?”
Dick shrugs in resignation as if there’s no choice in the matter. Which is ludicrous. Of course there’s a choice.
Steve tries a different approach. “Dick, think about the risk you’re taking. Think about Kiley and Jim.”
Dick stares into his beer. “I am thinking about them. It’s all I think about.”
Steve runs his hand through his hair. “This is insane. There are thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of released sex offenders in the world. You’re not going to stop them all. You’re not even going to stop a fraction. So in the end, you’re risking everything for what? You’re not even making a difference.”
Dick almost smiles as if he finds the statement is amusing. “Have you ever heard ‘The Starfish Story’?”
Steve shakes his head as Dick pushes to his feet. He lays a ten on the bar. “Ask Dee to tell it to you sometime. It’s always been one of her favorites.”
He starts for the door.
“I’m going to stop you,” Steve says to his back.
Dick doesn’t turn, but he stops, and his shoulders still stooped with the weight of what he’s done, he says, “I believe you. You’re very good at your job. I was impressed to see you at the service this morning.”
The next words catch in Steve’s throat. “When I do, will I lose her?”
“I hope not,” Dick says, “but I don’t know.”