First Offense by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

the tension, praying he didn’t spot the fear. His eyes, she kept thinking. It was all in the eyes. Right behind those dark eyes with the long lashes, rage was just simmering. “I live alone. Just me and my dog. Do you like dogs. Randy?”
    “Sure,” he said, thrown off balance by this change in direction, “everybody likes dogs.”
    Ann beamed innocently. “I have a German shepherd. You know, a big dog. They say you can tell a person’s personality by the kind of dogs they like.” Placing her hands on the table, Ann said, “Let’s play a game just for fun. If you had a dog, what kind of dog would it be?”
    Delvecchio became wary all over again. “Is this some kind of test or something? I don’t like tests.”
    “No,” Ann said quickly. “We’ve been at this for quite a while now. Randy. I thought we’d take a little break. You know, like recess at school.”
    “I didn’t get to go to school much,” he said, his gaze drifting toward a far comer of the room.
    “Oh, no,” Ann said. “You mean you dropped out?”
    “No,” he said, a glint of moisture in his eyes. “I didn’t have no shoes, see, and they wouldn’t let me go to school with no shoes.”
    “I’m sorry,” Ann said, truly compassionate, watching as he blinked back the tears. Sometimes even with the worst offender, she caught a glimpse of the child he had once been and was saddened. Would Delvecchio be here today, she wondered, if someone had provided him with a pair of shoes? “Look,” she told him, “let’s play our game. Forget about the past right now. If you had a dog, Randy, what kind of dog would it be?”
    Delvecchio narrowed his eyes, but a moment later he relaxed once more. “I know it wouldn’t be one of those little mutts with the bows in their hair. They bite. Those dogs are fucking vicious, man.” He turned his head to the side, and with his other hand he cracked his neck.
    “Oh, really?” Ann said, her expression frozen in place, only her eyes expanding. She was getting close, very close. “A dog bit me one time. Want me to show you?”
    “Yeah,” he said, curious, getting into it.
    Ann shoved the chair back a few feet from the table and pulled her skirt up above her knees. “See, right there,” she said, pointing at a nonexistent mark on her thigh. “A little toy poodle sank his teeth in me. Can you see the scar? Boy, I almost killed him. I kicked the shit out of that damn dog.” Before he could get a good look at what Ann was pointing at, she quickly repositioned her legs under the table and pulled her skirt back down. Delvecchio had been trying to see something, but not what Ann was showing him. Scars were evidently not as interesting as her long legs and the place between them.
    Allowed this intimacy, Randy grew animated in a childish way, smiling, moving his shoulders around. He rolled up the sleeves on his jumpsuit and purposely flexed his biceps, showing off for her. He was aroused, Ann could tell. Sitting right there a few feet away from her, he was probably thinking how much fun it would be to place his big hands around her neck and strangle her. A little cheesecake might get him going, but Ann knew it wasn’t sex that excited him. Randy Delvecchio was a rapist and a murderer. What turned him on, excited him past the point of no return, was cruelty and intimidation. For Randy Delvecchio, there was no such thing as sex.
    “A fucking poodle bit me too,” Delvecchio volunteered, again chuckling and making eyes at Ann. “Right here by my ankle.” While Ann leaned over to look, he pulled up the baggy pants of his jumpsuit and exposed his muscular calf. “Hurt like a bitch. I hate those stupid dogs.”
    “Was it a white poodle or a black one? I’ve heard the white ones are the meanest. The one that got me was a white one.”
    “Yeah, you’re right,” Delvecchio said, smiling so broadly that his crooked teeth were fully exposed. “They’re the meanest. It was a white one, and I think it had a