assault of a minor that saved the state the money, the judge had set a $5,000 bail, stating: “I trust Mr. Preacher will honor the court’s decision to appear.”
Mr. Preacher had jumped bail straight from the courthouse steps. Three months later, he’d been fingered in mug shots by a sixteen-year-old girl who’d been sexually assaulted in Rhode Island. By then, Preacher had moved on to Maine.
In 1990, he’d kidnapped a fifteen-year-old girl, clubbed her with an axe handle in a Portland Gas n’ Go parking lot, and driven her to a forest, where he’d raped her while he described in detail how he was going to kill her. After five hours of being victimized, the girl had managed to flee while Preacher had slept like a baby from exhaustion. He was caught. Again, he’d pleaded down, and again was given a lesser sentence on fabricated charges that did not speak toward the awful truth of what he’d done. He got five-to-fifteen. Served five. Five. In a minimum-security corrections center nicer than Rachel’s dormitory; moved from a maximum-security prison to the correction center after mental-health tests revealed: “Mr. Preacher is a victim of a low IQ. His actions feed his base needs and are not done with ‘criminal intent.’ He, and society, will profit from behavior modification. He accepts blame for his role.”
A victim? His role? As if the girls he’d raped had played a role? As if Laura had played a role by opening her door. Who were these people who made such atrocious decisions? They had to be childless.
Preacher had been paroled after just five years of behavioral modification. He’d moved to Vermont and assumed a new identity, worked his odd jobs for folks like Laura and Daniel, then lit out for Maine, where he was suspected of trying to kidnap a woman and her daughter though they could not testify that it was him for sure.
His next stop had been a return to Vermont. To Laura.
Why he’d come back to Laura’s house was unclear. Perhaps because he knew her pattern and knew she’d likely be home alone during the day, even if he hadn’t known about the baby. Rath remembered Preacher’s laugh when he was hauled away by the bailiff, as if he knew he’d be out much earlier—a cold, dead laugh.
“So. He’s been a good boy, ” Rath said, stung by humiliation, by his own impotency in the face of a system that gave lenience to perpetrators and forgot their victims. Time and again when Rath turned on the TV to see a rapist or a child molester brought into court, he learned that the perp had priors for similar crimes and had been released early. Every crime committed after the perp’s early release had been preventable.
During Rath’s first two years as a detective, he’d learned his idea of justice was a delusion. Cops reacted to violent crime. They could not stop it. Violence was an entwined thread in human DNA. Cops came in to clean up and hopefully arrest who’d done it. They were janitors. And once the system got the criminals, it was out of the cops’ hands. The DA charged perps as the DA saw fit, not the cops. And the system let freaks out for being good.
Rath had thought there would be satisfaction in sending rapists or murderers to prison. There was a professional satisfaction. But not a personal one. Because this subspecies did not care about being in prison. They embraced being put among their own kind, where they could brag and learn from each other, wallow in a shared self-pity for all the wrongs exacted against them by parents and teachers and cops and wives, plot for another stab at things when they got on the outside. The only part of prison they resented was not being able to act on the animal urges that had put them inside to start. The criminal life was a state of mind, a belief as powerful and influential as any religion. Unapologetic and self-righteous. And you couldn’t put a belief in prison.
A look of embarrassment sullied Laroche’s face. “Good behavior gets a con up
Mr. Preacher had jumped bail straight from the courthouse steps. Three months later, he’d been fingered in mug shots by a sixteen-year-old girl who’d been sexually assaulted in Rhode Island. By then, Preacher had moved on to Maine.
In 1990, he’d kidnapped a fifteen-year-old girl, clubbed her with an axe handle in a Portland Gas n’ Go parking lot, and driven her to a forest, where he’d raped her while he described in detail how he was going to kill her. After five hours of being victimized, the girl had managed to flee while Preacher had slept like a baby from exhaustion. He was caught. Again, he’d pleaded down, and again was given a lesser sentence on fabricated charges that did not speak toward the awful truth of what he’d done. He got five-to-fifteen. Served five. Five. In a minimum-security corrections center nicer than Rachel’s dormitory; moved from a maximum-security prison to the correction center after mental-health tests revealed: “Mr. Preacher is a victim of a low IQ. His actions feed his base needs and are not done with ‘criminal intent.’ He, and society, will profit from behavior modification. He accepts blame for his role.”
A victim? His role? As if the girls he’d raped had played a role? As if Laura had played a role by opening her door. Who were these people who made such atrocious decisions? They had to be childless.
Preacher had been paroled after just five years of behavioral modification. He’d moved to Vermont and assumed a new identity, worked his odd jobs for folks like Laura and Daniel, then lit out for Maine, where he was suspected of trying to kidnap a woman and her daughter though they could not testify that it was him for sure.
His next stop had been a return to Vermont. To Laura.
Why he’d come back to Laura’s house was unclear. Perhaps because he knew her pattern and knew she’d likely be home alone during the day, even if he hadn’t known about the baby. Rath remembered Preacher’s laugh when he was hauled away by the bailiff, as if he knew he’d be out much earlier—a cold, dead laugh.
“So. He’s been a good boy, ” Rath said, stung by humiliation, by his own impotency in the face of a system that gave lenience to perpetrators and forgot their victims. Time and again when Rath turned on the TV to see a rapist or a child molester brought into court, he learned that the perp had priors for similar crimes and had been released early. Every crime committed after the perp’s early release had been preventable.
During Rath’s first two years as a detective, he’d learned his idea of justice was a delusion. Cops reacted to violent crime. They could not stop it. Violence was an entwined thread in human DNA. Cops came in to clean up and hopefully arrest who’d done it. They were janitors. And once the system got the criminals, it was out of the cops’ hands. The DA charged perps as the DA saw fit, not the cops. And the system let freaks out for being good.
Rath had thought there would be satisfaction in sending rapists or murderers to prison. There was a professional satisfaction. But not a personal one. Because this subspecies did not care about being in prison. They embraced being put among their own kind, where they could brag and learn from each other, wallow in a shared self-pity for all the wrongs exacted against them by parents and teachers and cops and wives, plot for another stab at things when they got on the outside. The only part of prison they resented was not being able to act on the animal urges that had put them inside to start. The criminal life was a state of mind, a belief as powerful and influential as any religion. Unapologetic and self-righteous. And you couldn’t put a belief in prison.
A look of embarrassment sullied Laroche’s face. “Good behavior gets a con up
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