William Bernhardt - Cruel Justice

It just wasn’t fair. He’d worked hard to get himself into Homicide, making painstaking efforts to avoid any contact with the Sex Crimes Division. And now he was confronted by child homicides that doubled as sex crimes. And a bloodthirsty pedophile. The worst kind.

Not that there were any good kinds. Mike had been up all night researching, trying to educate himself on topics he had intentionally avoided when he was at the academy. He found the whole subject revolting—and incomprehensible. Some crimes, after all, anyone could understand. Anyone could be driven to murder, Mike firmly believed, given the right circumstances. Anyone could be driven to steal; Victor Hugo had taught him that. But pedophilia—that was too foreign, too sickening.

As he was learning, pedophiles were not all the slavering, skid-row monsters that he thought they would be—indeed, that he wanted them to be. Pedophiles came from all walks of life—all income brackets, all occupations. According to the shrinks, they know they’re different at an early age.

Since they know what they’re interested in early on, they can plan accordingly. It wasn’t an accident that so many of these perverts turned up as teachers or camp counselors or scout leaders. If you know what you want, you figure out a way to get it. So pedophiles intentionally choose professions that put them in contact with children, preferably in some sort of trusted-adviser role.

Mike generally thought psychological profiles were a lot of useless mumbo jumbo and scrupulously avoided them. In this case, however, it was unavoidable; anyone who would do this stuff obviously had serious mental problems. The shrinks, he learned, divided pedophiles into two categories. The more common were situational child molesters—the ones the boys in Sex Crimes called try-sexuals. They were experimenters. They’d try anything—homosexuality, animals, children. The other class were the preferential pedophiles—the hard-core cases. They went after children because that’s what they liked. Period.

The vicious, repetitive cycle of so many domestic crimes was also evident in child molestation, Mike learned. Pedophiles almost always were sexually abused when they were young. When they grew up, they shifted from being victims to being abusers. According to the experts, this was why most pedophiles have a preference for children of a particular age. Turns out, pedophiles fixate on children of the same age they were when they were first sexually abused.

Sometimes, Mike read, pedophiles will start grooming a child, cozying up to him, before he reaches the target age, so that when he does arrive, the stage will be set. And the victims covered the full range of ages, too. Mike read about cases of sexual abuse of infants—less than one-year-olds. He found a case where the pedophile insisted that the kid had “asked for it,” led him on, exposed himself in a provocative manner. The kid was barely two and still in diapers.

When he first tried to trace the kiddie porn back to the killer, Mike learned that the stereotype of pedophile-as-sicko-loner was often false. Many pedophiles worked in teams. Networks, in the modern jargon. They had mailing lists, fax machines, computer bulletin boards, even Internet Web pages, for exchanging names and circulating photos. Most of the slick foreign magazines—like Kinderlieb, Ballbusters— had been driven out of the country by a concerted federal law-enforcement effort. So the creeps began to grow their own.

Perhaps the most amazing fact Mike learned was that pedophiles often seemed to have a genuine affection for children, including their young lovers. They were concerned about their welfare. Almost uniformly, the child molesters studied didn’t think they’d done anything wrong. They didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. After all, all they’d done was share a little love. What could be wrong with that?

This was an important piece of information, Mike realized, because once you understood what made molesters tick, you could figure out how to catch them. Unlike rapists and serial killers, he learned, pedophiles rarely grab kids and force themselves on them immediately. Pedophiles try to seduce their victims. They try to win them over. They try to earn the kid’s trust. They seek out children from dysfunctional families, children who are unhappy at home. Children who are vulnerable. The pedophile finds an opening and tries to fill it. If Mom and Dad can’t afford to give the kid a bicycle, he’ll give the kid a bicycle. If the kid needs to be treated with respect, he treats him with respect. If the kid doesn’t get enough attention, he’ll give him attention. Warm fuzzies. Trust. Whatever it takes.

And so the seduction goes.

Sometimes, even after the creeps are caught, the kids won’t rat on them. After all, they don’t want to hurt their best friend.

That’s what the pedophile counts on.

Mike found the crime statistics inconsistent and unreliable. No one really knew how prevalent this crime was. It was pitifully underreported, even more so than rape. There were a million reasons for a kid not to tell. He might be financially dependent on the molester, or the molester might be in a position of authority over him. The kid might have genuine affection for him, or think he does, anyway. Worse, sometimes parents encourage their kids to remain quiet. They don’t want the stigma, the horrible publicity. They don’t want their kid dragged through the police, the newspapers, the courts. Who would want their neighbors to hear a report on the six o’clock news about their little boy being molested?

Mike pushed away his notes and pressed his hands against his face. He knew this research was changing him, changing the way he viewed the world. Now every time he saw a stranger at a bus stop talking to a little boy, or a Little League coach swatting one of his players on the backside, he’d wonder: Is he the one? It wasn’t fair—there were many good-hearted, upright people working with kids. But nowadays parents couldn’t help but be suspicious. They had to be suspicious.

“Christ,” Mike whispered. “What a nightmare. Just as well we never had any kids.”

Mike thought about calling it quits for the night and heading home, but what was the point? There was nothing waiting for him there. Nothing but a half-empty bottle of Mogen-David and the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Hip, hip, hooray. What was it Mark Twain said? Be good, and you will be lonesome.

Very true. Except Mike wasn’t sure he had been all that good.

On a sudden whim, Mike pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, removed his Citibank credit card, and looked at the small photo hidden behind it.

There she was, in all her glory. Beautiful long chestnut-brown hair. Silly turned-up nose. Freckles. All those years ago.

The picture had been taken the day he and Julia were married.

When he’d seen her last, more than a year ago, she was not in great shape. Her new marriage was on the skids, and she’d regained a lot of weight. But she was still beautiful. Just seeing her again made him forget all the pain, all the emptiness, all the disillusionment. After the divorce, he swore that commitment was for suckers, that nothing lasted, nothing remained. That it was all hopeless.

Hopeless. Nothing remained.

If he knew what he had done wrong, he could fantasize about going back in time and changing things, doing it right. But the fact was, he had no idea what he would do differently. He had done everything he could think of to keep her—hadn’t he? But in the end, it hadn’t made any difference.

He should get rid of this picture. He should tear it up, forget about her, and get on with his life. But somehow …