A Course of Passion

52: A Bad Good Guy

When I get back to the shelter, I see Richie and Robin sitting in a room with who appears to be a lawyer. I pop open the door and say, "hey. Is this a bad time?"

"Not at all, Smitty." Richie says, "come on in."

The lawyer stands as I walk in, "this is the guy?"

"Yeah." Richie replies.

The guy explains, "good timing. We can always use another character witness for our petition."

"What petition?" I question as I get closer to the table.

"To get Mr.Caskey's sex offender registration reduced from Level Three to Level Two." The lawyer tells me.

Richie adds on, "it means I could, uh, go back to my apartment and live at home with my wife."

This is terrible, I can't sign off on this. I quickly come up with something to say, "i'm a sex offender too. Who cares what I think?"

Robin says back, "he heroically intervened on your behalf."

"It's a great story." The red headed lawyer returns, "Ms.Daughtry's already onboard. She wrote a beautiful letter."

Robin smiles, "I only wrote the truth. Richie works very hard on his rehabilitation."

I snark out, "yeah, and not to mention that he nailed my ass to the wall in our session yesterday."

Robin defends him, "confronting your denial. He's helped a lot of men accept responsibility empathize with victims, begin their own healing. He was a model prisoner. Now he's a model parolee."

Richie doesn't beam with what they are saying as he just sits there and lets them gloat about his good behavior. His lawyer continues to pile it on, "there's no way he poses a threat to public safety."

I nod and then question without thinking, "level Three. Did you file that petition with the sentencing court or the Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders?"

"Oh," The lawyer chuckles, "somebody's been hitting the prison law library."

I kick myself for saying something so stupid and obvious, but quickly come back with, "no, I-I used to want to be a lawyer."

"Really?" He smirks back, "good luck with that.You gonna help us out or not?"

I just utter, "uhh- uhh, yeah. Let me think about it, okay?" And begin to walk back out of the room. The lawyer turns to Richie to say something but I can't hear it as I close the door.

The next morning I spot a beat cop on patrol near the shelter. He's not actually a beat cop and is a detective in our unit. That means they want me to come in. I find an excuse to leave and meet him three blocks away. He fills me in on the basics of what's going on and once I get up to the precinct floor, I ask Olivia, "it was Robin?" I tug the hat off my head, "W-what happened?"

She elaborates, as we walk to the table, "somebody was waiting for her where she parked her car. He knew she was coming." I ground out an annoyed sigh as she goes on, "he knew her usual parking spot by the train tracks."

As I get closer to my team, Fin says, "got inside with her, raped her, and stabbed her."

"Stabbed her? Why? Our rapist hasn't killed anybody." I ask then say, confused at this new MO.

Maddison tells me, "the M.E. found black thread underneath her fingernails, so she could of pulled off his mask, maybe recognized him."

"It was somebody she knew?" I ask, feeling ill, feeling like I could have stopped all of this.