Sullivan's Law Read Free

to wait. “I’ll be right back,” she told the woman, pulling her damp shirt away from her chest. “I’m going to the break room for some coffee.”
    A tall, handsome man with blond hair and blue eyes caught Carolyn by the elbow. “You’re not going anywhere,” Brad Preston said abruptly, steering her back into his office and kicking the door shut behind him. He released her and stared at the newspaper in her hands. “Did you get a look at the headlines?”
    â€œNo,” Carolyn said, depositing the wet papers in the trash can. “My umbrella broke. I used the paper to stay dry. What’s going on?”
    â€œEddie Downly raped an eight-year-old girl!” he said, tossing his copy of the Ventura Star Free Press at her. “She’s alive but he did his best to kill her. This was your probationer. When did you last see the bastard?”
    Carolyn’s fingers trembled as she stared at the rapist’s picture. On the street, they called him Fast Eddie. His real name was Edward James Downly. At sixteen, he’d been sentenced to serve a year in the county jail, then placed on four years’ probation. Since the crime had been sexual in nature, Downly had been tried as an adult and ordered to register as a sex offender. Under the DNA Forensic Identification Data Bank and Data Bank Act of 1998, all registered sex offenders had to provide a DNA sample. At present, Fast Eddie was only nineteen years old.
    â€œI…I…” Carolyn stammered, slowly raising her eyes. “I don’t remember, Brad. I’ll have to check his file.”
    â€œOf all people,” he said, dropping down in the leather chair behind his paper-strewn desk, “I never thought I’d be having a conversation like this with you, Carolyn. How long has it been?”
    â€œI told you,” she said, her voice shaking, “I’m not certain. His probation is due to terminate any day. Eddie never gave me any indication that he was a rapist or pedophile. In the underlying offense, all he did was slide his hand up the dress of the fourteen-year-old who lived next door. Eddie swore she was his girlfriend. He claims the only reason he was prosecuted was due to some kind of vendetta between the two families. The last time I talked to him, he was engaged to get married.”
    Brad leaned forward, his face frozen into hard lines. “The media’s beating our door down. You’re one of our best officers. Tell me what I want to hear, Carolyn.”
    She rubbed her forehead, covering a portion of her face with her hand. He wanted to be reassured that she’d seen Downly that month, that she’d monitored his every move, that there was nothing the agency could have done to prevent him from brutalizing a child. “The truth? Do you really want to know? It’s not what you want to hear.”
    â€œOf course I want the truth,” Brad shouted, standing and removing his jacket, then yanking off his tie. “We have to back up our statements with documentation. I promised we’d get copies of everything in Downly’s file to the police within the hour. The address they have for him is no good. How long has it been, Carolyn?” He walked over until they were only a few inches apart. “Christ, we can’t play twenty questions while a rapist is on the loose. Tell me where we stand, damn it.”
    â€œA long time,” she said, nervously rubbing her palms on her skirt. “Nine months…maybe as long as a year.”
    â€œA year!” Brad exclaimed, his hot breath on her face. “You haven’t seen this man in a freaking year?”
    â€œDon’t forget,” Carolyn told him, “I’m not assigned to field services. I had over forty pre-sentence investigations to complete last month. On top of that, I now have a caseload of over two hundred offenders. To stay on top of everything is humanly impossible. You know that,