Sullivan's Law Read Free Page B

if she had seen Downly every month for the past year, it wouldn’t have prevented him from raping an innocent child. When an offender began to disintegrate, however, telltale signs generally appeared. This wasn’t always the case with a sex offender, though. Many times they came across as model citizens. A pedophile was like a crack in the wall, hidden behind a piece of furniture. Regardless, she would have to live with this for the rest of her life, never knowing if she could have somehow stopped it.
    Carolyn propped the paper up on the mirror above the sink. An eight-year-old girl, for God’s sake. Her daughter, Rebecca, was twelve. Downly had not only raped the child, he’d strangled her. When the girl had fallen unconscious, he’d mistakenly thought she was dead. Yesterday while Carolyn and her children were enjoying a cookout with her mother in Camarillo, Luisa Cortez was in a ditch behind an abandoned building that had once been a Dairy Queen.
    Carolyn wadded the newspaper up in a ball and hurled it across the room. Years ago, she’d enjoyed her job. Now she woke up every morning with a knot in her stomach. They had to stop giving her more work than she could handle. Before Brad had taken over the unit, she’d lost it one day. The eleven-year-old victim in the case she’d been investigating had been made to bend over the toilet every morning before school while her stepfather sodomized her. When she fought back, he’d twisted off her nipples with a pair of pliers. The case alone had been horrifying. During the investigation, Carolyn learned that the social services agency had failed to provide the child with psychological counseling. While the stepfather remained in the home pending trial, the girl had been placed in foster care, leaving behind her friends, her school, and even her mother. Her mother continued to reside with the defendant under the belief that he was innocent. During the trial, Cheryl Wright had tried to kill herself.
    Carolyn had stormed into her supervisor’s office and demanded that the case be reassigned to another officer. She was investigating four other crimes against children and she couldn’t handle it. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, she’d thought of going to the stepfather’s house and shooting him. Irene Settle, the woman in charge of the unit at the time, had told her that she must finish the case or turn in her resignation. When Carolyn had asked why, the woman had looked her squarely in the eye and told her she was the only one in the unit who was qualified to handle a case of that magnitude.
    Carolyn continued to work at her job for the benefit of the victims. In her first year at Ventura College of Law, she attended classes every Monday and Wednesday evening. She was fortunate that her fifteen-year-old son, John, was responsible enough to look after his younger sister. She had enrolled in law school to better herself and increase her income. She was also looking for a way to escape.
    At thirty-seven, Carolyn was small in stature, yet possessed a curvaceous and feminine body. Her chestnut hair fell to her shoulders in natural waves, her skin was flawless, and her eyes were the color of molasses. Dressed neatly in a pink cotton shirt and a simple black skirt, she’d draped the matching jacket over a chair in her office so it could dry from the rain. Two identical suits hung in her closet at home, differing only as to color—one navy blue, the other beige. Carolyn varied her wardrobe with six pastel shirts which she ironed every Saturday morning. Now and then she wore a dress, something simple yet tasteful. Her only accessories consisted of a sterling silver cross with a flower in the center given to her by her mother, a Swiss Army watch, and an antique pair of pearl cufflinks that had been in her family for over a hundred years. During the thirteen years she’d been a deputy probation officer, the cuff links had become