Salter, Anna C Read Online Free PDF Page A

idea. There wouldn't be any way I could ask her without tipping her off.
    We got off Willy, finally, and onto the backlash against victims of child sexual abuse and "taint" hearings and legal issues and the way the media gobbles up any perp's version of events regardless of how bizarre, but underneath it all I kept thinking about Willy. Carlotta had kicked off something. I had been so furious that some fool judge had released him that I hadn't yet thought about where his release put me. By the time lunch was over I was facing the fact that if Willy didn't go after me, I'd have to find a way to go after him. I couldn't just walk away knowing he was going to sadistically abuse eighteen million kids.
    I walked back to my office thinking about the problems that come when you start on a life of deception. If I was going after Willy it would have been safer to have somebody know exactly where I was and what I was doing at all times, but it wasn't worth the hassle.
    This was Carlotta's fault, I rationalized. If she weren't being so controlling I could have told her. I would have told her if I had trusted her to stay out of it and not blab to Adam. I, of course, would stay completely out of it when dealing with a friend who was doing something stupid beyond belief. Right.
    In my defense, it had always felt better to be in the driver's seat than the passenger's seat. Willy would look me up even if I didn't look him up, and I couldn't see just sitting around waiting to be surprised. Neither of us had counted on his getting out of prison when he waxed eloquent about his various techniques for entrapping children —after all, he'd been in his sixties and starting a thirty-year prison sentence.
    But the real problem —which was so formidable I didn't even want to think about it—was what the hell was I supposed to do once I found him? I couldn't just shoot him —despite my unfortunate, politically incorrect fondness for guns and the fact that I had a fair amount of expertise with them. I couldn't imagine shooting anyone in cold blood.
    I wasn't going to talk him out of anything. I could see it now: "Willy, did you know molesting kids was wrong?"
    "Gee," he'd say, "I never thought of that. "I'll quit right away."

    Threatening him would just put me in more jeopardy. The more Willy was sure I would try to harm him, the more he'd go after me.
    Could I warn people in his community? Put it in the newspaper? Without a doubt no one would believe me. Willy was too glib and too charming.
    I'd end up with a major lawsuit against me for slander plus get labeled as a crazy whose word was worthless. People have a way of ignoring evidence if they really like someone. A few months before, a teacher at a private school had been caught with mega-amounts of child porn. His colleagues had claimed it didn't mean he was a pedophile. Right. Like people who own two hundred cookbooks don't cook.
    I had to smile thinking about Willy's defense. I would say truthfully that I had visited Willy in prison to learn about sadistic offenders. Willy would no doubt use the visits against me. He would portray me as a paranoid who had been harassing him for years and was now making up stories about him.
    But if he did sue me, the audiotapes might be admissible under the rules of discovery. I brightened a little thinking I had one option, even though professional self-immolation would not be my first choice.
    I walked back to my private practice office a few blocks from Sweet Tomatoes. My private practice was in a house I had once shared with Carlotta. I was only there one day a week. I spent the rest of my time in the Department of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical School, where I taught, supervised residents, sat on stupid committees, and endlessly annoyed the chairman, who thought tact was an art form and that I knew less about it than anyone he had ever met.
    That wasn't exactly true. I knew about tact. I just thought it was a character flaw. So what if he had had a few