“Castration?”
“Let me give you some background.” He pointed to the stack of books and newspaper articles on the countertop. “First off, keep in mind that we’re talking about sex offenders, Ivy. Very important! We’re talking about men who take ten-year-old girls behind toolsheds and force them to have sex. Full penetration. Oral sex. Anal sex. You name it. It ain’t pretty. If it’s assault, then they break a few limbs in the process. Beat her up. Or if it’s a Harold Payne, then it’s the beating her up that counts. Bruises. Contusions. Lacerations. Fractures. These guys are beasts.”
“If you’re asking if we care about these guys dying, all I can say is-”
“I’m not! I tell ya, I’m not crying over losing Harold Payne-not if he took his own life. But we’re both questioning that, aren’t we? Of course we are, or you wouldn’t be here. Listen to me-several years back, late eighties, Finland instituted a program of voluntary castration for its sex offenders. They traded these men freedom for castration. The group was monitored and studied over a four-year period. The results were impressive: two to four percent recidivism versus eighty in the control group-a ninety-eight percent reduction in sexual assault; and even these figures are skewed. The two to four percent repeat offenders were picked up for offenses like voyeurism and flashing. In fact, none of the castrated offenders went on to commit a violent sexual act. Not one.
“The castrations were voluntary, don’t forget,” Bragg continued. “I tell ya, it’s a relatively simple procedure: the testicles are removed and replaced by prosthesis. And don’t feel too sorry: A percentage of the group reported having intercourse about once a month. But the abhorrent behavior, caused by either ‘defective’ hormone production-if you will-or the body’s overproduction, was eliminated entirely. Simple English: Castration works.”
“But Payne’s equipment was intact,” Dart reminded.
“Scientists and researchers in this country bowed to the religious right and deemed castration barbaric. This, despite the obvious success. But it led to other attempts: The U.S. decided that a less barbaric solution would be to administer high doses of estrogen, in theory to counter-balance the ill effects of the over-production of testosterone. That’s known as chemical castration. It was tried on a voluntary basis in some of our prisons. It failed on two counts. One, because of the inherent social problems with this approach: breast development, loss of facial hair, a change of voice. Two, it just plain didn’t work. The funding was scrapped and the program dropped. We reverted to locking away sex offenders, but for far too brief a time.”
“Teddy-”
“Where am I going with this?” he asked rhetorically. “Let me tell ya.” He spun his chair around and produced one of several gray cardboard boxes, the size and shape of a shoe box. He removed the lid and pulled out a plastic bag, inside of which was a smaller plastic bag, inside of which were the glass vials recovered from 11 Hamilton Court. “Don’t jump all over me about the inadmissibility of this evidence, because I’ve heard all about it. And besides, that’s your problem. I don’t give a shit. My job is to make sense of evidence. And boy, can I make sense of this.”
“Talk to me.”
“Dead viruses,” he said, pointing to the vials. “Mean anything?”
“Vaccine?”
“Good boy,” Bragg said, clearly impressed. “Only in this case you’re wrong. Close, but no cigar.”
Mention of a cigar reminded Dart of Zeller, and he studied Bragg closely to see if maybe the man knew more than he was letting on. He decided that he wasn’t. “So?”
“There are three systems currently in wide use for the delivery of gene therapy.”
“Gene therapy,” Dart echoed.
“DNA. The building block of life.”
“I got that,” Dart said anxiously.
“My guess is that our Mr. Payne was in a gene therapy program.”
Dart finally saw what Bragg was getting at. He nearly shouted, “A program involving sex offenders, wife beaters?”
Bragg nodded. “It’s called anti-sense technology. What it amounts to is divining which gene produces ill effects and then attaching DNA material to that gene to resequence its behavior. It’s been effective with Huntington’s disease, high cholesterol. It’s a wide-open field. The government has been actively mapping human DNA since the eighties in something called the Human Genome Project. Everyone’s involved-even Bill Gates.”
“We found injection marks,” Dart stuttered. “We thought maybe giving blood or selling plasma.”
Bragg acted out giving himself a shot in the arm. “Shooting up dead viruses mixed with fresh genes. It’s the ultimate solution,” he said. “Nothing barbaric about it. Fix the gene, correct the hormonal imbalance, improve the behavior. Like cutting the nuts off without a knife. Break the chain. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here. But it’s possible.”
“How possible?”
“Quite possible.” Bragg pointed to the vials. “If this shit is what I think it is, it’s the cutting edge.”
CHAPTER 28
“And what do you think?” Abby asked.
“I think Zeller knows about these gene therapy tests. I think he doesn’t want anybody offering a ‘cure’ to sex offenders-another excuse to parole them. Nesbit was on parole at the time he killed Lucky and the three others.”
“It’s difficult, isn’t it?”
“How’s that?” Dart asked.
“No tears for guys like Gerald Lawrence. There’s a part of me-a big part-that wishes them dead. I work with their victims-but week in and week out-and what’s been done to them makes me sick. Oh yes,” she reassured him, “me too. Don’t think I get used to this. You never get used to it.”
This came as a relief to Dart, who had worried that she had become hardened-that something had been stolen from her as well. He explained, “That was a major part of my reasoning for not going forward with the Ice Man: Who cares? Making them dead is somehow more satisfying than locking them up. But what if there is treatment?”
“And what about so many sex offenders expressing pressing remorse and genuinely wanting to stop?” she asked. “I know. It’s not an easy issue.”
“I know what has to be done,” Dart said, dreading this thought.
“Well, I know what has to be done too,” she said seductively. She wore a pair of tight blue jeans and a loose-fitting gray sweater that Dart found provocative, because when she leaned over it fell open at the neck. Drinking a beer from the bottle, she was sitting in Dart’s one remaining captain’s chair, her left leg kicked up over the arm.
He was prepping a radicchio and shrimp risotto and trying to concentrate on the recipe. Mac was snoring at Abby’s feet.
“Before you start that,” she said, “take a break. Once you get going on a risotto, you can’t stop.” She motioned him into a chair. “Tell me about Kowalski.”
Dart opened a beer. “It’s possible that he’s telling the truth. He told us the same story three times in a row. And he remembered details well. The trouble with interviewing a cop-he knows what you’re looking for. He could be full of shit. It’s hard to say.”
“But you believe him,” she stated.
“I do. Haite doesn’t. And I can’t tell Haite because it involves Zeller, and I’m not ready to lay all that on him.”
“Personally, I’ve never believed anything Kowalski says. He’s a bullshitter from way back.” She asked, “What’s his status?”
“It’ll be reviewed. Meanwhile, he’s still active.”
“I don’t imagine he’s too keen on you.”
“He never has been.”
She took a pull on the beer and set down the bottle. There was something brewing in her.
“What about these tests?” he asked.
“You mean, have I heard anything? Have they discovered some abnormal gene in sex offenders? To my knowledge: no. But listen, there have been rumors for years about a crime gene. You’ve heard that stuff. The Times reported last February that the gene-a combination of genes-had been identified. Nothing’s impossible.” She asked rhetorically, “Is there a Prozac for sex offense? Not that I’ve heard of. Not yet. But as Teddy Bragg says, ‘Stay tuned.’”