"Nowhere? There's no record of this?"
"No. Two Superior Court judges handle all of these matters, and then the cases are sealed. If you don't hear the facts from me, I doubt there's any way you could find out any of them. And once I tell you, I'll probably be planning an early retirement."
"Nelly, you point me in the right direction and I'll take it the rest of the way. If you go, I go with you. Coop won't let them can you," Mike said.
She looked at me for reassurance that I couldn't give her. This wasn't the normal whistle-blower situation.
"How did it work?" Mercer asked, his deep voice and earnest expression helping to calm the nervous woman. "Rasheed's hearing."
"Like every other uncomfortable mix of law and psychiatry," she said. "The SVPA-the Sexually Violent Predator Act was passed in 1998, sort of designed along the lines of commitments for the mentally ill. But there's a major distinction."
"What's that?"
"In a proceeding for a mental patient, the focus is on the patient's state of mind, his current condition. Things he did in the past, even in those cases in which crimes were committed, they're not usually relevant. But at Kearny-and for Troy-they use the prior crimes as critical evidence of his thinking, his behavior, his probability of offending again in the future. The law lets us keep these monsters confined for their thoughts, not just their actions."
"Count me in," Mike said, standing and starting to pace the old wooden floorboards of Kallin's kitchen. "Thought police-my kind of department. I'd love to make collars just for what the bad guys are thinking, before they pull the trigger."
"So the patient's state of mind is at issue," I said. "I guess that lets in just about everything, right? Hearsay, old psych evaluations from the pretrial exams, statements he made in treatment, while incarcerated?"
"That just scratches the surface. The shrinks testify about the prisoners' sexual tastes and their fantasies-what are supposed to be their fantasies. Prosecutors are able to shop around for psychiatric opinions. Well, the state can almost always find some reason to keep these guys behind bars."
"Then why did Rasheed get out this time?" I asked.
"Because he learned how to beat us. Troy copied the handful of guys who made it out before him. And I'm convinced that you'll find he didn't pounce on these victims-these women who were murdered- like he did on Jocelyn and the others. I'm sure of that. Something put them in his path and this time he thought he knew how to get them to come along with him, without even having to show a knife."
There seemed little prospect at the moment of reconstructing the last hours-or minutes-of the lives of Amber Bristol, Elise Huff, and Connie Wade.
"So how did it go for Rasheed?" Mercer asked again.
"Almost four years ago," Kallin said, "just a few days from the end of his jail time, he was told he was being transferred to Kearny. That's how it always begins. A secret process, with a surprise notification."
"But who picks which prisoner goes?"
"My colleagues-the administrators at DOC. No written guidelines."
"That's part of the reason these commitments are being challenged in federal court," I said. "The inmates claim they're unconstitutionally arbitrary."
Kallin hesitated and looked out the window. I followed her line of vision and saw only the hedges between her small yard and the house next door.
"Did you see someone? Something?"
She went back to twiddling her thumbs. "Probably just the neighbors."
Mike stood behind her and kept his eye on the narrow alleyway.
"After that, the attorney general's office screens the cases. They usually support us in about half the applications. Troy was no different from any other inmate when he got here. He'd spent almost half his life in prison, was just days from walking out, but then got smacked in the face with the news that he wasn't going anywhere."
"So the first hearing was three years ago," Mercer said.
"Yes. And there aren't many perps who make it through that initial one. They're so angry about the transfer, all the state has to do is present its diagnosis and tack on the fact that the guy has bad control of his impulses. What they really have to show-and it was easy in Troy's case-is that he has serious difficulty in controlling his behavior."
"What was his diagnosis?" I asked. "Personality disorder, NOS, Ms. Cooper," Nelly Kallin said. "NOS?"
"Not otherwise specified. It's the same diagnosis that got him dis- charged from the army when he was twenty-one years old.
THIRTY-NINE
Son of Uncle Sam.
"When was Troy Rasheed in the army?" Mercer asked.
"He enlisted when he was nineteen and was thrown out less than two years later," Kallin said.
"Where did he serve? Why was he tossed?"
"For the six months before his discharge, he was in Germany.
There was an incident with a woman on the base. He wasn't the only one involved-there were three or four guys from his command. Sort of a date rape-a lot of alcohol and some not very clear allegations.
"Was there a trial?" I asked, wondering if that young woman, too, had been in uniform when the drinking began.
"Way back then? No way. You probably know what it's like trying to get records out of the military. Everything disappears. And a drunken female claiming sexual assault? The army still doesn't do so well with that today. I can't believe the girl was taken too seriously. Troy must have had a stack of other offenses leading up to that incident."
Kallin stretched her neck and looked out the window again.
"Personality disorder, NOS," Mike said. "That sounds pretty mild for a serial rapist."
She turned to look at him and loosened up for the first time. "You'd fit that diagnosis for sure, Mr. Chapman. Anybody interesting would. Troy's really an ASPD but the shrinks didn't have to create a stir by going that far. The defense team couldn't rebut this one. He'd been tagged with it before he even encountered the legal system."
Anti-Social Personality Disorder was one of the hallmarks of serial killers in the DSM-IV, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the bible of the forensic psychiatric community.
I started to tick off the traits of this psychopathic behavior as listed in the DSM. "Failure to conform to social norms, limited range of human emotions, lack of empathy for the suffering of others-"
"Which leads to risk-seeking behavior," Kallin said. "Deceitful, impulsive, aggressive. Repeated lying, use of aliases."
There would have been no reason for Troy Rasheed to use his real name in applying for a job with Kiernan Dylan. How easy it must have been for him to slip away from New Jersey after he had complied with the need to register his name with the state's monitors.
"Do you have his military records here?" I asked, pointing at her stack of folders.
"No. The prosecutor was never able to get them-just the discharge summary."
"What do you know about his family background?"
Some movement in the corner of my eye drew my attention to the window. I looked out but saw nothing.
"You're jumpier than I am," Kallin said to me.
Mercer eased himself out of the chair. "I left my cell phone in the car. I'd better get it. Don't want to miss the lieutenant's callback. Mind if I use this door?"
I knew that Mercer was going to check around the outside of the house. It wasn't likely that anyone could have followed us, but I'd been even more on edge since Kerry Hastings had been injured simply by virtue of her proximity to me.
Nelly got up, too, removed the chain, and unlocked the kitchen door, which led onto a deck. I watched as Mercer disappeared down the path alongside the house.
"Troy's mother died more than ten years ago. Before that, she came to see him once a week, every single week. A sister who's married with three kids, but she lives in Texas. His father's still alive. I called him after the hearing in July."