Equal Access (13 page)

“Three years does not equal a few times.”

“A few years then. I’m not the same person I
used to be. I’m settled down now. I’m even married.” Wally held up
his left hand to display an ornate gold band. “I let my picture be
put in the paper, as you pointed out, because I don’t have anything
to fear or to hide. Don’t condemn me on a misjudgment I made in my
youth.”

“Pedophilia isn’t a misjudgment. It’s a
psychosexual disorder than doesn’t just go away.”

“I thought so.” Wally nodded. “You’ve put me
in a category, made an armchair diagnosis without consulting me.
What happened with you hasn’t been going on for all my life.”

“Who in their right mind would be attracted
to a child?” More conflicting emotions tumbled inside Shad.

“A confused young man who probably isn’t in
his right mind at the time. Listen, what is it you want from me? A
settlement?” Wally’s eyes narrowed. “All you’d accomplish is
tearing my life apart by dragging me into court. I know you can’t
be so angry at me you’d put yourself through that kind of hell just
to make me suffer. Extortion, then? Who here is the lawyer?”

Shad frowned. “I’ll do whatever it takes to
end the suffering of others.”

“What others?” Wally leaned forward. “My
wife?
Your
wife? Aren’t they innocent? Do you really want to
drag them through the chaos you’d put them through?”

Shad realized Wally must have noticed the
plain gold band he wore on his own left ring finger. “I know single
mothers with young sons aren’t that hard to come by. Why did you
marry an older woman with grown sons?”

“Excuse me?”

“Have you decided the gaming store is a
better place to pick up new victims?”

“Victims?” Wally leaned back in his chair
again. “First, I keep telling you I haven’t done anything like that
since your mom threw me out. Second, I can’t believe you would
think of yourself as a victim. I never forced you to do anything.
In fact, there were times you were the one who started
something.”

Wally’s accusation was a bad, bad sign. “I
was a child behaving like a child. You were the one interpreting my
actions the way you wanted to.”

Wally shook his head. “You’ve bought into the
hysteria.”

A chill settled over Shad. “Are you about to
tell me that adults and children should have equal access to each
other? Are you gonna give me the spin that children should be given
the right to express their affection physically?”

“No, no, of course not. But there is a
hysteria out there. These days a teacher can’t even put an arm
around a student as comfort without getting fired. People condemn
everything in one broad sweep rather than looking at individual
situations. What happened to you was one situation –”

“Three years.”

“You were the only one.” Wally leveled his
gaze with Shad’s. “I was wrong to bring you into my confusion, I
suppose, but I never meant you harm. I never
did
you any
harm. So you got some experience maybe a little younger than some
other kids. People will experiment, play around. I did nothing
worse to you than kids often do with each other anyway.”

“Oh, you did more.” Shad’s eyes narrowed.
“Those were no innocent games of playing doctor. You also robbed me
of freedom of choice. It wasn’t my choice as a child to engage in
the kind of activity that as an adult I would choose to save for my
wife. You used me for your own pleasure, plain and simple.”

Wally shook his head. “It didn’t bother you
then. It only bothers you now because others have convinced you
that you’re supposed to feel ashamed by what happened. Probably
have some religious guilt built in there, too. Remember, I was
barely more than a kid myself.”

“What was your motivation to change? What
steps did you take to bring about that change?”

Wally stared at him for a few seconds before
replying. “I don’t go looking for boys. I know who I am now. What
happened with us is in the past and has nothing to do with the
present.”

“You didn’t answer the questions.”

“Here’s a question.” Wally leaned forward
again. “Are you still beating your wife?” In the couple of seconds
that Wally waited for his words to soak in, Shad felt a sickening
sensation almost like nausea sweep through him. “You see, not all
questions have a simple answer. I went through a process, a
journey. I can’t recount it off the top of my head because I didn’t
have a problem I was dealing with methodically.”

Lies. Bald-faced lies. Shad knew too much
about the challenges of pedophilia to accept any of Wally’s claims.
He also had studied too much about molestation to doubt his
conclusion about Wally.

“If I was so special and the only one, how is
it you were able to abandon me so easily?” Shad still tried to pry
out a sliver of truth. “You never came back to check up on me or
try to reconnect in any way.”

“You got to remember I was still pretty young
at the time. I didn’t know what I was doing. And after what we’d
done, well, I kind of figured it would be best if we stayed away
from each other.”

“You knew what that woman was like. I was
practically gift-wrapped for you. Did you really think you could
leave me with her and I’d be fine?” An irritation Shad hadn’t
experienced in a long time began squirming to the surface of
tangled emotions.

“I guess I just figured ... she’d find
somebody else to take care of you.”

“Take care of me?” Shad’s voice rumbled lower
than he’d expected. “The parade of men that passed through her bed
convinced me we didn’t need to keep our relationship such a secret.
She did nothing to stop them when I was punched and kicked and
burned and strangled.” Shad caught himself. Something too much like
rage threatened to break to the surface, and he drew a deep breath
to quash the writhing emotions back into the depths of his
soul.

Wally stared at him for a few seconds before
responding. “Then why are you on my doorstep instead of
theirs?”

“Abuse is abuse but the nature of yours is
especially pernicious.” Shad was relieved to hear that his voice
wasn’t so low anymore. “Yours is one case where I might be able to
save the future for others.”

“From what?” Wally sat up. “You rate the care
I gave you as worse than the beatings those cretins dished out? You
really have been swept up in a witch hunt if you think I’m more
dangerous than they are.”

“The ramifications of abuse are all the same,
no matter what form it takes.”

“That’s ridiculous. I didn’t abuse you.”
Wally leaned forward. “Honestly, Shadow –”

The growl erupted from Shad without warning.
“Don’t call me that.”

Wally’s eyes widened for a second before he
nodded. “All right. But just think about it. Everything I did with
you was an act of love. Everything those bastards did to you was an
act of violence.”

“Acting on a sexual impulse doesn’t equal
love.”

“I was always careful. Made sure I didn’t
hurt you.”

“How gentle you are doesn’t change the
confusion, the helplessness, the betrayal felt by those boys.”

“Dammit!” Wally hissed, and the expletive
sparked a flash of alarm in Shad as they always did. But then Wally
drew a visible breath and leaned back in his chair. “How can I
possibly prove a negative to you? There are no other boys. It was
you and me. That’s all. If you think you need to come riding in
here on some great white horse, you’re wrong.”

“The odds you changed are not in your
favor.”

The two men stared at each other for a few
seconds, and then Wally shifted in his seat and briefly glanced
down before returning his attention to Shad.

“Can’t you at least agree that people
can
change?”

Of course people could change. Shad himself
was living proof that a person’s life course could change a whole
one hundred eighty degrees. But Wally had given him nothing to
suggest the man had made such changes. Instead, Wally refused to
take responsibility for his actions. And his arguments in defense
of this “phase” Wally insisted he was done with rang too much like
the activist arguments Shad had become familiar with.

And pedophilia didn’t just go away. Wally’s
claims of experimentation might even suggest that his condition
coexisted with other paraphilias like fetishism or voyeurism, which
was commonly the case. All psychotherapeutic studies confirmed it
was a markedly pervasive disorder that persistently defied
eradication. Wally was still a liar.

“People can change,” Shad replied. “But you
aren’t one of them.”

“Why won’t you believe me?”

Shad frowned. “I didn’t become a lawyer on a
whim. In a way, I have you to thank for my choice of profession.
And if I want to see to it that people like you get put away, I
have to know what to look for.”

Wally stared at him for a few seconds before
replying. “Don’t assume you know everything. You can’t judge me
based on books you’ve read. If you bring up charges because you
think I still do that stuff, you won’t be saving innocent lives.
You’ll be tearing them apart. I admit we shouldn’t have done what
we did, but otherwise you have to admit that I did take care of
you. On the basis that I was always kind to you, can you at least
show a little kindness to me now?”

“You abused me and then you abandoned me. The
kindness was just to facilitate getting what you wanted.”

“I didn’t know any better. Your mom made me
leave. How many times do I have to say that? I was young and I was
stupid. After all, I didn’t come from such a great background
myself, you know.”

Part of what Wally said echoed in Shad’s
memory. Considering his own background, if Mam and Pap hadn’t
brought him in and taught Shad to bend to divine will, his own will
would have led him to a much darker place. And Shad could have
believed that what he was doing wasn’t really harmful ... just like
Wally. It was unsettling they could have that much in common, yet
there remained one glaring difference between them even if Wally
ever did overcome his disorder.

“Is this the part where you claim you were
molested too?” Shad asked in a flat monotone, but he could feel the
prickling of something unpleasant beneath the question.

Wally seemed to study him for a few seconds
before replying. “There was this cousin who would babysit me. I
think he was just ... a confused young man. I don’t harbor any ill
will toward him. In fact, I’m glad to see that he moved on with his
life, too. Went out and got married. Actually a couple of times, I
think. Had kids of his own.”

A ripple of nausea swelled inside Shad. “And
you continued to keep his secret, I presume.”

“I didn’t feel the need to rip up his life.”
Wally’s gaze seemed to sharpen on Shad. “Have you told anybody ...
about me?”

If a bowlful of water left out in the depth
of winter, when night temperatures would plunge below zero, could
feel the water freeze so hard the container would break, Shad could
relate to what that might feel like. A flicker of panic that seemed
to hold off the impending hard freeze warned him not to answer that
question at its face value.

At least he’d had many “dark watches of the
night” when Shad spoke to the only other One who was there.
“Yes.”

Wally frowned slightly. “Is this supposed to
be part of some kind of therapy you’ve been through?”

“The one thing you and I agree on is that
this doesn’t concern us anymore. But I can’t allow you to
continue.”

“Continue what?” Wally sat up. “Do you intend
to file a complaint against me?”

Shad grappled for a response. Maybe Wally
wasn’t entirely familiar with the law, or maybe Wally had already
done the math and knew Shad could only file a civil suit against
him. But unless Shad hired a private investigator to tail Wally,
which also wasn’t an option, he had no evidence to prove Wally was
lying to him.

The truth actually turned out to be his best
answer. “I don’t know yet what I’m gonna do with you.”

“So you admit it?” Wally leaned forward. “You
don’t need to rip our lives apart by accusing me of something I’m
not doing?”

Shad decided he’d reached his saturation
point. There was no way he was going to extract a confession from
Wally, and this conversation would only continue going in circles.
He wished he hadn’t come here. Shad wished he’d never opened that
newspaper on the train.

“I’ve got nothing else to say to you,” Shad
said bluntly as he got to his feet.

Wally’s eyes widened. “You’re leaving?”

“We’re done.”

The man scrambled to his feet as Shad turned
away from the desk. “That’s it? You’re going to leave just like
that? You aren’t going to give me any explanation? You’re just
going to leave me hanging?”

Shad hesitated at the door and glanced back
at Wally. When the man had left that seedy apartment over twenty
years ago, he left during the night while Shad was asleep. The boy
had been given no warning of his departure. Shad had simply
awakened to discover that Wally was gone.

“And that still doesn’t make us even.” Shad
stepped out the door.

I form light and create darkness, I make weal and
create woe – I the LORD do all these things.

--Isaiah 45:7

After Dulsie left for work the next morning,
Shad lingered at the house a little longer than usual to review
some of his books on psychology and abuse. Everything he read
confirmed his prognosis about Wally, which meant Shad needed to act
if he was going to stop the man’s predations. But he was still
stumped on just how to go about that action when the law stood in
his way. Shad didn’t miss the irony that he had become an attorney
in order to find ways that procured justice when the law was too
rigid, and now he was personally in such a dilemma ... again. And
although his role the first time had been more passive, it was
those events that led him to this career.