“No, I mean, that was the question. Are you just going along, in case I got something else for you on that other thing, or are you saying you believe me?”
“I believe you,” the cop said. “I did from the beginning.”
“But she was raped?”
“No question.”
“So, if she picked me out of a lineup, whoever did it, he must look something like me, right?”
“You’d think so,” the cop said, leaning back and lighting a smoke. He didn’t offer me one. That was a good sign.
“A lot of guys could look like me. That doesn’t narrow it down much.”
“Big guy, white … sure, that covers a lot of ground. Hair is something you can change easy enough. Beard, mustache … takes only a few minutes, make them go away. Except for this”—he touched his own right eyebrow—“nothing makes you stand out except your size.” He gave me a close look, not making any secret out of what he was doing.
I stayed still.
“Your eyes. Your eyes, that’d set you off. That’s what those glasses are about, huh?”
“Why are you playing me? I haven’t done anything for you to treat me like this. You know damn well, anyone gets a look at my eyes, they’d remember.”
“They would. And, yeah, I did.”
“But she didn’t?”
“Where’s all this going, Caine?”
No more “Sugar.” No more “have one on me” cigarette. Good. If he’d acted like we were pals, I wouldn’t have bought it.
And he’d know that. So maybe it wasn’t as good a sign as I thought.
Fuck it. I’m no good at this sideways stuff. I just went for it.
“You think I got off cheap, don’t you?”
“Five years? Far as I’m concerned, you lucked out when that girl ID’ed you. Wasn’t for that, you’d still be where you belong.”
“Lucked out? Right. If that girl had never ID’ed me, you’d still have been waiting when I came back to my place, that’s what you’re selling?”
“One man’s luck is another man’s loss. And I still say you got off cheap.”
“Let’s say I did. But if the sex-crimes cops hadn’t gotten her to ID me, you wouldn’t be saying what you just said. That’s true, too.”
“Okay. But I’m still waiting for the punch line.”
“I want to get off the RSO list.”
“So you can sue the city? It’s a little late for that now, don’t you think?”
“Five years—”
“I’m not a lawyer,” the cop said, like he was proud of it. “If some shyster told you there was money in this, you’re brain-dead, Caine. You pleaded guilty. I don’t care if they found enough of some other guy’s DNA to fill every test tube in Quantico, it wouldn’t do you any good.”
“I don’t have a lawyer. I’m not going to sue anybody. You know why I took that plea.”
“So? What, then?”
“So that DNA, it would do me some good. A lot of good.”
“You brought up the RSO, not me.”
“Right. You know what that means, being a Registered Sex Offender? I maxed out, but I still got to keep an address, let them know when I move, stuff like that.”
“Cramps your style, does it?”
“No, that’s not it. They don’t actually do anything. It’s just a stupid Web site. And you know who uses it the most?”
“Uses what the most?”
“This ‘registry’ thing. The people who use it most are those … ‘pedophiles,’ they call them. See, what they do, when they’re trying to worm their way in someplace, like with a single mother who’s living with her little daughter, they tell her to check them out. On this Web site, I mean. When that comes up empty, it’s like the government is saying, ‘This guy, he’s all right,’ see?”
“How come you know this?” Woods asked me. He was way too casual—I could see he really wanted to know.
“When I first went in—on the last bit, I mean—they put me in this group for sex offenders. It was supposed to be voluntary, but all of them know, if they don’t go, the Parole Board’s gonna nail them.”
“And you didn’t want to call attention to yourself, so you played along?”
“On the nose. I didn’t last long—they threw me out—but that was one of the things they talked about in ‘group.’
“They talked about this registry a lot. Some of them, they were all … outraged, like. It was a violation of their rights, they were branded for life, blah-blah. But a couple of them said the truth: that was one scam they could never use again, which