D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,45

he doesn't smoke and generally lives a rather healthy lifestyle... apart from his main hobby, of course."

"He isn't an actor," John reflected aloud, "I thought that he could be an actor, but an actor can't have a real beard..."

"I thought through one hypothesis," Douglas replied. "Even before your idea about Santa–which, by the way, isn't yet proved, though it is hard to think why else someone would dye a beard white. So, anyway, I tried to understand why he never had any failures. And I came to the conclusion that he understands children's psychology very well. So well that he knows a child literally at a glance, even before communicating with the kid. So, most likely, he's an experienced professional–either a child psychologist or some other occupation that deals with children, for example, a teacher... The first step, trainee?"

"To check all people of corresponding professions who were targeted in the investigation of sexual misconduct towards children. Including those acquitted and never come to trial."

"Correct. It made a rather long list, but all of them happened to have alibis. Obviously, our bastard is too careful to leave witnesses and victims alive. But since he is a professional, we can look for traces of his professional work. For a teacher it is more difficult, but he's not a teacher; he starts hunting prior to the beginning of Christmas vacation. But if we assume that his job is closer to a science, then what?"

"We can look for publications in scientific journals! On the topic of problem families, or conflicts in a school setting, or violence against children."

"Bravo, John. However, there are too many such publications. There may be even more psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts in this country than lawyers... Still, we have checked up on some of them, carefully, since we lack probable cause. Nothing remarkable was found. On the other hand, there are no guarantees that he really has published works..."

"And that he is a psychologist at all. If he simply puts on Santa's costume..."

"And here you're wrong, John. One doesn't exclude another. A five-year-old kid can be deceived by any guy with a white beard and in a red jacket. But the Snowman works with older children. And among these youngsters, not all will agree to follow a stranger if he doesn't impress them... Perhaps, the real beard plays a considerable role here–but it isn't the only factor."

"Perhaps. So, we should look for journal authors who have a big beard and are between forty and fifty years of age. As you worked on this already, I believe, you identified some authors?"

"Yes, but, as I've said, there are too many of them. But now, knowing about the beard and age, we can narrow our search."

"I would offer additional criteria, sir. Most likely, he writes articles alone, instead of co-authorship. And, possibly, he was born in a northern state. Perverts, of course, happen to be rather odd, but it seems doubtful to me that a heat-loving southerner would enjoy sex in freezing temperatures. Also, there is an off-road vehicle registered on his name... He, of course, can rent cars, but he prefers to use his own in order not to show himself in rental offices."

"Well, in these parts almost everyone owns off-road vehicles... But as a whole your ideas sounds reasonable. Sit down at the computer, John. Let's see how they teach you to work with information nowadays."

The third thing which Gregory Prime hated was lies.

In the beginning of his life he simply couldn't imagine that such a thing as a lie might exist. The idea that it is possible to say something that is not true seemed so absurd to him that it didn't deserve consideration at all. Indeed, why then speak at all? In adult terms, his conceptualization of that time would sound like this: a conversation is the purposeful exchange of information, so any corruption of the information contradicts the very essence of a conversation. Later, about an age of three, he found out that the lie nevertheless does exist and immediately he felt a deep contempt for it. For this reason, he hated fairy tales since they were just a pack of lies.

Both Greg's parents had higher technical education (his father was an engineer in a power company and his mother was a chemist in a pharmaceutical laboratory) and were atheists who adhered to materialism. At the age of three, the boy already knew the structure of the atom, what positive and negative particles were, and what a water