If someone was to tell them what it is we're doing and then ask them what they thought of it, a lot of them would then say: No. We're under no illusions here. We know what we're doing goes totally against the grain, completely against the grain, of the attitude that the majority of people today have toward the criminal justice system. What it should be doing and what direction it should be taking. What it ought to be accomplishing; the kind of results it should be getting, what we've got a right to expect.
'That's what they think, and that's the end of it. No matter what you tell them, you're not gonna change their mind. Inna popular mind now, the purpose of the justice system is punishment. 'No, no more talkin' here. Get 'em off a the streets; we're afraid of them. Lock'em up an' then get rid of the key.'
'We know this. People who're involved inna system like Judge Cavanaugh and I, who actually know how it works and what it does to people, we're not supposed to say: 'Well, yeah, we hear what you're saying. But we still think what may be called for here, in this particular case, involving this particular person, is something slightly different.
Instead of assuming that the best thing we can hope for is what you know you'll get, if we just let the system work the way it normally does, let's see if maybe we can adapt the system a little.
''See, the system assumes that offenders're fungible; every one is the same. What works for one'll work for all the others. That's why the system doesn't always work very well. Offenders're people, and people aren't fungible. And Judge Cavanaugh and I think when you get a case like this one, what you oughta do is individualize the approach. See if something a little different might not work a little better.'
'You mean you've aborted another prosecution,' Diane said. 'That's what it amounts to, isn't it? Just sort of noodged it off to one side where the two of you can play with it for a while. With no idea at all what the outcome of this little game will be. That's why you're so bothered; something's gone wrong: just like I told you it would when you were so excited telling me a year ago about it. I knew right off it was dangerous. I told you. You wouldn't listen. You reacted the way you always do when you've asked me what I think about something you propose to do and I tell you 'Not much.' You got hurry and said: 'Well, I'm the expert. You don't know what you're talking about.'
'You did it today, not fifteen minutes ago, when I asked you a harmless question about how much hope some young kid has of ever getting help. I can't imagine why you're telling me about this poor woman again, this case that you've been screwing up, when we're trying to have a nice day.'
'Well, if that's what you want to call it,' he said, 'you could call it 'screwing up,' yeah. But if you're asking me for the term that I would use, I would say her case has been continued. Looks like just every other continuance we got, and there're dozens of 'em, literally, more'n you could shake a stick at. Technically that's what it is.
'But I would call it more of a suspension. We've continued the case, but we really don't expect… it isn't like we think there's going to come a day when this case's called for trial. No witnesses, for one thing; the old lady who's the victim was sharp but she wasn't in good health back when the incident occurred. And my understanding even then was that if much more'n another month went by before the matter came to trial, it'd be touch-and-go whether she could testify. And that was a year ago. So no, a trial in this case isn't out of the question; it's not very likely, is all. But we haven't screwed anything up.'
'You're gambling,' she said. 'She doesn't know it, but this woman that you're trying to control… what was her name again? I can almost see it in my mind.'
'LeClerc,' he said. 'Janet LeClerc' 'Yes,' Diane said, 'Janet. Poor little Janet LeClerc, getting bossed around by you, who've got absolutely no authority to make her do anything, no case against her at all. But she doesn't know this, and wouldn't know what to do about it if she did she isn't bright enough.
The only reason that she's trying to do what you tell her is because you've tricked her, you and Cavanaugh. Lied to her, deceived her, conned her just like the gypsy who was conning her and the other woman to cheat the sick old lady. The sheer moral arrogance: breathtaking.'
'Well, Jesus Christ, Diane,' he said, 'this's for her own good. It isn't like we're doing this because we want to hurt the woman, here, you know. That's what I'm trying to tell you. That this's something that we decided we would try to do, thought it would be a good thing for us to try to do, and now it turns out, like I said, that there was a catch.'
She overrode what he was saying before he could finish. 'No,' she said, shaking her head. 'Don't make it what it isn't. You're taking an awful chance here, and a stupid one to boot. The papers get ahold of this, they'll ruin both of you, you and the judge both. And you'll deserve it. You have no authority to do what you're doing and you know it. You've told me that yourself. Place the case on file, as you put it, and then make the defendant accountable to you. Set yourself up over this unfortunate creature as though you were her keeper. Rule her life.
'It's okay. The two of you've decided in your wisdom that what's legally available, the agencies and so forth, aren't effective enough for you. They don't do things the way you'd like to see them done. So the hell with the legislature and the laws and all of that stuff. You and Danny Hilliard; that's where this got started. The two of you spent so much time thinking up ways to manipulate people to get him elected, and then when he was elected, using every bit of power he could get, any way that he could get it, to do what you two wanted done, you lost sight of everything else.
'Something happened to you. You've got this disdain for the whole process. For you it's become a charade. Everything official's a show you put on for the dummies out front, to distract them while you do what was best for them. What the law says is not important; what matters is who's got the fix in. The law's what you want the law to be, and never mind what it says; you'll decide what matters.
'Who the hell do you think you are? Barging into her life, like you own it? Who on earth gave you that right?
'No one did. You've got no right. And in the second place, just what are you going to do, to punish her, if she doesn't do what you tell her, or does what you tell her not to do? Have you given that any thought? What are you going to do to her if she decides to call your bluff, get into trouble knowing you will help her? You create a dependency when you inveigle a person into reposing her trust entirely in you, knowing she's not bright or strong- willed — that's what enabled you to do it. A low-affect personality you've compelled to abdicate responsibility that for all you know she might've been able to handle for what happens in her life. Instead you make all her decisions.
Amby, this is a dangerous game. Therapists who play it often find themselves wishing they hadn't.'
'I know it,' he said. 'That's what I've been trying to tell you. I really wish now that the judge and I hadn't taken this thing on.
Basically what I had on my mind when I told her to come in and see me yesterday was what Sam Paradisio told me. I told you about him, my friend in federal Probation. He called me last week, said he's got information Janet's shacking up with this bank robber — most likely a stone killer, too, 'cept nobody's proved that yet. And his concern in my place would be that this vicious bastard'll decide it's time for Janet to disappear.
'Sammy thinks he's the type of guy who solves problems that way. When someone complicates his life, homicide is a thing he can do to simplify it. Sammy's afraid his guy'll kill this woman we've been trying to help.'
'Marvelous,' Diane said. 'Perfectly wonderful. He kills her and then of course there's an investigation, and that's when it comes out that she shouldn't even've been in the situation where someone could get at her to kill her. When she got in trouble, a year ago, she should've been sent to an institution, a supervised, structured, protected environment. Either getting punished or else getting some help. And that's where she would've been, if the judge and his clerk had enforced the laws. But instead they decided to take the law into their own hands. 'Cause they knew better.'
'Well, naturally this worries me,' Mernon said.
'I should think it would,' she said. 'It would certainly worry me.
'But I talk to her,' Merrion said. 'I have a heart-to-heart talk with her, and I tell her to stay away from this guy, have nothing more to do with him, and she assures me she will not. She'll stay away from him.'
'Amby, you're a dear man,' Diane said, 'but how is she going to do that? How on earth… if the reason you don't want her seeing this man is that someone who knows him thinks that he might kill her, how do you think your Sad Sack of a woman's going to make him leave her alone?
Isn't it more likely she'll set him off completely if she tries to do that? Provoke him into doing the very thing that you're afraid he'll do?'
'I don't think so,' he said. 'Or at least this morning, down at the station, I didn't think so. From what Sammy told me and you understand this's confidential stuff that he's only telling it to me because he has to, do his job and I need him to, to do mine, so I shouldn't really be telling it to you this's all very hush-hush and so forth.'
