going to take it that way, so be it.
I had to hand it to O'Donnell. He could be a Grade A jerk, but at
least the guy could take it. As I slammed down the phone in my office,
I could hear his laugh above all the others.
I waited for my pulse to return to normal, then called over to the jail
to make sure Derringer was still in custody. The Multnomah County
holding center's under an order from a federal judge for overcrowding.
If the cells get full, the sheriff's office is required to start
releasing prisoners according to a court-created formula. In theory, a
sex offender in on a parole hold should be one of the last to be
released, but I'd stopped being surprised by MCSO's decisions a long
time ago.
I finally got connected to a Deputy Lamborn.
'You calling about Frank Derringer?' he asked. 'Because I've been
trying all morning to figure out who to call, and I'm getting ready to
come off shift. Can't read the PO's signature for shit.'
'What's going on?' I asked.
'Well, we noticed something I thought the PO should know about. When
we bring the prisoners in for booking, they've got to strip down out of
their street clothes and put on their jail blues. Anyway, when
Derringer was changing, one of the guys noticed that Derringer doesn't
have any pubic hair.'
'Come again?' I said.
'Yep, all gone down there. So, anyway, we assumed he had crabs or
something and were joking around about what lucky prisoner was gonna
have to share a cell with him. But then I noticed Derringer had a
parole hold for an Attempted Sod One and figured a sex offender might
have a more sinister reason for getting rid of the short and cur lies
Thought someone should know about it.'
That someone was me. I wrote down Lamborn's information so I could add
him to my witness list. Then I cut the call short so I could call
Derringer's parole officer to see if he knew anything else.
He picked up the phone on the first ring. 'Renshaw.'
I introduced myself to Dave Renshaw as the DA who was going to pick up
the Derringer case, then passed along Deputy Lamborn's observation.
'Well, I don't like what he had to say about my penmanship, but the boy
was certainly using his noggin, wasn't he?'
'I'd say so. Unless Derringer's got some explanation, it looks like he
knew he was going out for a victim and didn't want to leave any
physical evidence behind. I was calling to see if you had anything in
your file that might help. Derringer hasn't been out on parole for
long, so if we could show that no one ever noticed anything unusual
about Derringer's appearance when he was in prison '
Renshaw cut me off. 'Oh, I can do better than that. One of Mr.
Derringer's parole conditions is that he submit to pethismographic
examination.' My silence told him I didn't know what that was.
'Standard for most sex offenders. A counselor hooks the guy's private
parts up to an EKG and then shows slides of various sexual images. By
monitoring what gets someone like Mr. Derringer hot, the counselor can
see whether the parolee's preferred fantasy images are changing with
treatment or whether he's still perverted.'
'Are you about to say what I hope?'
'Yes, ma'am. Derringer was in let's see, I've got his file right here
yep, just last week for his initial examination, and I was there for
it.'
'And everything was normal down there?'
'I don't know about that, but, yes, I definitely would've noticed if he
had shaved that area, and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary.'
'And what were the pethismograph results?' I asked.
'Oh, the doctor would tell you that Derringer was responding to
treatment. Derringer's pulse got pretty fast during some of the
violent porn and stayed flat and steady during what most of us would
consider straight porn, but his Johnson stayed limp the whole time. The
doctor thought Derringer's pulse raced out of nervousness that he might
get caught getting off on the violence. But with what I know so far
about this new case, I think Derringer was getting turned on but just
wasn't responding downstairs.'
Definitely possible. We were wrapping up the call when Renshaw said,
'Now this is interesting. I was flipping through the file while we
were talking. I usually get the facts of my guys' cases straight from
the police report, but intake typed in something that must've come from
the prosecuting attorney's file. The notes say that Derringer's
brother, Derrick, had offered himself as Derringer's alibi witness.'
'This is on Derringer's old case?'
'Right, the Attempted Sod,' Renshaw clarified. 'I didn't realize that
Derringer ever tried to go with an alibi, but it says here that Derrick
