in the old days, when Elliot Ness was chasing Al Capone, thatâs what they used to call agents of the Treasury Department. T-men.â
Â
âThat went well,â Karen said when we were back in the Audi. âDo you think you could have been any more condescending?â
âI thought I was the soul of restraint,â I said.
âIs that what you call it. God, once a cop, always a cop.â
âWhatâs that supposed to mean?â
âYou know, McKenzie, thereâs a big difference between being on parole and being on probation.â
âIs there?â
âIf a man is out on parole, itâs because he did his time. He paid the price for his mistakes, and now heâs trying to make the transition from prison life to real life. But you cops refuse to give him a break. You confuse him with offenders who are serving probation, offenders who were convicted of crimes but instead of being sent to prison or jail are slapped on the wrist and told to âbe good.â I donât blame you if youâre pissed off at them.
âThere are twenty times more criminals on probation than in prison. Thatâs because ninety-six percent of the felony convictions in Minnesota are achieved through guilty pleas and seventy-eight percent of those convictions result in probationâso, yeah, I can understand why you might get frustrated, you and the cops. Especially since thirty percent of the criminals are going to keep on offending and not much bad is going to happen to them. Theyâll commit one offense and get probation and then commit another offense and get probation and then another and another. Seven out of ten offenders are going to go straight; theyâre going to learn their lesson. But that thirty percentâI knew one offender who was serving twenty-two probations simultaneously, all of them theft related. The judges who sentenced him just didnât believe the nature of his new offenses warranted time.
âThatâs just the way it is. In Minnesota only the most nefarious offenders go to prison. The state legislators set it up that way. Maybe they did it because it costs over forty thousand dollars to send an offender to prison for a year and only eighteen hundred to monitor an offender whoâs on probation. Maybe theyâre just too cheap to spend the money to build more prisons to make room for all those offenders. I donât know. I only know itâs not my fault and it isnât the fault of my parolees, so cut it out. Okay?â
âOkay,â I said, but only to maintain peace in the car, only to secure Karenâs future cooperation. See, it wasnât an offender out on probation that kidnapped Victoria Dunston. It was one of her parolees. Besides, two out of five ex-cons return to prison for one reason or another, I donât care how well they behave while on parole, so what difference did it make?
At Karenâs direction I hung a right on University and headed east. On the way I called Harry on my cell. Probably I should have called Special Agent Honsa since he was in charge, but I didnât know him. I told Harry that we hadnât learned much so far, only that Scottie Thomforde had had the entire afternoon free to kidnap Victoria.
âSomething else,â I said. âHe has a friend called T-Man. I donât have anything more on him except that he apparently showed up a couple of weeks ago.â
âAbout the time the white van was stolen,â Harry said.
âHeâs big from weight lifting.â
âBig enough to carry a squirming eighty-pound girl to a waiting van, I bet.â
âMaybe he did his body building in prison.â
âHe wouldnât be the first.â
6
As we drove toward the state capitol campus at the far end of University Avenue, it occurred to me that St. Paul was fast becoming the most boring city in America. Take the name. The city was originally called Pigâs Eye
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton
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