Read Online Madman on a Drum by David Housewright - Free Book Online

in the old days, when Elliot Ness was chasing Al Capone, that’s what they used to call agents of the Treasury Department. T-men.”
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    â€œThat went well,” Karen said when we were back in the Audi. “Do you think you could have been any more condescending?”
    â€œI thought I was the soul of restraint,” I said.
    â€œIs that what you call it. God, once a cop, always a cop.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œYou know, McKenzie, there’s a big difference between being on parole and being on probation.”
    â€œIs there?”
    â€œIf a man is out on parole, it’s because he did his time. He paid the price for his mistakes, and now he’s 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 ‘be good.’ I don’t blame you if you’re pissed off at them.
    â€œThere are twenty times more criminals on probation than in prison. That’s because ninety-six percent of the felony convictions in Minnesota are achieved through guilty pleas and seventy-eight percent of those convictions result in probation—so, 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. They’ll 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; they’re going to learn their lesson. But that thirty percent—I knew one offender who was serving twenty-two probations simultaneously, all of them theft related. The judges who sentenced him just didn’t believe the nature of his new offenses warranted time.
    â€œThat’s 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 who’s on probation. Maybe they’re just too cheap to spend the money to build more prisons to make room for all those offenders. I don’t know. I only know it’s not my fault and it isn’t the fault of my parolees, so cut it out. Okay?”
    â€œOkay,” I said, but only to maintain peace in the car, only to secure Karen’s future cooperation. See, it wasn’t 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 don’t care how well they behave while on parole, so what difference did it make?
    At Karen’s 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 didn’t know him. I told Harry that we hadn’t learned much so far, only that Scottie Thomforde had had the entire afternoon free to kidnap Victoria.
    â€œSomething else,” I said. “He has a friend called T-Man. I don’t have anything more on him except that he apparently showed up a couple of weeks ago.”
    â€œAbout the time the white van was stolen,” Harry said.
    â€œHe’s big from weight lifting.”
    â€œBig enough to carry a squirming eighty-pound girl to a waiting van, I bet.”
    â€œMaybe he did his body building in prison.”
    â€œHe wouldn’t be the first.”

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 Pig’s Eye