Read Online Redemption by Laurel Dewey - Free Book Online

well as a criminal pattern. That’s the most important part of all of this! Lou has a definite pattern . The two girls he raped were both fourteen years old. Ashlee was fourteen years old. The girls were brunettes. Ashlee was a brunette. The girls had hazel eyes. Ashlee had hazel eyes. The pattern is a complicated, psychological mesh of Lou’s tweaked perspective. Lou’s mother was a brunette with hazel eyes. I know it sounds like bad, cookie-cutter psychology, but there it is. Choosing a fourteen-year-old also had meaning. Lou was fourteen years old when his mother raped him.”
    “His mother actually physically raped him?”
    “I already told you that!” Kit replied, sounding a bit irritated.
    “You said she sexually abused him. That’s a broad umbrella term these days. It can run the gamut from fondling and masturbation to exposing him to porn or making him watch her have sex with another guy.”
    “Well, Lou’s mother did all that and she raped him with her own goddamned body. Get the picture?”
    “So, what’s the meaning around the number fourteen?”
    “I was getting to that. During our conversations, Lou mentioned a saying to me many times: ‘The Power of Fourteen.’ It was a strong belief he had. He said that when a boy or girl reached fourteen years old, it signified a pivotal moment in his or her development. It was at that age, he said, that a child was highly impressionable and could easily be altered spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally. His feeling was that whatever occurred in your fourteenth year framed and defined who you would become as you grew into an adult. As much as I hate to admit it, ‘The Power of Fourteen’ theory has merit. I’ve paid more attention over the years, and I have noticed that it is a defining age. Look at that little girl in Utah who was kidnapped and held captive for all those months. What was her name? Elizabeth.... Elizabeth Smart. She was fourteen years old when that occurred. I know that tragedy and trauma can strike at any age, but there does seem to be something to the whole ‘Power of Fourteen’ idea.”
    Jane nervously rubbed the old scar on the right side of her forehead. She had been fourteen when that defining moment in her young life occurred. And that runaway kid on the street in front of The Red Tail...she was fourteen. Coincidence? Jane wasn’t about to entertain a warped theory from the mind of Lou Peters. “You believe that shit when a Devil incarnate like Lou says it?”
    “Even the Devil speaks the truth sometimes, Jane P. He just doesn’t couch that truth in love. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that truth or insight can pour from his lips.”
    “I’m afraid I see the world as a bit more black-and-white than that, Kit.”

    “This is not a black-and-white world. If you see it that way, you create polarity. And when you do that, you’re not open to the wonderful, frustrating, enlightening gray middle part.”
    “Cops don’t see gray. We can’t. It would eliminate that ‘polarity’ we call ‘guilt.’”
    “Lou’s own experience proved his theory. He was actually speaking about himself. His mother raped him when he was fourteen, and that event altered and twisted him and turned him into what he became. It’s the classic cycle of victimization.”
    Jane had listened to the “abuse excuse” too many times during her career. If she applied that reasoning to her own violent childhood, she would be working the other side of the law instead of enforcing it. “Do me a favor, Kit. Don’t use Lou’s childhood trauma to sell your appeal. A lot of us got the shit kicked out of us and we’re not out there raping and killing people.”
    Kit eyed Jane carefully. “I was right,” she said, more as an acknowledgment to herself than a statement to Jane. “I saw it in your eyes during that Larry King interview. I saw your pain. I just wasn’t aware where it came from.”
    Jane was not used to anyone so readily