Equal Access (7 page)

As they both scanned about the garden for a
ripe vegetable that might be hiding, Dulsie remembered how nice it
was that Shad no longer had to contemplate any free time as a
chance to catch up on lost sleep. He’d dared to also continue
working as a part-time night janitor while in law school, which
probably only “brainiacs” like him could get away with.

“I think we got it all,” Dulsie glanced at
Shad. Because they were working in the garden on a morning that was
quickly getting hotter, they were dressed in summer work clothes.
Shad was wearing denim shorts and a light green tee shirt, and
Dulsie had on tan cotton shorts and a yellow tee shirt.

Dulsie turned her attention toward Sadie. The
large white dog was lying outside the garden. Not only did the
short fence keep her out, Sadie knew better than to try coming
through the gate to join her masters. The dog was too bulky and
klutzy to avoid trampling the plants. Her thick white coat looked
pretty rough this time of year because the dog would pull out her
own shedding hair as a way to cope with the heat, which actually
sort of added to how intimidating Sadie could appear when she
started to bark.

Barking was the first recourse in Sadie’s job
to guard the turkeys. Although actually quite friendly, especially
to people she knew, Sadie left no doubt in a coyote’s or stray
dog’s mind that she would shred it to bits if it ventured too
close. Dulsie was also quite proud that the dog had even mauled a
couple of opossums and a raccoon in the past three years.

“What’re your plans for all this?” Shad
glanced between their baskets of produce.

“Make fried okra and tomatoes for lunch.”
Dulsie looked down at her own basket. “Have green beans with supper
tonight. Make a squash casserole to take to dinner tomorrow.”

Every Sunday after First Day meeting, their
families would gather at either the Wekenheiser home or the Delaney
house to share a meal and visit.

“You sure about the casserole?” Shad asked.
“You know we’re
all
eating squash these days.”

Dulsie laughed. “If we don’t eat them,
they’ll take over the planet.”

“Maybe you could take some to work after this
weekend and give them to your coworkers.”

“Are you kidding?” Dulsie grinned at him.
“This time of year they make sure they lock their cars so nobody
can leave a bag of squash in there.”

Dulsie led the way out of the garden, and
after Shad closed the gate they walked together toward the house.
Sadie lumbered to her feet and trotted over to one of the oak trees
beside the house to lie down again in a shady area.

There was a stoop on the back corner of their
house closest to the turkey gate. The door there opened into the
kitchen, and when Dulsie and Shad entered they set the baskets on
the counter beside the sink.

Dulsie had nicknamed this place the
Handyman’s Delusion. It wasn’t a bad house, really, but it had
issues related to both its age and the changing styles of the
times. From the outside it was sort of cute with its broad front
porch and white clapboard siding. But the inside showed either
signs of wear or evidence where past repairs had been performed.
The house was also a testament to modeling changes over the last
eighty years.

With its two bedrooms and one bathroom it was
only one room larger than the apartment they had rented while still
living in Columbia. There was still no central air or heating
installed, so a small furnace stood in one corner of the living
room and a window air conditioner was perched at the side wall.
Dulsie and Shad had added another cooling unit to one of their
bedroom windows.

Every room but the bathroom had two windows,
and all had all been replaced with aluminum storm windows over
thirty years ago, adding to the eclectic timeframe of the house.
The windows really did need replacing again. They were drafty and
provided, Dulsie suspected, some of the many entryways the mice
used to regularly show up in the house. At least during the
summertime her discoveries of mice were much rarer because the
snakes were as adept at getting in. Dulsie decided she preferred
snakes to mice, but the first time somebody offered her a free
kitten she would snatch it up.

Shad started taking tomatoes out from their
baskets and setting the fruits closer to the sink while Dulsie
picked up the wooden cutting board and drew a chef’s knife from the
block at the other end of the counter.

“Beat it.” Dulsie walked around Shad and set
the implements to the other side of the baskets.

Shad arched an eyebrow at her as he set the
last tomato on the counter. “Looks like you mean it.”

Shad deferred to Dulsie in the kitchen.
Although he could cook – his parents had seen to that – Shad needed
a recipe and the right ingredients for any dish beyond “the
basics.” Dulsie could look in the pantry and the refrigerator, fix
items together and produce a meal. She would ask for Shad’s help
whenever she had multiple tasks in operation, but otherwise like a
typical Leeds woman Dulsie preferred to hone her cooking skills
without someone less inventive in her way.

“I want to get all this stuff ready to go.”
Dulsie began setting out the squash. “Maybe after lunch we can head
over to your folks and see what the river’s doing.”

The back side of Uncle Pax’s farm was
bordered by the Osage River. She and Shad had spent many hot
afternoons swimming there.

“You want me to snap beans?”

“No.” Dulsie smirked as she glanced at him.
“I’ll take it from here.”

Shad saw his opportunity to begin taking
action on his discovery about Wally. Before he could do anything
else, he’d decided, Shad needed to collect more information on the
man. “How long are you gonna take?”

“This won’t take long.” Dulsie’s smirk
deepened. “But I have some other things to do, so you have time to
go play on the computer.”

Shad couldn’t figure out how it seemed Dulsie
would keep reading his mind. “How did you know...?”

“My spider senses are tingling.” Dulsie
glanced at him. “You asked how long it would take me, not if there
was something else I wanted you to do. That means there’s something
else you want to do, and usually that’s work on the computer.”

Shad half wondered how long it would be
before Dulsie started finishing sentences for him. “Oh.” He turned
away to leave the kitchen but glanced at her again as Shad
approached the doorway to the living room. “You didn’t have to make
it sound so
obvious
.”

He heard Dulsie chuckle as Shad entered the
living room and immediately turned right to step into a small
hallway. The door in front of him led to the bathroom. On his right
was their bedroom, and to his left was the spare bedroom they used
as an office.

After washing up in the bathroom, Shad went
into the bedroom to retrieve his laptop before strolling into the
office. He sat at the scraped up but solid wood desk he’d bought at
a garage sale nearly ten years ago and pushed back the monitor of
their desktop computer to set the laptop in its place and switch it
on.

The laptop was newer and more powerful, a
gift from Dulsie and both their parents when he completed law
school but before he passed the bar. Dulsie had been able to learn
from Shad exactly what he would want in a personal computer and saw
to it this laptop filled the bill. It was the perfect gift. Before
he gave in to the insane idea of becoming a lawyer, Shad had
figured on going into computer programming as a career.

Actually he had originally wanted to be a
farmer like Pap, but Pap told Shad to “get a day job” because it
was increasingly difficult for a family to survive exclusively from
the earnings on a family farm, even one as large as theirs. Pap had
managed to remain a full-time farmer because Mam held a job at the
school. The only reason Pap didn’t feel somewhat emasculated by the
fact his wife was the first one in generations to have to hold a
job was because Mam actually enjoyed her work as a secretary.

The choice for Shad’s career had seemed
pretty obvious. He had no trouble spending long hours completely
alone, and Shad preferred to deal with facts rather than more
subjective problems. His talent surfaced only months after his
parents brought him into their home. Mam got a new computer in the
school office where she worked, and the change in programming was
giving her fits. One day after classes she asked Shad if he wanted
to look at it and see if the contraption made any sense to him.

It made perfect sense. Computers were utterly
logical with their specific commands and predetermined responses.
By the time Shad entered high school his parents bought a used
computer which he managed to hone his skills on despite its
obsolescence. And as soon as Shad was able to get on the internet
regularly after Mam and Pap bought a new computer, he indulged in a
personal challenge that was his worst ever defiance of the law.

He became a hacker. Shad never tampered with
the files of another system or used confidential information
unethically, but he took satisfaction from being able to break into
programs that were designed to keep him out. Shad suspected his
enjoyment of this form of rebellion was rooted in the abuse of
authority he’d suffered in his earlier childhood. Although his
parents were aware of what sites Shad would go into, it wasn’t
until he was a junior in high school they figured out
how
he
was getting into them.

“Isn’t this illegal?” Pap asked him that
evening when they realized what Shad was doing.

Shad was scared they were going to take the
computer away from him, but he was more concerned about the
consequences that naturally came from a lie. “Well ... yeah.” He
quickly added, “I’m not messing with anything, though. I’m just
looking.”

“It’s an invasion of people’s privacy.” Pap
frowned. “I know
you
wouldn’t want your privacy
invaded.”

The discussion continued for at least an
hour, and Shad became more convinced his parents were going to shut
off their internet access. Pap had Shad show him how he managed to
get past the security on the sites, then Pap sat in silence for
what seemed like an eternity to Shad as the man stared at the
monitor and absently stroked his beard.

“Tell me this,” Pap finally said. “When you
become a programmer, you’re gonna use your knowledge about this
stuff to come up with technology that will stop people like
you.”

Shad agreed. His parents allowed him to
continue, and Shad sometimes wondered if this was Pap’s way of
encouraging him to keep up the Delaney notoriety. When Pap went
into the hospital the following year, however, it started the chain
of events that turned Shad away from the technology profession to
actually consider law.

Ironically his questionable talent was an
asset to Shad in his work as an attorney. Although illegally
obtained information wasn’t admissible in court, for Shad just
having the knowledge was a powerful advantage. Research was one
aspect to his job Shad actually liked, so he had a tendency to
overindulge in it.

Right now he needed all the information he
could get on Walden Palmer.

It was easy enough to start with the website
Shad had learned was associated with Wally’s business. From there
he began delving into information that wasn’t normally available
without paying a fee or hiring a detective. He already knew Wally
was still living in the St. Louis area, and before very long Shad
had his mailing address and phone number. Then he discovered Wally
owned the property with his wife.

Wife? Had Wally merely altered his
modus
operandi
to actually marry a woman instead of
simply move in with her to gain access to a young son? Was the
marriage a better front for the public persona that would make
people believe Wally would never do such a thing to a child? Was it
possible the wife belonged to the ranks of those few women who were
also molesters? Such females were a minority, but they often got
started by pleasing male molesters they became attached to.

Shad did a background check on the wife,
Lynette. She had been formerly married and given birth to two sons
... but both were legal adults now. A search on the sons revealed
that neither was married, so Wally apparently wasn’t preying on any
grandkids. And Lynette’s record was clean in regard to any run-ins
with the law.

Could Wally be putting together a personal
harem from boys drawn to the business? Shad’s research on the
history of the chain revealed Wally opened the original store eight
years ago, five years before his marriage to Lynette.

Further focus on Wally gave Shad his
political party affiliation, former addresses, when and where he
was born, what vehicles he owned and even some banking information.
Shad also confirmed this was Wally’s first marriage.

Most frustrating, but unsurprising, was the
fact Wally’s record was clean.

Shad leaned back in his chair and stared at
the screen of latest information on the laptop. Wally had been a
rather young man when he had access to Shad, perhaps barely in his
twenties. He’d probably starting molesting boys back in his teens.
The best case scenario was that Wally managed to find a woman with
a four-year-old son whom he would live with until the son was
seven, then Wally would move on to a new hunting ground. That could
possibly reduce the number of Wally’s victims to around twelve to
fifteen.

The numbers were of no comfort to Shad. He
was convinced Wally was a molester because first he was a pedophile
– someone who was physically attracted to children, usually of a
specific age and gender. And Shad had no guarantee that even while
he was such an easy target for Wally the man didn’t turn his
affection toward a few boys on the side. Odds were Wally had
molested more than fifteen boys. At least Shad was also convinced
that Wally wasn’t simply an opportunist who took advantage of any
child just because he or she became accessible to him. Those types
of molesters usually turned out to be the really dangerous ones
because their motivation wasn’t based on attraction. They committed
the act because those children were simply there and convenient to
victimize.