Amy Lynn Steele probably would not have paid too much attention to the clothing she was wearing if she had not bumped her leg up against the bottom of her kitchen table and put a run in her nylons. Loudly she cursed the table that had ruined her pantyhose, but other then her dog, there was no one there to hear her utter frustration. Normally by this hour she was showered and relaxing in her sweat pants and long t-shirt, but today had been an especially hectic day. There had been the usual hectic day at work, but just coming home had been an ordeal. There had been groceries to get, and her Miniature Schnauzer had been whining at the door begging for a walk before she even had time to step through the door. Walking a dog while still wearing her work heels was not something Amy wanted to do, especially considering the late hour, but now that he had been walked, and been fed, she wanted to do nothing more then to sit down and relax.
Her first order of business was to remove her shoes. Fourteen hours in a pair of high heels was four hours more then any woman should. With eagerness, she placed her toe against the heel of the other and pried it from her foot. With a loud clatter, it fell to the hardwood floor even as she went to pop off her other shoe. That one came off just as easily, and after so many hours of wearing them, Amy could not get them off fast enough. Still they hurt terribly from the hours of walking and she longed for the days when she came home, the dog had been walked and fed, and she could plop her tired feet into her husband's lap and say "rub."
"Divorce sucks," she said to Isaac as she teasingly rubbed his head with her now nylon toes as he lay on the floor underneath the table. "Remind me tomorrow to wear sensible shoes," she said to her dog as if he really could do such a thing. With a last rub of her toes over his salt and peppered colored fur, Amy hit a few keys on her laptop to check her email. As she waited for her email to open up, she took a long sip of red wine from a glass she had poured earlier and noted who had sent her emails.
Secretly she wished her ex-husband would send her one. While she rejoiced to her friends about her new found freedom, she doubted she would find anyone as understanding as John. While it was true he had cheated on her and sent the marriage towards the courts, deep inside Amy knew it was her endless hours of work, constant complaining and unrealistic demands that had pushed him away. But instead of seeing her ex-husband's email address in her inbox however, she saw another that she had never seen before.
Strangely it had gotten past her spam protection, and she was just about to delete it unread when she noticed the tag at the end of the senders email address. Even the most unscrupulous spammer did not use the dot gov tag for fear of the consequences of using such an address, so Amy quickly realized it was a legitimate email. With curiosity she clicked on it and began to read it.
"Ms Steele, only you can right this wrong. Tomorrow you have a parole hearing for Jonathan Victor. You should know that he should not be released. Not only is he dangerous to society, but he is also using political connections to get paroled even though his behavior in prison has been violent. Research what I am saying and you will realize he cannot be paroled."
As a member of the State's Parole Board, Amy had never had an email like this before. She reread it several times and tried to decipher a motivation for such a letter. With a dot gov email address and from the wording they used, Amy concluded it came from within the prison system, but when she went to reply to the email, it bounced back with an undeliverable message.
For a moment Amy leaned back in her chair, deep in thought. Her long hectic day, her aching feet and even her glass of wine were forgotten as she looked at the words and tried to decide if she should act on what she was being told.
"Research it and you will see what I am saying," she said aloud as she re-read the email and tapped her fingers on the kitchen table. "Maybe I will Isaac. This person knows something but can't do anything about it without my help. I wonder just what it is."
Amy closed her email box and began to turn her attention to researching Jonathan Victor. Through the magic of the internet, she was able to connect to the main frame at the office and have access to anything she had access to there. She was familiar with the name, but other then a precursory look at the next day's parolee's, Amy had not done much investigation into the next day cases. When the parolee's pdf file began to download slowly, Amy knew the email had been legitimate.
"Isaac, I can see right now its going to be a coffee type of night and not wine. This guy's rap sheep is two pages long.
As Amy's night slowly slipped into the early hours of the morning, it was easy to see something with this man was a miss. Coming to the conclusion that this man had no reason to be paroled was pretty easy. His rap sheet might have been two pages long, but it was as redundant with each entry repeating the last with only the date of the offense changing. Sexual assault on a woman...that was how every arrest report began, but every charge had been reduced by the District Attorney to Indecent Exposure. Even in prison he had assaulted women; two nurses and an administrative assistant, the latter only two weeks ago, and yet those were all reduced down as well.
"Then why is this man going before the parole board," Amy asked again as the clock in the kitchen slowly wound its way past one AM?
On a hunch, and powered by coffee so dark and stale now that it could float a spoon, Amy tried a genealogical search using his last name and found the answer. When the name of his Uncle rolled across her screen, Amy shuttered. Jeremy Black, his mother's brother who happened to be the Commissioner of Maine's Department Of Conservation. Amy knew the name well enough, but had never met the man personally nor knew much about him, but in Maine the political circles run deep and commissioners today can be governor's tomorrow so power exists at all levels.
"Oh my God", Amy kept saying as she got up to pace the room. There was no question the man needed to remain in prison, but with a politician protecting him, there was not much Amy could do. What Amy saw for information online was certainly not going to be what her and the other two parole board members were going to see tomorrow. Any recommendation on her part would single her out, and the vote would still be two to one in favor of release. Still she could not let this predator out of prison. His offenses might have been reduced to Indecent Exposure and Kidnapping, but he should have been in for Rape, an unpardonable offense.
"But what brings on these attacks," Amy said again to her dog, but he was asleep on the couch hardly twitching an ear as Amy padded around the kitchen barefoot. As she returned to her computer and tried to read the arrest reports again and again to figure out what motivated the rapes, it was her own bare feet that made the connection.