Status Updates From False Allegations (Burke, #9)

I couldn't think of another rock to turn over. Truth is, I believed her the first time I heard her. It was only Kite who kept me going, following every spot of blood on the tracks. It wasn't the money. I know how to go through the motions without actually doing anything.

Poor little bitch, I thought. Hung out to dry, trained to dance so hard she kept it up even when the music stopped. But every time she heard that music again…"Sure," I said, "but is she—?"

The mystery of life isn't why a tortured child becomes a serial killer—it's why so many children don't. If we could only understand how the brain learns new accommodations…But we do know this: it's some form of interference later on."

Her face fell. "I don't mean that. There are plenty of…kids who didn't turn out like that. No matter what happened to them." "That's true. I'm not arguing with you. Being abused…it's no guarantee." "It's no excuse either," she said, looking at me with those orange eyes.

I'd forgotten how much I'd loved it, reading and studying. I'll bet if I'd been raised by humans instead of a collection of freaks and the fucking State, I'd have been…a scientist, maybe. I don't know. I know I wouldn't have been what I am now. You don't get born bad. NOT BORN BAD IS A VASHSS MANTRA

But those kind of burglars are a dying breed. Hell, burglary itself is a dying art. Today, it's mostly smash–and–snatch punks, junkies and fools, amateurs who think a fence is what you climb over to get to the windows…which you break with a brick. They don't know how to bypass an alarm, don't even know enough to start at the bottom with a chest of drawers.

"The truth—don't you understand? He always says the people who say it never happens are just as crazy as the ones who say it always happens. He believes this wom—In this case, I mean. I do too. And he says you're the man to prove it for him…If you can't break a story, it can't be broken, that's what he says."

"Allegations of child sexual abuse," Kite intoned. "The nuclear weapon in divorce cases, the staple of talk shows, the darling of the tabloids. Absolutely pandemic. And when those allegations are false, a greater threat to the fabric of our culture than AIDS, cancer, and cocaine combined!"