Kate Burtch was Kate Burtch with or without Vodka. She had entered a rehab center in Madison but was so hostile and uncooperative that she was made to leave. She tried to tell Mervin Gross that she had successfully completed her recovery. Mervin was now more afraid of Henry and John Miller than he was of Kate and insisted on documentation. Kate, of course, could not provide it and her master plan made it necessary for her to return to her job in Jefferson County. She checked herself into a center in Chicago.
Kate's files had been completely reviewed and at least two more inconsistencies were found. They could have been carelessness - failure to make appropriate entries as children moved or were emancipated but there was also the real possibility that something much more sinister was occurring. Henry had his detective agency continue to keep an eye on her. For several months nothing of major import was observed. There was some concern over the Chicago center's lax visitation policy. Most rehab centers kept their inmates isolated from persons who might exert an influence deleterious to the patient's recovery. One of her frequent visitors, however, proved to be a Chicago bookie. She seemed to have a gambling habit along with her drinking.
Stevie was making slow progress. Sarah Collins was convinced that the boy would live with bipolar disease all his life but a proper level of medication currently had the boy reasonably normal. He was still very much more concerned with how he was perceived than what he had done or had done to him. He agreed that a seven year old boy shouldn't have his "ass fucked" but saw no problem with his experiences with Tony and the other children in the Miller house. One of his mother's friends when they lived in the trailer court in Chenequa let her eight-year-old daughter "live" with her twelve-year-old boyfriend because they were "in love". The boy's mother thought the arrangement equally appropriate.
To Stevie, sex was for "love" or for fun - regardless of age. "Love" could last an hour or a month. He eventually conceded that he had been raped and agreed that if you made someone do it, it was bad and understood that was why he was so angry. If anybody wanted to, however, even if they were a little kid, it was no one else's business. Why shouldn't you do it if it felt so good? Sarah was not optimistic but vowed to continue trying. If the boy were to live any kind of socially acceptable life, he would need years of therapy.
Sarah admitted that therapy might not be the correct word. The boy's subculture had taught him that conventional mores were unnecessarily restrictive, that people like him were unable to control their lives or their impulses. His "culture" seemed to see itself as less worthy to live as other than "animals". The boy's maladjustment had little to do with the fact that he had been victimized sexually. He saw himself as a victim only of duress. For him sexual activity was the norm. He knew several kids who made money by allowing themselves to be penetrated by adult males. When you got paid for it, you were not queer. It was a job and you made good money. His maladjustment was the fact that society would not accept the folkways of his subculture. Sarah had her work cut out for her.