In this 1989 contribution to the anthology The Child Abuse-Delinquency Connection (edited by David N. Sanberg), as with his earlier book The Life-Style Violent Juvenile, Vachss drew from his real-world casework representing children and running detention centers.
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Aftershock
Killing a deer—what they call “hunting” around here—is like fishing with sonar. Or climbing a mountain with a team of Sherpas walking ahead of you to build a base camp before you arrive. Time enough to take off your oxygen mask and warm yourself by the artificial heat before you have some champagne and turn in for the night.
All that’s needed is money. Of course, other people with money sneer at them for doing it. “They wouldn’t be hunting deer if the deer could shoot back.”
The Questioner
For all secrets created, a tiny percentage is kept against any intrusion. The ultimate extractor of such secrets is The Questioner – a man who has trained himself to become empty, who uses that emptiness to listen fully, to sense what others need to hear, to respond in ways that lead them to reveal their most protected thoughts. Disdaining torture or coercion, he mines those secrets with nothing more than conversation.
Batman: The Ultimate Evil
Andrew Vachss’ writing has been described as “red-hot and serious as a punctured lung” (Playboy), “hypnotically violent … made up of equal parts broken concrete block and razor wire” (Chicago Sun-Times), and “short and choppy, like the ticking of a time bomb” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer).