The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [303]
But the Doctor disagreed. He figured that, though the woman might rebel at the idea of such a sentence on the surface, some deeper part of her soul would accept and maybe even welcome it. Mr. Moore and Marcus were skeptical about this thought, too, until the Doctor explained it further. Prison, he said, would actually satisfy the conflicting longings of Libby’s spirit: the need to be isolated while at the same time having people around; the need to perform what she saw as some sort of useful task (for a woman as clever as Libby would no doubt be assigned to a position of some authority among the prisoners in, say, the women’s block at Sing Sing) while at the same time feeling like she was defying accepted social customs and authority (she would, after all, be a jailbird). And then there was the question of her desire to control what went on around her: many criminals, the Doctor said, especially those of Libby’s stripe, secretly craved some kind of regulation and discipline in their lives (she had, he reminded us all, been able to go through hours of labor without ever making a sound loud enough to wake her parents); and though physical control in this case would actually be administered by the prison, Libby, with her talent for self-delusion, would quickly convince herself that in fact she was the one who was dictating what went on. And in a way, the Doctor said, she’d be right, being as it would be her own criminal actions what would’ve landed her in jail. But one consideration weighed above all others in convincing the Doctor that Libby would take the deal what Mr. Picton planned to offer: over and over we’d seen her demonstrate that she prized her own life above all things, including the health and safety of her own offspring—the chance to escape execution would be enough, the Doctor said, to make Libby play along, even without the other influences.
Marcus was satisfied by this reasoning, but Mr. Moore still had his doubts; and Mr. Picton, though he knew they were taking the only sensible course, continued to feel a little cheated by not being able to secure a death sentence. But the Doctor insisted to all of them that the only thing what was truly important was for Libby Hatch to be put into a place where she’d never again have any contact with children—especially her own child. On top of that, knowing that her mother was going to be jailed for life instead of executed would only help Clara Hatch’s recovery, since the girl wouldn’t have to carry the enormous weight for the rest of her life of having played a part in sending her mother to the chair. Miss Howard stated that this was the best reason of all for making the deal; indeed, she said, considering what effect her mother’s execution might’ve had on Clara, she wondered why Mr. Picton hadn’t made life imprisonment for Libby his goal in the first place. This comment led to some pretty passionate statements from the assistant district attorney about the unknowable future, and how he couldn’t trust that some governor might not get suckered—say, twenty or thirty years down the line—by one of Libby’s effective performances into reversing the part of her sentence what specified that there was to be no parole. The Doctor and Miss Howard might have done a lot that day to explain her evil, he said, but they hadn’t done anything to remove it: only death could provide that kind of solution.
That set the Doctor off again, on the subject of how was science ever supposed to learn anything from criminals like Libby if the state went around frying and hanging them all; and this discussion, along with all others