He thought
of the more
minor offenders, agonizing over the young ones especially, whose lives were spiraling, the ones who perhaps had things left in them to do, the ones who wouldn't likely ever murder, but had been unable to extricate themselves from these spirals, from their deranged fathers or their addled mothers, from the lack
of any parents, from
sexual abuse, from the vagaries
of the foster care system, from the sorts
of daily hurdles that Walters would never have dreamed about — the
boys (and occasional girls) who were at that corner, who could turn, the ones whose direction wasn't already set.