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  “Lots of things played a role,” I said.

  “Zactly. First off, she leaves her baby alone. Second, the baby goes and wanders off. Third, Randolph goes with that monster to the mall even though I told him not to. Fourth, my legs were hurtin’, so I lay down to sleep it off and Randolph sneaked off. See what I mean? It’s like a . . . like a movie. Starring the devil, with us being the people the devil’s workin’ against. Like no matter what we do, everything goes to hell.”

  She struggled upright, stood bracing herself with her cane. “Take me back, okay? I get over there too late, those bastards gonna love lockin’ me out.”

  CHAPTER 6

  I drove Margaret Sieff back to the jail, went home, and picked up messages. Rand Duchay’s P.D., a man named Lauritz Montez, had left two.

  He didn’t bother with small talk. “You’re finished with my client, so can we finally talk?”

  “Feel free to state any relevant facts, Mr. Montez.”

  “Only one fact, Doctor, but it’s the crucial one. Randy’s obviously impaired. No way you couldn’t have found that. What’s the extent of it?”

  No one called the kid Randy.

  I said, “It’ll all be in my report.”

  “Spare me,” said Montez. “This isn’t the stuff of forensic debate.”

  I said, “You know how it goes. Judge Laskin sees everything first.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . so, what’d you think of that grandmother? You bought her lunch. See that as conflict of interest?”

  “I’m pretty busy, Mr. Montez— ”

  “Easy, just kidding. So what do you think of her? Seriously.”

  “At the risk of repeating myself— ”

  “Come on, Doctor. You can’t be harboring any serious doubt about competence. You might want to know that I’m having my own expert conduct a full psychometric battery. Herbert Davidson, endowed professor from Stanford, acknowledged authority in the field.”

  “Read his textbook in grad school,” I said.

  “Be a shame if your results run far afield from his.”

  “Be a damn shame,” I said.

  “So when do I get your report?”

  “When Judge Laskin sends it to you.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Following orders. God forbid anyone should think independently.”

  * * *

  Troy Turner was housed as far from Rand as possible, in a corner cell past a dark twist of corridor. The deputy who walked me over said, “You’re gonna love this one.”

  He was an iron-pumper named Sherrill with a shaved head and a massive, straw-colored mustache. Usually, he projected the confidence of a strong man. Today he looked distracted.

  “Tough kid?” I said.

  He slowed his pace. “I got kids. Four of my own plus a stepkid. On top of that, I spent three years working juvey crime, so I understand kids. Unlike some of the other guys, I know punks can start off as victims. But this one . . .” he shook his head.

  “He do something in here?” I said.

  “Naw, it’s just the way he is.” He stopped. Behind us were empty cells. “Doc, if anything I’m telling you gets out, we’re never going to have any trust between us.”

  “This is off the record.”

  “I mean it,” he said. “I’m talking to you because word is you’re straight and you’re doing your best for Judge Laskin and we all respect Judge Laskin, ’cause he knows the way the real world is.”

  I waited.

  He looked over his shoulder, stopped again. Silence all around; only on High Power could a jail be this quiet. Up a few feet was an occupied cell and I could see the inmate checking us out. Well-groomed, gray-haired, middle-aged. Copy of Time magazine in one hand.

  Sherrill drew me farther up the hall, muttering, “That one’s Russian Mafia, cut your throat as easy as smile at you.” When we were alone, he said, “I don’t talk much to prisoners, life’s too short, why fill your life with garbage. But this one, being a kid, I tried to be friendly. Turner reacts by shining me on. Completely. Making like I’m invisible. One time, I’d been off-shift, and when I got back he looked like he’d lost some weight. I brought him some breakfast, threw in some extra toast because he seemed pitiful. He snatched up a piece, gobbled like a hyena. I asked him if he understood why he was in here. This time, he doesn’t shine me on, he comes right out and says, ’ ‘Causa what I did.’ But not with any feeling. He could’ve been ordering fries and a Coke. Then he takes another piece of toast from the breakfast tray and looks me in the eye and starts chewing. Real slowly, real sloppy. Pieces are falling out of his mouth, and then he starts dribbling and drooling, rolling his eyes. Acting like an idiot, like it’s a big joke. I stand there and he keeps it up and then he spits it all out on the floor and says, ‘What?’ Like I’m annoying him. And I say you didn’t answer my question, dude. Why’re you in here? And he says, ‘I fucked that baby up is why.’ Then he grinds the toast into the floor with his foot and says, ‘This shit sucks, dude. Gimme some real food.’ ”

  “Remorseful,” I said.

  “Doc, God help me for saying it— if you repeat this I’ll totally deny it— but some sperm deserve to be drowned before they get a chance to swim.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Small boy, stick arms, heart-shaped face. Expectant brown eyes widened as I entered his cell. The pinched, wounded features of a Dickensian orphan.

  I introduced myself.

  He said, “Pleased to meet you.” It rolled out easy, like a rehearsed line, but if there was sarcasm I wasn’t catching it.

  I sat down and he said, “That chair’s not real comfortable.”

  “Not much choice around here,” I said.

  “You kin sit on the bed and I kin sit there.”

  “Thanks, Troy, but I’m fine.”

  “Okay.” He straightened his posture, rested a hand on each knee.

  I took out my notepad. Looked at his hands. Narrow, white, long-fingered hands, grimy around the cuticles but the nails had been clipped neatly. Delicate hands. It wouldn’t take much strength to strangle a baby, but still . . .

  “Troy, I’m a psychologist.”

  “To talk to me about my feelings.”

  “Someone told you that.”

  “Miz Weider.”

  Sydney Weider was his primary P.D. She’d been more persistent than Lauritz Montez about meeting me before I began my evaluation, had gotten aggressive when I refused. Laskin had termed her “a pit bull. Mark my word, she’s already making notes for the appellate attorneys.”

  “What did Ms. Weider tell you about me?”

  “You’re gonna ask questions and I should cooperate.” He smiled, as if demonstrating.

  I said, “Is there anything you want to talk about?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I should talk about her.”

  “Her?”

  “The baby.”

  “Everyone calls her a baby,” I said, “but she was more like a toddler, right?”

  The term was new to him. “I guess.”

  “Kristal was two years old, Troy. She walked and talked a little.”

  “I didn’t hear her talk.”

  “Ever see her before?”

  “No way.”

  I said, “Why’d you decide to take her?”

  “She followed us.”

  “Where?”

  “Out.”

  “Out of the mall.”

  “Yeah.” The camera had caught Kristal dangling, kicking her legs. The police had assumed it was a struggle, but both defense briefs suggested that all three kids had been horsing around.

  As if that mattered.

  I said, “Why’d Kristal follow you?”

  Shrug.

  “Can you think of any reason at all, Troy?”

  “Probably she thought we were cool.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “ ’Cause she was little and we’re big.”

  “Big
is cool.”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Kristal followed you and then what happened?”

  “We went to the park and smoked and had some beer.”

  “All of you.”

  “Yup.”

  “Where’d you get the beer?”

  His eyes half closed. Suddenly wary. “We had it.”

  “You had it with you at the mall?”

  “From before.”

  “Where’d you keep it?”

  “At the park.”

  “Where at the park?”

  Hesitation. “Behind a tree.”

  “Hidden.”

  “Yup.”

  “So you drank and smoked. All three of you.”

  “Yup.”

  “Kristal drank and smoked.”

  “She tried to. She wasn’t no good at it.”

  “Kristal had trouble drinking and smoking,” I said.

  “It made her cough.”

  “So what’d you do?”

  “Kept trying.”

  “To make Kristal smoke?”

  “To help her.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “Not so good.”

  “What happened?”

  “She coughed some more.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She threw up.”

  “Where?”

  “On my shirt.” Now the eyes were slits.

  “You didn’t like that,” I said.

  “It smelled shit— smelled bad.”

  “Kind of gross.”

  “Yup.”

  “What’d you do about that?”

  “About what?”

  “Being barfed on.”

  “Pushed her away.”

  “Where’d you push Kristal?”

  He placed his hands on his chest.

  “Where did she land?” I said.

  “On the floor.”

  “The floor of the park.”

  “The grass.”

  “She land hard?”

  “It was grass.”

  “Soft.”

  “Yup.”

  “Did you push her pretty hard?”

  No answer.

  “Troy?”

  “I didn’t do nothing serious,” he said. “She sat on her butt and started crying real loud. Rand gave her some beer.”

  “Why?”

  Shrug. “I guess to keep her quiet.”

  “Rand’s idea.”

  “Yup.”

  The coroner’s report had found traces of Budweiser in Kristal’s tiny stomach. Her lungs, too— the child had aspirated beer.

  I said, “It was Rand’s idea to give Kristal beer.”

  “I said that.”

  “Why do you think Rand had that idea?”

  “He’s stupid.”

  “Rand is.”

  “Yup.”

  “You hang out with him a lot.”

  “He hangs out with me.” Flint had come into his voice. He realized it. Smiled. “Most of the time, he’s okay.”

  “What happens when he’s not okay?”

  “He does stupid things. Like that.”

  “That?”

  “Giving the baby beer.”

  “How’d Kristal like the beer?”

  “Not too good.”

  “She throw up some more?”

  “She made puffy noises.” His cheeks inflated and he exhaled noisily. “Stuff started coming out of her nose. Then she started yelling.”

  “Yelling loud?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Pretty annoying.”

  His eyes were hyphens. “It wasn’t cool.”

  “What’d you do about that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Kristal threw up on you and yelled loud and annoyed you but you didn’t do anything at all?”

  “Didn’t have to,” he said. A tiny smirk skipped across his lips. Lasted for less than a second before his features settled into childish innocence. If I’d been writing notes, I would’ve missed the whole thing.

  “Why didn’t you have to do anything, Troy?”

  “Rand did.”

  “Rand solved the problem.”

  “Yup.”

  “How?”

  “Shook her and hit her and put his hand on her neck.”

  “Rand put his hand on Kristal’s neck.”

  “He choked her.”

  “Show me how Rand choked Kristal.”

  He hesitated.

  I said, “You were there, Troy.”

  “Like this,” he said, grazing his own neck with a limp hand. Pressing ineffectually with the back of the hand, then releasing.

  “That’s how,” he said.

  “Then what happened?”

  “The baby blooped over.” He tilted to one side, in demonstration, lowered himself in slow motion to the cot. Sat up again. “Like that.”

  “Kristal fell over after Rand choked her.”

  “Yup.”

  “How’d you feel when you saw that?”

  “Bad,” he said, too quickly. “Very bad. Sir.”

  “Why’d you feel bad, Troy?”

  “She wasn’t moving.” Fluttering eyelashes. “I shoulda stopped it.”

  “You should’ve stopped Rand from choking Kristal.”

  “Yup.”

  His lips curled upward and I watched for the return of the smirk. But something happened to his eyes that softened the expression.

  The resigned, world-weary smile of one who’d seen it all but had managed to maintain his dignity.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “It was up to me. I’m the smart one.”

  * * *

  He was.

  Full-scale I.Q. score of 117, which put him in the top twenty-five percent. Given an abstract reasoning subtest in the ninetieth percentile and spotty school attendance that weakened his knowledge base, I figured it for an underestimate.

  Worlds apart, intellectually, from Rand Duchay.

  I shoulda stopped it.

  Maybe Sydney Weider’s coaching had fallen short. Or she’d told him the facts and he’d blocked them out.

  Or he’d simply chosen to lie, figuring me for a gullible jerk.

  I’d read the coroner’s report.

  Traces of Kristal Malley’s skin had been found under Troy’s fingernails, not Rand’s.

  * * *

  For the rest of our sessions he cooperated fully, blithely lying every step of the way.

  When I asked about his mother he told me she was trying to be an actress and that she visited him all the time. The logbooks said she’d been there once. Deputy Sherrill told me Jane Hannabee had been obviously stoned, the visit had lasted ten minutes, and she’d left looking angry.

  “Once you see her, Doc, maybe you understand something about the kid. But not all of it, right? Other punks have crackhead skanks for mothers and they do bad stuff, but not this bad.”

  According to Troy, his father had died “in the army. Shooting terrorists.”

  When I asked him what a terrorist was, he said, “It’s like a criminal but usually they’re niggers and they blow stuff up.”

  I revisited the murder several times and his position remained the same: Kristal had gone with him and Rand voluntarily; Rand had committed all the violence. Troy felt bad about not intervening.

  On the sixth session, he substituted “guilty” for bad.

  “You feel guilty.”