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  I nodded.

  “You don’ believe me,” she said.

  “I’m sure raising a son alone was hard.”

  “I got rid of the others.”

  “The others?”

  “I got knocked up four times.”

  “Abortions?”

  “Three. The last one hurt me.”

  “You kept Troy.”

  “I felt like I deserved it.”

  “Deserved having a child.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s a woman’s right.”

  “To have a child.”

  “You don’t believe that?”

  “You wanted Troy,” I said. “You did your best raising him.”

  “You don’t believe that. You’re gonna send him off to prison.”

  “I’m going to write a report about Troy’s psychological status— what’s going on in his head— and give it to the judge. So anything you can tell me about Troy could help.”

  “You sayin’ he’s crazy?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think he’s one bit crazy.”

  The directness of the answer startled her. “He’s not,” she insisted, as if we remained in dispute. “He’s real smart. He always was smart.”

  “He’s very bright,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I want him to go to college.” She turned and shot me another smile, closemouthed, subtle. Its arc matched the coil of snake on her neck and the effect was unnerving. “I figured he kin be a doctor or something else to get rich.”

  Troy had talked about getting rich. Unperturbed. As if the charges against him were an inconvenience along the road to affluence. His mother’s delusions made my eyes hurt.

  She placed her hands on the BMW’s steering wheel. Pressed down on the inactive gas pedal. Muttered, “This is somethin’.”

  “The car?”

  She eyed Weider through the windshield. “You think she’s gonna help Troy?”

  “She seems to be a good lawyer.”

  “You don’ ever answer a question, do you?”

  “Let’s talk about Troy,” I said. “You want him to go to college.”

  “He ain’t goin’ there now. You’re sending him to prison.”

  “Ms. Hannabee, I can’t send him anywhere— ”

  “The judge hates him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She reached over and touched my arm. Stroked it. “I know men. They’re all hate and jumping.”

  “Jumping?”

  “On women,” she said, working her way up toward my shoulder. Touching my cheek. I removed her hand.

  She gave me a knowing smile. “If there’s something a man needs, I know it.”

  I shifted backward, touched the door panel. “Is there anything you want to tell me about Troy?”

  “I know men,” she repeated.

  I caught her gaze and held it. She touched the bruise on her cheek. Her lips quivered.

  “Where’d you get that?” I said.

  “You think I’m ugly.”

  “No, but I would like to know— ”

  “I used to be hot,” she said. “My tits were like water balloons, I used to dance.” She pressed her palms to her chest.

  “Ms. Hannabee— ”

  “You don’t have to call me that. Miz. I’m no Miz.”

  “Jane— ”

  She wheeled, grabbed my arm again. Claw-fingers bit through the wool of my sleeve. No seductiveness this time. Desperation, as cold fear brightened her eyes and I caught a glimpse of the girl she’d once been.

  “Please,” she said. “Troy didn’t kill no baby. The retard did it. Everyone knows it.”

  “Everyone?”

  “He’s the big one, Troy’s little. Troy’s my little man. It weren’t his fault he hooked up with the retard.”

  “Rand’s the guilty one,” I said.

  Her grip on my arm tightened further. “Zactly.”

  “Did Troy tell you that Rand killed the baby?”

  “Yeah.”

  I glanced down at her fingers. She coughed and sniffed and removed them.

  “He’ll get better,” she said.

  “Who will?”

  “Troy. You give him a chance and he’ll get better and go to college.”

  “You think he’s sick.”

  She stared at me. “Everyone’s sick. Being alive’s being sick. We got to be forgiving. Like Jesus.”

  I said nothing.

  She said, “You understand? About forgiving?”

  “It’s a wonderful quality,” I said. “Being able to forgive.”

  “I forgive everyone.”

  “Everyone who hurts you?”

  “Yeah, why not? Who cares what happened before? Same with Troy, what he did is over. And he didn’t even do it. The retard did.”

  She turned in the seat, bumped her hip against the steering wheel and flinched. “You gonna help him?”

  “I’ll do my best to be truthful.”

  “You should,” she said. Leaning closer. Her scent was a strange mixture of old laundry and too-sweet perfume. “You could look like him.”

  “Like who?”

  “Jesus.” She smiled, ran a tongue over her lips. “Yeah, definitely. Put a beard on you, a little more hair and yeah, sure. You could be a real cute Jesus.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Tom Laskin’s clerk called me a couple of days later to check on my report. I told her I needed another week, picking the time arbitrarily, not sure why I was asking for an extension.

  I spent ten more days on the case, interviewing the social workers and the eligibility officers who covered 415 City, visiting the project and chatting with neighbors, anyone who claimed to have something to offer. Each time, Margaret Sieff was out. Jane Hannabee had moved and no one knew where.

  I visited the boys’ school. No one— not the principal or the guidance counselor or the teachers— had more than a vague remembrance of Troy or Rand. The last time either boy had been graded was a year ago. C minuses and a couple of D’s for Rand, which was social promotion; my testing had shown him to be illiterate with math skills at the second-grade level. B’s and C’s and D’s for Troy. He’d been judged “bright but disruptive.”

  * * *

  To the project workers, the young killers were names on forms. The residents all agreed that prior to his arrest, Rand Duchay had been viewed as a harmless oaf. Everyone I spoke to was certain he’d been turned bad by Troy Turner.

  No divided opinions on Troy, either. He was seen as cunning, nasty, mean, “evil.” Scary despite his small size. Several residents claimed he’d threatened their children but the details were vague. One woman, young and black and nervous, stepped forward as I was leaving the project and said, “That boy done nasty things to my daughter.”

  “How old’s your daughter?”

  “Gonna be six next month.”

  “What happened?”

  She shook her head and hurried away and I didn’t go after her.

  * * *

  I asked to reinterview the boys but was blocked from doing so by Montez and Weider.

  “They’re adamant,” Tom Laskin informed me. “Went so far as to file motions to keep you away.”

  “What’s the problem?” I said.

  “My feeling is it’s mostly Weider. She’s a manic shark.”

  “She does talk fast.”

  “Everything’s conflict with her, even when it doesn’t need to be,” said Laskin. “She says you’ve had more than enough time with her client, doesn’t want his head messed up before she brings her own experts in. Montez is a loafer, takes the path of least resistance. I could probably push it, Alex, but if I’m reversed I’d prefer it not be for something picayune. Do you really need more time?”

  “Why would I mess up their clients’ heads?”

  “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “It’s lawyer crap. Their basic premise is that you’re biased for the prosecution.”

  “I haven’t spoken a word t
o the D.A.”

  “It’s gamesmanship. They’re setting the stage so if you do say something they don’t like, they’ve precharacterized it as impeachable.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you when you get up on the stand. So when can I expect your compiled psychological wisdom on my desk?”

  “Soon.”

  “Soon is better than the alternative.”

  * * *

  I sat down to write my report, starting with the easy part— the crime scene, the background information, the test results. But even that was a struggle, and I hadn’t gotten far when Lauritz Montez called me.

  “How’s it going, Doctor?”

  I said, “Have you changed your mind about my talking to Rand?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “My client cooperated fully the first time, didn’t he? You’ll make a point of stressing that, right?”

  “I’ll do my best to be unbiased.”

  “Look,” said Montez, “the motion was Weider’s idea. You know what she’s like.”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “You do remember Rand cooperating fully.”

  “I do.”

  “Good.” His voice was tight. “He’s pretty depressed.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Poor kid,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “The reason I’m calling, Dr. Delaware, is that Weider just put in for a bifurcated hearing. Do you understand what that means?”

  “She wants to split Troy’s defense from Rand’s.”

  “She wants to screw me— screw Rand. I thought we were all on the same page but she’s pulling a fast one, shifting to blaming it all on my client so her little sociopath can get easy treatment. I thought you should be alerted.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “The truth is obvious.”

  “What truth is that?”

  “A basically good, really stupid kid got caught up with a cold, cruel murderer. I know you’ve been back to 415 City, I know everyone told you that.”

  I said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Lauritz?”

  “I respect your expertise and want to maintain open communication. No offense about the motion to deny you access, okay? If you really want to talk to Rand, fine. He’s remorseful. Consumed with remorse.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “So,” he said. “Are you going to be seeing him again?”

  “I’ll give you a call.”

  I didn’t.

  He never followed up.

  * * *

  Three days into writing the report, I phoned Tom Laskin. “This isn’t working very well.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “I told you at the outset that I might not be able to come up with meaningful recommendations, and that’s what’s happened. If you want to reduce my fee, fine.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I can’t produce clear data to help you with your choice. My personal preference would be juvey certification because they’re kids and lacked adult capacity. But I’m not sure I’d sleep well if I was responsible for that decision.”

  “Why not?”

  “The act was horrendous and I doubt making them C.Y.A. wards for a few years will rehab them.”

  “Are they still dangerous?” he said.

  “Would they do something that bad again? On his own, Rand Duchay probably wouldn’t. But if he hooked up with someone dominant and violent, it’s possible.”

  “Any remorse on his part?”

  “He seems to have some,” I said. “Was he thinking like an adult at the time of the murder? No. Would that change in five years, or even ten? Probably not, given his intellectual level.”

  “Which is?”

  I quoted the test results.

  Laskin whistled. “What about Turner?”

  “Smarter— a lot smarter. He’s got the ability to calculate and plan. Sydney Weider’s going to claim Rand Duchay initiated the crime and her client was an innocent bystander. The forensics say that’s not true, but Rand did admit striking Kristal, and his size could work against him if you didn’t know better.”

  “I’m still on the remorse issue,” said Laskin. “Turner have any?”

  “He talks about sin, claims to be reading the Bible, has a couple of theology students offering moral support. But I doubt there’s any serious insight there. He denies he ever touched Kristal despite the fact that Kristal’s skin was found under his fingernails.”

  “Weider sent me an impassioned request for bifurcation. Looks like just another TODDI defense.”

  The Other Dude Did It.

  “Going to grant the split?” I said.

  “Not unless I have to. How smart is Turner?”

  “Considerably above average.” I gave him those numbers, too.

  He said, “No diminished capacity, there. Adult comprehension?”

  “Intellectually, he can reason things out. But he’s thirteen, which is an interesting age. There’s some evidence that adolescent brains undergo changes at fourteen to fifteen that lead to fuller reasoning capacity. Even with that, you know what teens are like. Rationality takes years to settle in.”

  “Sometimes it never sets in,” he said. “So you’re leaning toward juvey but you don’t want to put it in writing because of the enormity of the crime.”

  “I don’t think it’s a psychological issue,” I said.

  “What is it, then?”

  “A judicial question. What placement would approximate justice to the greatest extent.”

  “Meaning it’s my problem.”

  I didn’t answer.

  He said, “I know teens are stupid. The problem is if we gave teen criminals special treatment, a lot of really vicious thugs would be getting off easy. And nothing in my experience matches the viciousness of this crime. They worked that poor baby over really bad.”

  “I know. But you’ve seen Turner. He looks twelve. I’m trying to picture him at Quentin or a place like that and it’s not a pretty thought.”

  “Small and smart, but he murdered a two-year-old, Alex. Why the hell would a smart kid do something like that?”

  “That’s another question I can’t answer,” I said. “I.Q. and moral development are separate issues. Like Walker Percy said, ‘You can get straight A’s but still flunk life.’ ”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A novelist and a psychiatrist.”

  “Interesting combo,” he said. “So you’re telling me I’ve got a dumb kid and a bright little sociopath and they just happened to murder a two-year-old. Any other antisocial history for either of them?”

  “Not for Rand. Everyone who knows Troy describes him as cunning, and some people at the project called him cruel. He’s got a history of threatening younger kids. He’s also suspected of killing stray dogs and cats, but I couldn’t find any facts to back that up, so maybe the rumor mill’s working overtime because of the murder. One woman implied he’d molested her daughter but refused to talk to me about it. Given his upbringing, I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s been abused, himself.”

  I gave him a capsule of both boys’ histories, including Rand Duchay’s head injury during infancy. “If you’re looking for mitigating factors, you’ve got plenty.”

  “Prisoners of biology?”

  “And sociology and just plain bad luck. Neither of these two had much in the way of nurturing, Tom.”

  “Which doesn’t excuse what they did to that poor little girl.”

  “Not in the least.”

  “Have you picked up any possible motive?” he said. “Because no one’s put anything forward— including the cops.”

  “From what I can tell, the abduction was impulsive. The two of them were headed to the park to smoke and drink when they saw Kristal wandering around. They thought it would be fun to watch Kristal smoke and drink. She got sick, started to fuss, threw up, and things got out of control.
There’s no indication they were stalking her.”