“Oh, no. Mel, he’s got this She leaned forward and said, confidentially:

“Overeating problem.”

“Is that so?”

“I gave up on Mel long ago. But Barry, he’s still so young. It’s not good for a boy his age to carry around all that weight. And the other kids, they can be so mean about it.”

Claire looked sympathetically at Barry. “You’re having problems at school?”

A light seemed to dim in the boy’s eyes. He looked down, all cheerfulness gone.

“I don’t much like school anymore.”

“The other kids tease you?”

“They don’t ever stop with the fat boy jokes.”

Claire glanced at Louise, who shook her head sadly. “He has an IQ of a hundred thirty-five, and he doesn’t want to go to school. I don’t know what to do about it.”

“I’ll tell you what, Barry,” said Claire. “We’re going to show everyone how determined you are. You’re too intelligent to let those other kids defeat you.”

“Well, they aren’t all that bright,” he agreed hopefully.

“You have to outsmart your own body as well. That’s the part that takes effort.

And Mom and Dad have to work with you, not against you." She looked at Louise.

“Mrs. Knowlton, you have a smart and wonderful boy here, but he can’t do this alone. This takes the whole family.”

Louise sighed, already preparing for the daunting task ahead. “I know,” she said. “I’ll talk to Mel. No more doughnuts.”

After the Knowitons left, Claire walked into Vera’s office. “Don’t we have a patient at three o’clock?”

“We did,” said Vera, looking puzzled as she hung up the phone. “That was Mrs.

Monaghan. It’s the second cancellation we’ve had today.”

Claire glimpsed movement in the waiting room. Through the sliding business window, she saw a man sitting on the couch. Large, homely, his sad-clown face emphasized by an unflattering crew cut, he looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else than in a doctor’s office. “Well, who’s that?”

“Oh, he’s just some magazine reporter who wants to talk to you. His name’s Mitchell Groome.”

“I hope you told him I’m not available.”

“I gave him your standard ‘no comment’ line. But this guy insists on waiting around for you.”

“Well, he can wait all he wants. I’m not talking to any more reporters. Is there anyone left on the schedule?”

“Elwyn Clyde. Wound check on his foot.”

Elwyn. Claire pressed her hand to her head, already anticipating a headache. “Do we have air freshener on hand?”

Vera laughed and clapped a can of Glade on the desk. “We’re all ready for Elwyn.

After him, you’re free for the day. Which works out well, because you have a meeting with Dr. Sarnicki this afternoon. He just called a little while ago.”

Dr. Sarnicki was chief of staff at the hospital. This was the first Claire had heard about any meeting.

“Did he say what it’s about?”

“Something about a letter he just received. He said it was urgent.” Vera’s gaze suddenly shot to the front window and she jumped to her feet. “Damn it, there they are again!” she said, and dashed out the side door.

Claire looked out the window to see Vera, all flashing bangles and earrings, shaking her fist at two boys with skateboards. One of the boys was yelling back at her now, his voice cracking in adolescent outrage.

“We didn’t do anything to your stupid car!”

“Then who left that giant scratch on the door, huh? Who?” demanded Vera.

“Why’re you always blaming us? Like kids are always the ones who get dumped on!”

“I see you here again, I’m calling the police!”

“This is a public sidewalk! We gotta right to skate here!”

A tapping on glass drew Claire’s attention. Mitchell Groome’s hangdog face was gazing at her through the receptionist’s window.

She slid the window open. “Mr. Groome, I’m not talking to any reporters.”

“I just wanted to tell you something.”

“If it’s about Taylor Darnell, you can talk to Dr. Adam DelRay. He’s the boy’s physician now”

“No, it’s about your receptionist’s car. The one that got scratched. Those boys out there didn’t do it.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw it happen yesterday. Some old woman scraped past it with her car. I assumed she was going to leave a note on the windshield. Obviously she didn’t, and I think your receptionist has already reached her own conclusions.” He glanced out the window, at the argument raging outside, and he shook his head.

“Why do we always treat kids like the enemy?”

“Because they so often behave like an alien species?”

He gave her a sympathetic smile. “Spoken like someone who has an alien living in the house.”

“Fourteen years old. You can probably tell by all the gray hairs on my head.”

They regarded each other for a moment through the window.

“Are you sure you won’t talk to me?” he asked. “It would just be for a few minutes.”

“I can’t discuss my patients. It’s a confidentiality issue.”

“No, I’m not going to ask about Taylor Darnell specifically. I’m after more general information, about the other kids in town. You’re the only doctor in Tranquility, and I assume you have a good idea of what’s going on around here.”

“I’ve only been in town eight months.”

“But you’d be aware of drug abuse among the local kids, wouldn’t you? It could explain the boy’s behavior.”

“I hardly think one incident, tragic as it was, means that this town has a drug problem.” Her gaze suddenly focused on the view through the front window The boys with the skateboards were gone. The mail carrier had arrived, and was chatting with Vera on the sidewalk. He handed Vera an armful of mail. Was there a letter from Paul Darnell’s attorney in that stack?

Groome said something, and she realized he had moved closer, and was practically leaning through the open business window.

“Let me tell you a story, Dr. Elliot. It’s about a perfect little town called Flanders, Iowa. Population four thousand. A clean, decent place where everyone knows everyone else. The sort of people who go to church and join the PTA. Four murders later-all of them committed by teenagers-the shell-shocked residents of Flanders finally got around to facing up to reality.”

“Which was?”

“Methamphetamine. An epidemic of abuse in the local schools. It turned that town into the dark side of America.”

“But what does that have to do with Tranquility?”

“Haven’t you been reading your own newspaper? Look around at what’s happening to your neighbors. First, there was that Street brawl on Halloween night. Then a boy beats his dog to death, and fistfights are breaking out in the school.

Finally, there’s the shooting.”

She was focused on the front sidewalk again, where the mailman was still shooting the breeze with Vera. For heaven’s sakes, bring in the mail!

“I followed the Flanders story for months,” said Groome. “I watched that town implode on itself. Parents blaming the schools. Kids turning on their teachers, on their own families. When I heard about the problems in your town, methamphetamine was the first thing I thought of. I know you must have run a drug screen on that Darnell boy. Could you just tell me one thing: Did methamphetamine turn up in his system?”

Still distracted, she answered: “No, it didn’t.”

“Did anything else?”

She didn’t answer. In truth, she didn’t know, because she hadn’t heard back from the lab in Boston.

“Then there was something,” he said, picking up on her silence.

“I’m not the boy’s physician. You have to ask Dr. DeIRay.”

Groome gave a dismissive snort. “DelRay says it’s Ritalin withdrawal psychosis.

Something so rare, there’s only a few anecdotal reports that it even exists.”

“You don’t accept his diagnosis?”

He looked her straight in the eye. “Don’t tell me you do?”

She was beginning to like Mitchell Groome.

The front door opened and Vera stomped in, carrying the mail. Unceremoniously she dumped the whole pile on her desk. Claire eyed the stack of business-size envelopes, and her throat went dry.