Fernie waited outside the car. When he saw her he raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

Sue shook her head.

He called the coroner.

The boys had made no attempt to conceal. Kristal’s body lay atop five days’ worth of park refuse, fully clothed but with one shoe off. The white sock underneath was grimy at the toe. The child’s neck was broken like that of a cast-off doll. Delicate neck like that, Sue figured- hoped- she had died instantaneously. Several days later the coroner verified her guess: several broken cervical vertebrae, a ruptured windpipe, concomitant cranial bleeding. The body also bore two dozen bruises and internal injuries that could have proved fatal. No evidence of sexual assault.

“Does it really matter?” said the pathologist who’d done the post. A usually tough guy named Banerjee. When he reported to Sue and Fernie he looked defeated and old.

Placed in a holding cell at the station, Rand-not-Randy Duchay hunched, immobile and silent. He had stopped crying and his eyes were glassy and trancelike. His cell stank. Sue had smelled that feral reek plenty of times. Fear, guilt, hormones, whatever.

Troy Turner’s cell smelled faintly of beer. The cans the detectives had found indicated each boy had downed three Buds. With Troy ’s body weight, not an insignificant amount, but there was nothing spacey about him. Dry-eyed, calm. He spent the ride to the station glancing out the window of the unmarked as it passed through dark Valley streets. As if this were a field trip.

When Sue asked him if there was anything he wanted to say, he gave a strange little grunting noise.

A grumpy old man’s sound- annoyed. Like they’d messed up his plans.

“What’s that, Troy?”

His eyes became slits. Sue had two kids, including a twelve-year-old son. Turner freaked her out. She forced herself to outstare him and he finally looked away and gave another grunt.

“Something on your mind, Troy?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Can I have a smoke?”

Both boys, as it turned out, were thirteen, and Troy was the older one, a month from fourteen. Neither had known Kristal Malley. As the papers reported it, the pair had run out of change; as they left the video arcade they spied the little girl wandering around the mall looking lost. Deciding it would be “cool” to “fool around,” they gave Kristal some stale candy from Rand ’s gritty jeans pocket and she accompanied them willingly.

Despite evidence to the contrary, implications of sexual assault laced the local coverage. The story was picked up by the national press and the wire services, tilting toward the lurid, feeding sensation to their international clients.

That brought the usual swarm of talking heads, public intellectuals, and other misery pimps sounding off. Op-ed editors found themselves in a buyer’s market.

The obvious root cause of such an outrage was: poverty; rampant societal breakdown; media violence; junk food and poor nutrition; the erosion of family values; godlessness; the failure of organized religion to meet the needs of the underclass; the absence of moral training in school; truancy; insufficient government funding for social programs; too much government control over the lives of the citizenry.

One genius, a pundit funded by the Ford Foundation, attempted to connect the crime to the post-Christmas sale season- pernicious materialism had led to frustration had led to murder. “Acquisitional rage,” he called it. The same thing happens all the time in the favelas of Brazil.

“Shop till you drop it on someone,” Milo had remarked at the time. “What an asshole.” We hadn’t discussed the case much and I’d done most of the talking. He has solved hundreds of homicides but this one bothered him.

The media noise lasted awhile. Over at the Hall of Justice, the legal process kicked in, stealthy and gray. The boys were placed in the High Power ward at the county jail. With both of them too young to qualify for a 707 hearing to determine if they could be tried as adults, most experts felt the disposition would end up in Juvenile Court.

Citing the brutality of the crime, the District Attorney’s Office made a special request to kick the case up to Superior Court. Troy Turner and Randolph Duchay’s court appointed P.D.s filed papers in strong opposition. A couple more days of editorial columns were devoted to that matter. Then another lull, as briefs were written and a hearing judge was appointed.

Juvey judge Thomas A. Laskin III- a former D.A. with experience prosecuting gang members- had a rep as a hard case. Courtroom whispers said it was going to get interesting.

I got the call three weeks after the murder.

“Dr. Alex Delaware? Tom Laskin. We’ve never met but Judge Bonnaccio said you’re the man for the job.”

Peter Bonnaccio had been presiding judge of Superior Court, Family Division for a couple of years, and I’d testified before him. I hadn’t liked him much at first, thinking him hasty and superficial when making custody decisions. I’d been wrong. He talked fast, cracked jokes, was sometimes inappropriate. But plenty of thought went into his decisions and he was right more often than not.

I said, “What job is that, Judge?”

“Tom. I’m the lucky guy who got handed the Kristal Malley murder and I need the defendants evaluated psychologically. The main issue, obviously, is, was there enough mature forethought and mental capacity prior to and during the commission of the crime to qualify the defendants for full, adult psychological capacity. The D.A.’s broken new ground, but from what I’ve seen the sixteen-year minimum for a 707 isn’t inviolate. Issue Two- and this is as much personal as official- I’d like to know what makes them tick. I have three kids of my own and this one makes no sense to me.”

“It’s a tough one,” I agreed. “Unfortunately, I can’t help you.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m not the man for the job.”

“Why not?”

“Psychological tests can reveal how someone’s functioning intellectually and emotionally in the present, but they say nothing about past state of mind. On top of that, they were developed to measure things like learning disabilities and giftedness, not homicidal behavior. In terms of what made these boys tick, my training’s even less helpful. We’re good at creating rules about human behavior but lousy at understanding exceptions.”

“We’re talking bizarre behavior, here,” said Laskin. “Isn’t that your bailiwick?”

“I’ve got opinions, but they’re just that- my personal point of view.”

“All I want to know is were they thinking like kids or like grown-ups.”

“There’s nothing scientifically definitive I could say about that. If other shrinks tell you different, they’re lying.”

He laughed. “Pete Bonnaccio said you could get like this. Which is exactly why I called you. Everything I do on this one is going to be put under the microscope. The last thing I need is one of the usual expert whores turning it into a circus. I didn’t take Pete’s word that you were unbiased, I talked to some other judges and a few cops. Even people who think you’re a compulsive pain-in-the-ass admit you’re not doctrinaire. What I need here is an open mind. But not so open your brain falls out.”

“Are you open-minded?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You really haven’t made up your mind?”

I heard him breathing. Rapidly, then slower, as if forcing himself calm. “No, I haven’t made up my mind, Doctor. I just had a look at the autopsy photos. Went by the jail and looked at the defendants, too. In jail duds, with their hair cut, they look like they got kidnapped themselves. It just doesn’t make sense.”