“I know, but- ”

“Cut the crap, Doctor. I’ve got solid citizens clamoring for vengeance and the ACLU and their buddies wanting to make political hay. Bottom line: I’ll evaluate the data and make up my own mind. But I need to be sure I’ve got the best information. If it’s not you evaluating those boys, it’ll be someone else- probably one of the whores. You want to opt out of your civic duty, fine. Next time something bad happens, tell yourself you did your best.”

“Impressive guilt trip.”

“Hey,” he said, laughing. “Whatever works. So how about it? Talk to them, test them, do whatever the hell you want and report directly to me.”

“Let me think about it.”

“Don’t think too long. Okay, decided yet?”

“I need to be clear,” I said. “I could end up with no recommendation on adult versus juvey.”

“I’ll deal with that if and when it happens.”

“I’d need unlimited access,” I said. “And no time pressure.”

“Yes to the first, no to the second. I’m due to rule within thirty days. I can extend it to forty-five, maybe sixty, but if I don’t act in a timely manner it leaves me open to all sorts of appeal static. You in?”

“Okay,” I said.

“What’s your fee?”

I told him.

“Stiff,” he said, “but not out of line. Send your bill directly to me. You might even get paid within a reasonable amount of time.”

“Comforting.”

“That’s all the comfort you’re going to get on this one.”

Social Services had evaluated the boys’ families before settling them in the housing project. It took a subpoena but I got the records.

Troy Turner Jr. lived with his mother, a twenty-eight-year-old alcoholic and cocaine addict named Jane Hannabee. She’d been in and out of rehab for most of her adult life and had spent two years, as a teenager, at the state mental hospital in Camarillo. Her diagnoses ranged from mood disorder, depressed type, to personality disorder, narcissistic-borderline type, to schizoaffective disorder. Meaning no one really understood her. During her attempts at treatment, Troy had been sent to her parents in San Diego. Troy ’s grandfather, a retired army sergeant, found the boy’s wild ways intolerable. He’d been dead for seven years, his wife for six.

A habitual felon and addict named Troy Wayne Turner was the boy’s alleged father. Jane Hannabee claimed that at age fifteen, she’d shared a rock and a one-night stand with the thirty-nine-year-old in a San Fernando motel. Turner had recently turned to bank robbery to support his habit, and after his tryst with Hannabee was caught fleeing from a Bank of America in Covina. Sentenced to ten years at San Quentin, he succumbed three years later to liver disease, never meeting, or acknowledging, his son.

Shortly after her boy’s arrest, Jane Hannabee had left 415 City for parts unknown.

Rand Duchay’s parents were long-distance truckers who’d perished on the Grapevine in a thirty-vehicle winter pile-up. Six months old at the time of the crash, Rand had been riding in the truck, swaddled in a storage compartment behind the front seat. He had survived without obvious injury, lived all his life with his grandparents, Elmer and Margaret Sieff, uneducated people who’d failed at farming and a number of small businesses. Elmer died when Rand was four and Margaret, afflicted with diabetes and circulatory problems, moved to the project when her money ran out. The way the social workers saw it, she’d done her best.

As far as I could tell, neither boy had spent much time in school and no one had noticed.

I put in my request to visit the prisoners and the A.D.A.s assigned to the case requested a prior meeting. So did the boy’s deputy public defenders. I didn’t need priming by either side and refused. When all the lawyers protested I had Judge Laskin run interference. A day later, I was authorized to enter the jail.

I’d been to the county jail before, was used to the grayness, the wait, the gates, the forms. The squinty scrutiny by reflexively suspicious deputy sheriffs as I stood in the sally port. I knew the High Power ward, too, had visited a patient there, years ago. Another kid who’d teetered over the edge. As I walked down the corridor with a deputy escort, moans and giggles sprayed from distant cells and the air filled with the battling stenches of excreta and disinfectant. The world might change but this place didn’t.

Psych evaluations had been ordered alphabetically: Randolph Duchay, first. He was curled up on a cot in his cell, facing front but sleeping. I motioned to the deputy to hold back and took a few seconds to observe.

Big for his age, but in the cold, unadorned, custard yellow space, he looked insignificant.

The furnishings were a sink, a chair, a lidless toilet, a shelf for personal items that was bare. Weeks behind bars had left him sallow, with sooty half-moons under his eyes and chapped lips and a slack face ravaged by furious acne. His hair had been clipped short. Even from a distance I could see the scourge of pimples stretching up into his scalp.

I motioned that I was ready and the deputy unlocked the cell. As the door clicked behind me, the boy looked up. Dull brown eyes barely took the time to focus before closing.

The deputy said, “I pass through every quarter hour. You need me sooner, holler.”

I thanked him, put my briefcase down, sat in the chair. When he left, I said, “Hello, Rand. I’m Dr. Delaware.”

“H’lo.” Hoarse, phlegmy voice, barely above a whisper. He coughed. Blinked several times. Remained prone.

“Got a cold?” I said.

Head shake.

“How are they treating you?”

No response, then he half sat, remaining slumped so low that his trunk nearly paralleled the cot. Big torso, disproportionately short legs. His ears were low-set, flaring on top, folded over in an odd way. Stubby fingers. Webbed neck. A mouth that never fully closed. His front teeth were small and ragged. The overall picture: “soft signs”- suggestions of abnormality that didn’t qualify for any formal syndrome.

“I’m a psychologist, Rand. Know what that is?”

“Kinda doctor.”

“Right. Know what kind?”

“Hnnh.”

“Psychologists don’t give shots or examine your body.”

He flinched. Like any other inmate he’d been subjected to the full course of physical scrutiny.

I said, “I deal with how you’re feeling emotionally.”

His eyes floated upward. I touched my forehead. “What’s in your mind.”

“Like a shrink.”

“You know about shrinks.”

“Crazy nuts.”

“Shrinks are for crazy nuts.”

“Hnnh.”

“Who told you that, Rand?”

“Gram.”

“Your grandmother.”

“Hnnh.”

“What else did she say about shrinks?”

“If I didn’t do right she’d send me.”

“To a shrink.”

“Hnnh.”

“What does ‘do right’ mean?”

“Bein’ good.”

“How long ago did your grandmother tell you that?”

He thought about that, seemed to be really working at figuring it out. Gave up and stared at his knees.

“Was it after you were in jail or before?”

“Before.”

“Was your grandmother angry at you when she said it?”

“Kinda.”

“What made her angry?”

His grainy skin reddened. “Stuff.”

“Stuff,” I said.

No answer.

“Has Gram been to see you, here?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Yeah.”

“How often does she come?”

“Sometimes.”

“She have anything else to say?”

Silence.

“Nothing?” I said.

“She brang me to eat.”

“What’s she bring you?”

“Oreos,” he said. “She’s mad.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I ruined it.”

“Ruined what?”

“Everything.”

“How’d you do that?”

His eyes fluttered. The lids dropped. “My sin.”