The room they'd exited was classroom-sized and crowded with another thirty or so people queued up before a metal desk. A young man sat at the desk, talked briefly to each person who stood before him, then filled out a prescription blank and handed it over with a smile. The people in line scuffed forward as automatically as cans on a conveyor belt. Some of them held out their hands in anticipation before they got to the doctor. None of them left without paper, none seemed cheered.

I resumed walking. The door at the end had a slide-in that said JEAN JEFFERS, MSW, LCSW. DIRECTOR.

Inside was a five-by-five secretarial area occupied by a young, full-faced, Asian woman. Her desk was barely big enough to hold a PC and a blotter. The wall behind her was so narrow that a dark, mock wood door almost filled it. A radio on an end table played soft rock almost inaudibly. A nameplate in front of the computer said MARY CHIN.

She said, "Dr. Delaware? Go right in, Jean will see you."

"Thank you."

She began to open the door. A woman caught it from the other side and pulled it all the way back. Forty-five or so, tall and blond. She wore a crimson shirtdress gathered at the waist by a wide, white belt.

"Doctor? I'm Jean." She held out her hand. Almost as big as mine, lanolin soft. The left one bore a ruby solitaire ring over a broad, gold wedding band.

More white in her teardrop earrings and a mock ivory bracelet around one wrist. A sensible-looking watch encircled the other.

She had a strong frame and carried no extra fat. The belt showed off a firm waist. Her face was long, lightly tanned, with soft, generous features. Only her upper lip had been skimped upon by nature- not much more than a pencil line. Its mate was full and glossed. Dark blue eyes studied me from under black lashes. Gold-framed half-glasses hung from a white cord around her neck. Her hair was frosted almost white at the tips, clipped short in back and layered back at the sides. Pure utility except for a thick, Veronica Lake flap in front. It swooped to the right, almost hiding her right eye. A handsome woman.

She flipped her hair and smiled.

"Thanks for seeing me," I said.

"Of course, doctor. Please have a seat."

Her office was the standard twelve-by-twelve setup, with a real wood desk, two upholstered armchairs, a three-drawer double file, a nearly empty bookcase, and some paintings of seagulls. On the desk were a pen, a memo pad, and a short stack of file folders.

A photo in a standup frame was centered on one of the shelves- she and a nice-looking, heavyset man about her age, the two of them in Hawaiian shirts and bedecked with leis. Social work diplomas made out to Jean Marie LaPorte were propped on another shelf, all from California colleges. I scanned the dates. If she'd graduated college at twenty-two, she was exactly forty-five.

"You're a clinical psychologist, right?" she said, sitting behind the desk.

I took one of the chairs. "Yes."

"You know, when Detective Sturgis mentioned your name I thought I recognized it, though I still can't figure out from where."

She smiled again. I returned it.

She said, "How does a psychologist come to be a police consultant?"

"By accident, really. Several years ago I was treating some children who'd been abused at a day-care center. I ended up testifying in court and getting involved in the legal system. One thing led to another."

"Day-care center- the man who took pictures? The one involved with that horrible molesters' club?"

I nodded.

"Well, that must be where I remember your name from. You were quite a hero, weren't you?"

"Not really. I did my job."

"Well," she said, sitting forward and pushing hair out of her eyes, "I'm sure you're being modest. Child abuse is so- to tell you the truth, I couldn't work with it myself. Which may sound funny considering what we deal with here. But children-" She shook her head. "It would be too hard for me to find any sympathy for the abusers even if they were once victims themselves."

"I know what you mean."

"To me that's the lowest- violating a child's trust. How do you manage to deal with it?"

"It wasn't easy," I said. "I saw myself as the child's ally and tried to do whatever helped."

"Tried? You don't do abuse work anymore?"

"Occasionally, when it comes up as part of a custody case. Mostly I consult the court on trauma and divorce issues."

"Do you do any therapy at all?"

"Not much."

"Me, neither." She sat back. "My main goal in school was to become a therapist, but I can't remember the last time I actually did any real therapy."

She smiled again and shook her head. The wave of hair covered her eyes and she flipped it back- a curiously adolescent mannerism.

"Anyway," she said, "about what Detective Sturgis wants, I just don't know how I can really help. I really need to safeguard our people's confidentiality- despite what happened to Becky." She folded her lips inward, lowered her eyes, and shook her head.

I said, "It must have been terrifying."

"It happened too quickly to be terrifying- the terrifying part didn't hit me until after it was over- seeing her… what he… now I really know what they mean by posttraumatic stress. No substitute for direct experience, huh?"

She pressed the skinny upper lip with one finger, as if keeping it still.

"No one knew what he was doing to her. I was right here, going about my business the whole time he was- the treatment rooms are totally soundproofed. He-" She removed her finger. A white pressure circle dotted her lip, then slowly faded.

"Then I heard noise from the hall," she said. "That horrible screaming- he just kept screaming."

" 'Bad love,' " I said.

Her mouth remained open. The blue eyes dulled for a second. "Yes… he… I went out to Mary's office and she wasn't there, so I opened the door to the hall and saw him. Screaming, waving it- the knife- splashing blood, the wall- he saw me- I saw his eyes settle on me- focusing- and he kept screaming. I slammed the door, shoved Mary's desk up against it, and ran back into my office. Slammed that door and blocked it. I hid behind my chair the whole time it was… it wasn't till later that I found out he'd grabbed Adeline." She wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry, you don't need to hear this."

"No, no, please."

She glanced at her message pad. Blank. Picking up the pen, she wrote something on it.

"No, that's it- I've told it so many times… no one knows how long he- if she suffered for a long time. That's the one thing I can hope. That she didn't. The thought of her trapped in there with him…" She shook her head and touched her temples. "They soundproofed the rooms back in the sixties, when this place was a Vietnam veterans' counseling center. We sure don't need it."

"Why's that?"

"Because no one does much therapy around here."

She took a deep breath and slapped her hands lightly on the desk. "Life goes on, right? Would you like something to drink? We've got a coffee machine in the other wing. I can have Mary go get some."

"No, thanks."

"Lucky choice." Smile. "It's actually pretty vile."

"How come no one does much therapy?" I said. "Too disturbed a population?"

"Too disturbed, too poor, too many of them. They need food and shelter and to stop hearing voices. The preferred treatment is Thorazine. And Haldol and lithium and Tegretol and whatever else chases the demons away. Counseling would be a nice luxury, but with our caseload it ends up being a very low priority. Not to mention funding. That's why we don't have any psychologists on our staff, just caseworkers, and most of them are SWAs- assistants. Like Becky."

"On the way in I saw a doctor giving out prescriptions."

"That's right," she said. "It's Friday, isn't it? That's Dr. Wintell, our once-a-week psychiatrist. He's just out of his residency, a real nice kid. But when his practice builds up, he'll be out of here like all the others."