“It doesn't look like it was someone at the school. In fact, we can't find any records of anything fishy happening out at the school. No fires or felonies or anything anybody would want to avenge, Alex. Just a few complaints about noise from Bancroft and one vehicular accident that did occur when Myra Evans was teaching there—May of seventy-three—but it was clearly an accident. One of the students stole a school truck and took a joyride. Made it up to the Riviera district and spun off a mountain road. He died, Santa Barbara PD investigated, found no foul play.”

“How old was the student?”

“Fifteen.”

“Vehicular accident off a mountain road,” I said. “Grant Stoumen was hit by a car and Mitchell Lerner was pushed off a mountain.”

“That's a little abstract, Alex.”

“Maybe not, if matching things—achieving consistency—is part of the killer's fantasy.”

Pause. “You'd know more about that than I would, but why focus on the school when we've got a victim with no connection to it? No obvious connection to de Bosch, period.”

“Shipler could have been connected to the symposium.”

“How? A janitor with a side interest in psychology, or did he sweep up afterward?”

“Maybe it's the race angle somehow. Shipler was black and de Bosch was a covert bigot.”

“Why would someone pissed off about racism beat a black man to death?”

“I don't know . . . but I'm sure de Bosch is at the core of this. The school, the conference—all of it. Merino told Harrison the conference set off something in him—maybe it was seeing de Bosch lauded publicly, when he knew the truth to be otherwise.”

“Maybe, but so far the school's got a clean record.”

“Bancroft seemed to think it was a hotbed of antisocial behavior.”

“Bancroft isn't your most reliable witness. Sally says he's been known to hit the bottle pretty hard, and his world view's somewhat to the right of the Klan. Compared to his old man, he's a pussycat. The two of them had a special thing for de Bosch because de Bosch overbid Bancroft Senior for the land the school was built on. When de Bosch broke ground in sixty-two, they tried to mobilize the neighbors against it—disturbed kids running amok. But no one went along with it because the Bancrofts had alienated everyone over the years.”

“The neighbors didn't mind a school for problem kids?”

“There were some worries, but the lot being vacant bothered them more. Vagrants used to come off the highway, light fires, toss trash, make a mess. Bancroft Senior had dickered with the owner for years, making offers, withdrawing them. De Bosch's school was an improvement as far as the neighborhood was concerned. Real quiet, no problems.”

“Except for a fifteen-year-old kid in a stolen truck.”

“One incident in twenty years, Alex. Considering that de Bosch dealt with emotionally disturbed kids, wouldn't you say that's pretty good?”