Sergeant Warren studied me. I couldn’t tell if my words had affected her or not. Then again, this was a woman who spent her time rolling over dead bodies so she could note their faces. She probably could take me at poker.

“And Tika Solis? She have a party?”

“I don’t know.” I started to open the file. Sergeant Warren reached across the table and slapped it shut.

“No. Off the top of your head. What do you remember about her?”

“I don’t.”

“What do you mean you don’t?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t. Name’s not ringing any bells.”

“You remembered Ozzie Harrington,” she said crossly.

“I worked with Ozzie one-on-one over the course of many months. Of course I remember him.”

“But not Tika?”

“Can’t even bring her face to mind.”

The sergeant continued to stare at me, as if I were holding something back. “Girl liked to cut herself. That jog your memory?”

I shook my head. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Please, a little girl who self-mutilates? That doesn’t stand out in your mind?”

“We have two of those cases right now, so no, it doesn’t.”

“Two?”

I pulled the file out of her grasp. “Children are direct, Sergeant. Sometimes, they can’t verbalize their emotions, but that doesn’t mean they’re not attempting to communicate. A child who hates the world will act hateful. And a child who hurts inside will externalize that pain, cutting her arms, legs, wrists, in order to show you her ache.”

“Tika was three when she was admitted here. That’s not exactly a teenager brooding over the poems of Sylvia Plath,” the sergeant countered skeptically.

“Three?” Three was young for slicing and dicing. Not unheard-of, but young. My turn to frown. “When was she admitted?”

Sergeant stared at me. “Around the same time as Ozzie Harrington.”

I searched my memory banks, trying to bring a whole cluster of kids into focus. The dynamics of the kids impacted the milieu as much as anything. Who were the kids we’d had with Ozzie? What was the dynamic? We’d been so busy for the past year. More and more kids, each with a case file more horrific than the last … “Wait a second. Tiny little thing? From Mattapan?”

Sergeant Warren flicked a glance at the redhead sitting on her other side. “They moved to Jamaica Plains from Mattapan,” he murmured. The sergeant nodded at me.

“Okay, I remember her,” I admitted. “But I didn’t work with her much. I was busy with Ozzie; besides, Tika didn’t care for women. She responded better to the male MCs.”

“What do you mean, ‘responded’?”