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?”