She turned in the seat, bumped her hip against the steering wheel and flinched. “You gonna help him?”

“I’ll do my best to be truthful.”

“You should,” she said. Leaning closer. Her scent was a strange mixture of old laundry and too-sweet perfume. “You could look like him.”

“Like who?”

“Jesus.” She smiled, ran a tongue over her lips. “Yeah, definitely. Put a beard on you, a little more hair and yeah, sure. You could be a real cute Jesus.”

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

Tom Laskin’s clerk called me a couple of days later to check on my report. I told her I needed another week, picking the time arbitrarily, not sure why I was asking for an extension.

I spent ten more days on the case, interviewing the social workers and the eligibility officers who covered 415 City, visiting the project and chatting with neighbors, anyone who claimed to have something to offer. Each time, Margaret Sieff was out. Jane Hannabee had moved and no one knew where.

I visited the boys’ school. No one— not the principal or the guidance counselor or the teachers— had more than a vague remembrance of Troy or Rand. The last time either boy had been graded was a year ago. C minuses and a couple of D’s for Rand, which was social promotion; my testing had shown him to be illiterate with math skills at the second-grade level. B’s and C’s and D’s for Troy. He’d been judged “bright but disruptive.”

* * *

To the project workers, the young killers were names on forms. The residents all agreed that prior to his arrest, Rand Duchay had been viewed as a harmless oaf. Everyone I spoke to was certain he’d been turned bad by Troy Turner.

No divided opinions on Troy, either. He was seen as cunning, nasty, mean, “evil.” Scary despite his small size. Several residents claimed he’d threatened their children but the details were vague. One woman, young and black and nervous, stepped forward as I was leaving the project and said, “That boy done nasty things to my daughter.”

“How old’s your daughter?”

“Gonna be six next month.”

“What happened?”

She shook her head and hurried away and I didn’t go after her.

* * *

I asked to reinterview the boys but was blocked from doing so by Montez and Weider.

“They’re adamant,” Tom Laskin informed me. “Went so far as to file motions to keep you away.”

“What’s the problem?” I said.

“My feeling is it’s mostly Weider. She’s a manic shark.”

“She does talk fast.”