The boys had made no attempt to conceal. Kristal’s body lay atop five days’ worth of park refuse, fully clothed but with one shoe off. The white sock underneath was grimy at the toe. The child’s neck was broken like that of a cast-off doll. Delicate neck like that, Sue figured— hoped— she had died instantaneously. Several days later the coroner verified her guess: several broken cervical vertebrae, a ruptured windpipe, concomitant cranial bleeding. The body also bore two dozen bruises and internal injuries that could have proved fatal. No evidence of sexual assault.

“Does it really matter?” said the pathologist who’d done the post. A usually tough guy named Banerjee. When he reported to Sue and Fernie he looked defeated and old.

* * *

Placed in a holding cell at the station, Rand-not-Randy Duchay hunched, immobile and silent. He had stopped crying and his eyes were glassy and trancelike. His cell stank. Sue had smelled that feral reek plenty of times. Fear, guilt, hormones, whatever.

Troy Turner’s cell smelled faintly of beer. The cans the detectives had found indicated each boy had downed three Buds. With Troy’s body weight, not an insignificant amount, but there was nothing spacey about him. Dry-eyed, calm. He spent the ride to the station glancing out the window of the unmarked as it passed through dark Valley streets. As if this were a field trip.

When Sue asked him if there was anything he wanted to say, he gave a strange little grunting noise.

A grumpy old man’s sound— annoyed. Like they’d messed up his plans.

“What’s that, Troy?”

His eyes became slits. Sue had two kids, including a twelve-year-old son. Turner freaked her out. She forced herself to outstare him and he finally looked away and gave another grunt.

“Something on your mind, Troy?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Can I have a smoke?”

Both boys, as it turned out, were thirteen, and Troy was the older one, a month from fourteen. Neither had known Kristal Malley. As the papers reported it, the pair had run out of change; as they left the video arcade they spied the little girl wandering around the mall looking lost. Deciding it would be “cool” to “fool around,” they gave Kristal some stale candy from Rand’s gritty jeans pocket and she accompanied them willingly.

Despite evidence to the contrary, implications of sexual assault laced the local coverage. The story was picked up by the national press and the wire services, tilting toward the lurid, feeding sensation to their international clients.

That brought the usual swarm of talking heads, public intellectuals, and other misery pimps sounding off. Op-ed editors found themselves in a buyer’s market.