Milo offered the badge, and the blonde said, “Marlene Baldassar.” Thin, tan, and intensely freckled, she had hollow cheeks, golden brown eyes, and a knife-point chin. Her navy blue A-line dress was piped with white and bagged on her bony frame. The ash hair was blunt-cut to midneck, bangs feathered to fringe. She wore a gold wedding band and an oversize black plastic diver’s watch. Tortoise-framed glasses hung on a chain. The big glass ashtray on her desk was half-filled with lipstick-tipped butts. The rim read Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas. The rest of the desk was taken up with books, papers, framed photos. And a shiny silver harmonica.

She saw me looking at the instrument, picked it up with two fingers, tooted twice, put it down, smiling. “Tension reliever, I’m trying to quit smoking. And obviously not doing very well.”

“Old habits,” I said.

“Very old. And yes, I have tried the patch. All of them. My DNA’s probably saturated with nicotine.” She ran a finger along the edge of the harmonica. “So, what’s this Shoba tells me about a police inquiry? Has one of our alumni gotten into trouble?”

“You don’t seem surprised by that possibility,” said Milo.

“I’ve worked with kids for going on twenty years. Very little surprises me.”

“Twenty years here, ma’am?”

“Three, here, seventeen with the county—Juvenile Hall, community mental health centers, gang-violence prevention programs.”

“Welcome change?” I said.

“For the most part,” she said. “But county work could even be fun. Lots of futility, but when you do come across a gem in the trash pile, it’s exciting. Working here’s extremely predictable. By and large, the kids are a decent bunch. Spoiled but decent. We specialize in serious learning disabilities—chronic school failure, severe dyslexia, kids who just can’t get it together educationally. Our goal’s specific: try to get them to a point so that when they get hold of their trust funds they can read the small print. So if your inquiry is about one of my current charges, I’d be surprised. We steer away from high-risk antisocials, too much maintenance.”

Milo said, “Are the kids confined twenty-four hours a day?”

“Heavens no,” she said. “This isn’t prison. They go home on weekends, earn passes. So what do you need to know and about whom?”

“Actually,” said Milo, “this is more of a historical venture. Someone who was here twenty years ago.”

Marlene Baldassar sat back, fooled with her eyeglasses. “Sorry, I’m not free to talk about alumni. An emergent situation with a current student would be something else—someone in the here and now posing a danger to themselves and/or others. The law would require me to work with you on that.”

“Schools have no confidentiality, ma’am.”

“But psychotherapists do, Detective, and many of our files contain psychotherapeutic records. I’d love to help, but—”