He laughed. “Eye for an eye, leg for a leg. I ruined lots of lives, and now I’m paying for it. Almost ruined Aimee’s life, too. Gave her dope—big dose of LSD, blotter acid. Her brothers’ idea, but I didn’t have to be talked into it. We forced her to swallow it, big joke, hahaha. She hollered and fussed and cried, and I stood around laughing with them.”

He drew a hand over sightless eyes.

“Poor little thing, hallucinated for four straight days. I think it might’ve changed her nervous system. Slowed her down even further, made her life even more difficult, and believe me, life had never been easy for that girl. Next time I saw her was her fourth day of freaking out. Garvey and Bobo wanted to score some mushrooms, and I was the candy man and I met them up in the hills the way we always did and there she was, sitting in the back of the car, but not still, like usual. She was rocking and moaning and crying her little eyes out. Garvey and Bobo just laughed, said she’d been tripping heavy since we blotted her, tried to plunge her hand in boiling water, had almost jumped out of a second-story window, they’d finally tied her down to the bed, she hadn’t had a bath or eaten. Laughing about it, but they were worried because their parents were coming home and even though their parents didn’t like her, they wouldn’t have approved. So I brought her down with barbiturates.”

“Her parents didn’t like her?” I said.

“Not one bit. She was different, looked it, acted it, and they were a nouveau riche family that made a big thing of looking good all the time. Country club and all that. Those boys were bad to the core, but they dressed well and combed their hair and used the right aftershave, and that made everyone happy. Aimee didn’t know how to do any of that, couldn’t be taught to fake it. She was less than a dog in that family, sir, and Garvey and Bobo took advantage of it. Did stuff and blamed it on her.”

“What kind of stuff?” I said.