“Well, as long as you asked, yes Samuel Jason Daschoff is clearly the messenger of the Second Coming—another Jewish savior. Little guy just turned two and has evolved from sweetness and light to age-appropriate obnoxiousness. Let me tell you, Alex, there’s no revenge sweeter than watching your own kids contend with the crap they shoveled at you.”

“I’ll bet,” I said, wondering if I’d ever know.

“So,” said Larry, “how’ve you been doing?”

“Keeping busy. I’m actually calling you about a case.”

“I figured as much.”

“Oh?”

“You were always task-oriented, Alex.”

“You’re saying I can’t be purely sociable?”

“Like I can be purely skinny. What kind of case, therapy or the bad stuff you do with the constabulary?”

“The bad stuff.”

“Still subjecting yourself to that.”

“Still.”

“I guess I can understand the motivation,” he said. “It’s a helluva lot more exciting than breathing in angst all day, and you were never one to sit still. So how can I help you?”

I described Caroline Cossack, without mentioning names. Asked him to guess where a teen that troubled might’ve been schooled twenty years back.

“Dosing Rover with cyanide?” he said. “Impolite. How come she didn’t end up in trouble?”

“Maybe family connections,” I said, as I realized incarceration would be an excellent reason not to have a social security card, and neither Milo nor I had thought of checking prison records. Both of us thrown off kilter.

“A rich, not-nice kid,” said Larry. “Well, back then there was no real place for a run-of-the-mill dangerous delinquent other than the state hospital system—Camarillo. But I suppose a rich family could’ve placed her somewhere cushy.”

“I was thinking Achievement House or Valley Educational, or their out-of-state counterparts.”

“Definitely not Valley Educational, Alex. I consulted there, and they stayed away from delinquents, concentrated on learning probs. Even back then they were getting fifteen-grand tuition, had a two-year waiting list, so they could afford to be picky. Unless the family covered up the extent of the girl’s pathology, but that kind of violent tendency would be hard to suppress for very long. As far as Achievement House, I never had any direct experience with them, but I know someone who did. Right around that time period, too, now that I think about it—nineteen, twenty years ago. Not a pretty situation.”

“For the students?”

“For the someone I know. Remember when I used to do mentoring for the department—undergrads considering psych as a career? One of my mentorees was a freshman girl, precocious, barely seventeen. She got herself a volunteer placement at Achievement House.”

“What problems did she have there?”

“The director got . . . overtly Freudian with her.”

“Sexual harassment?”