“Grolsch,” I said. “And I’ll have the entrecôte, medium rare.”

He left and Allison Gwynn smoothed already-smooth hair and twirled her wineglass. She avoided my eyes.

“What kind of work do you do at St. Agnes?” I said.

“You know the place.”

“I know of it.”

“Just some volunteer work,” she said. “Mostly helping the staff cope. Do you still work in oncology?”

“No, not for a while.”

She nodded. “It can be tough.” She drank some wine.

“Where do you teach?” I said.

“The U., adult extension. This quarter I’m doing Personality Theory and Human Relations.”

“All that and a practice. Sounds like a busy schedule,” I said.

“I’m a workaholic,” she said, with sudden cheer. “Hyperactivity channeled in a socially appropriate manner.”

My beer arrived. We both drank. I was about to get down to substance, when she said, “The girl you described. Would that be Caroline Cossack?”

I put down my mug. “You knew Caroline?”

“So it was her.”

“How did you know?”

“From your description.”

“She stood out?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. She stood out because of how they labeled her. There was a pink tab on her chart, the only one I’d seen. And I’d seen most of the charts, was a gofer that summer, running errands, picking up and delivering files. They used a color-coding system to alert the staff if a kid had a medical problem. Yellow for juvenile diabetes, blue for asthma, that kind of thing. Caroline Cossack’s tab was pink and when I asked someone what that meant, they said it was a behavioral warning. High risk for acting out. That and your saying it might be a police case helped me put it together.”

“So Caroline was high risk for violence.”

“Someone thought so, back then.”

“What specifically were they worried about?” I said.

“I don’t know. She never did anything wrong during the month I was there.”

“But she was the only one labeled like that.”

“Yes,” she said. “There weren’t a lot of kids, period. Maybe thirty. Back then Achievement House was exactly what it is today: a repository for rich kids who fail to perform to their parents’ expectations. Chronically truant, drug-abusing, noncompliant, children of the dream.”

I thought: Take away the dream and you had Janie and Melinda.

“But,” she went on, “they were basically harmless kids. Other than the obvious sneaky doping and drinking, nothing seriously antisocial went on that I saw.”

“Harmless kids locked up,” I said.

“It wasn’t that draconian,” she said. “More carrot than stick. High-priced baby-sitting. They locked the doors at night, but it didn’t feel like a prison.”

“What else can you tell me about Caroline?”

“She didn’t seem scary, at all. I recall her as quiet and passive. That’s why the behavioral warning surprised me.”