She licked her lips, moved her wineglass aside. “That’s really all I can tell you. I was a student volunteer, fresh out of high school, didn’t ask questions.” Her face tilted to the left. The enormous blue eyes didn’t blink. “Bringing up that place is . . . not the most fun thing I’ve done all week. Larry told you about my experience there with Larner.”

I nodded.

“If the same thing happened today,” she said, “you can bet I’d be a lot more proactive. Probably page Gloria Allred, close that place down, and walk away with a settlement. But I’m not blaming myself for how I handled it. So . . . have you worked with the police for a while?”

“A few years.”

“Do you find it difficult?”

“Difficult in what way?” I said.

“All the authoritarian personalities, for starts.”

“Mostly, I deal with one detective,” I said. “He’s a good friend.”

“Oh,” she said. “So you find it fulfilling.”

“It can be.”

“What aspect?”

“Trying to explain the unexplainable.”

One of her hands covered the other. Jewelry everywhere else, but no rings on her fingers. Why had I noticed that?

I said, “If you don’t mind, I have a few more questions about Caroline.”

She grinned. “Go ahead.”

“Did you have much personal contact with her?”

“Nothing direct, but I was allowed to sit in on some therapy groups, and she was in one of them. General purpose rap session. The leader tried to draw her out, but Caroline never talked, would just stare at the floor and pretend not to hear. I could tell she was taking it in, though. When she got upset, her facial muscles twitched.”

“What upset her?”

“Any personal probing.”

“What was she like physically?” I said.

“All this interest twenty years later?” she said. “You can’t tell me what she did?”

“She may have done nothing,” I said. “Sorry to be evasive, but this is all very preliminary.” Unofficial, too. “A lot of my work is random archaeology.”

Both her hands cupped her wineglass. “No gory details? Aw shucks.” She laughed, showed perfect teeth. “I’m not sure I’d really want to know, anyway. Okay, Caroline, physically . . . this is all through the perspective of my seventeen-year-old eyes. She was short, kind of mousy . . . a little chubby—unkempt. Stringy hair . . . mousy brown, she wore it to here.” She leveled a hand at her own shoulder. “It always looked unwashed. She had acne . . . what else? She had a defeated posture, as if something heavy sat on her shoulders. The kids were allowed to dress any way they wanted, but Caroline always wore the same shapeless dresses—old lady’s housedresses. I wonder where she found them.”

“Dressing down,” I said. “She sounds depressed.”

“Definitely.”

“Did she hang around with the other kids?”

“No, she was a loner. Shleppy, withdrawn. I guess today I’d look at her and be thinking schizoid.”

“But they saw her as potentially aggressive.”