He relaxed a little at the sound of her voice. “You can call me Orrin, ma’am.” His eyes were blue and his big lashes looked incongruous in his angular face. A gash in his right cheek was healing into a scar. “Most everybody does.”

“Thank you, Orrin. I’m Dr. Cole, and we’ll be talking together over the next few days.”

“You’re the one who decides who keeps me.”

“In a way, that’s true. I’ll be doing your psychiatric evaluation. But I’m not here to judge you, do you understand? I’m here to find out what kind of help you need and whether we can give it to you.”

Orrin nodded once, ducking his chin to his chest. “You decide whether I go to a State Care camp.”

“Not just me. The whole staff is involved, one way or another.”

“But you’re the one I talk to?”

“For now, yes.”

“Okay,” he said. “I get it.”

There were four security cameras in the room, one in each corner where the walls met the ceiling. Sandra had seen recordings of her own and other sessions and knew how she would look on the monitors in the adjoining room: foreshortened and prim in a blue blouse and skirt, her ID badge dangling on a lanyard around her neck as she leaned across the plain pine table. The boy would be reduced by the alchemy of closed-circuit video to a generic interviewee. Though she really ought to stop thinking of Orrin Mather as a boy, as young as he looked. He was nineteen, according to his file. Old enough to know better, as Sandra’s mother used to say. “You’re originally from North Carolina, Orrin, is that right?”

“I guess it says so in those papers you’re looking at.”

“Do the papers have it right?”

“Born in Raleigh and lived there, yes, ma’am, all my life till I came to Texas.”

“We’ll talk about that later on. For now I just need to be sure I have the basics right. Do you know why the police took you into custody?”

He lowered his gaze. “Yes.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Vagrancy.”

“That’s the legal word. What would you call it?”

“I don’t know. Sleeping in an alley, I guess. And getting beat up by those men.”

“It’s not a crime to get beaten up. The police took you into custody for your own protection, didn’t they?”

“I suppose they did. I was pretty bloody when they found me. I didn’t do anything to provoke those fellas. They just set on me because they were drunk. They tried to get my satchel, but I didn’t let them. I wish the police had come along a little earlier.”