“Pedro. This is awkward.” The doctor shifted uneasily in his chair. “Do you think criminals are always criminals? Or that there is a criminal mind?”

Laurel tilted her head. “I need more information than that.”

He sighed. “Last year my wife and I took in our youngest niece after my brother and his wife died in a car accident. She’s seventeen and a little wild but very smart and very kind. She’s dating a young man that I think might be a bad influence on her.”

This was way out of Laurel’s field of expertise, and she still didn’t have enough facts to be helpful. But she truly did want to assist him. “I don’t know much about teenage dating. I was in graduate school by my teens.”

Dr. Ortega smiled. “I figured. Even so, this young man has spent time in juvenile detention for underage drinking, vandalism, voyeurism, and I don’t know what else. He’s from a prominent family in Genesis Valley, and I’m concerned he’s done worse, but the mayor has buried any records.”

“The mayor?”

“Yes. This new boyfriend is Tommy Bearing, the mayor’s youngest son. He’s back at school now, and I don’t like that he’s dating my niece, but Joley seems enamored with him.”

While the concern was understandable, Laurel didn’t have insight to offer. “The voyeurism is concerning, but we don’t know the details. Sometimes, especially when something is newsworthy like the mayor’s son getting in trouble, facts get distorted. Why don’t you just ask the young man what he did? If he’s learned his lesson?”

The doctor sighed. “I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to him. I adore my niece. Joley’s top of her class and has a mathematical mind like you wouldn’t believe. She even attended space camp last year, which only accepts the best and brightest.”

“That’s true,” Laurel said.

“And this Tommy has that smug look rich kids get. You know? The one where they’re polite to your face while they have drugs in their pockets. Or plans that include breaking the law.”

Laurel couldn’t answer that. She didn’t know what that expression looked like.

He threw up his hands. “She has missed curfew twice, and I think she had been drinking the other night when she came home. She’s even doodling his name on her physics notebook.”

“Doodling is a sign of teenage interest,” Laurel said lamely. She’d been so much younger than everyone in college that she’d never doodled anybody’s name.

He sighed. “Why do smart girls like bad boys?”