School Days - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,39

and he always wanted to be like Hawk. Two, because he felt like it."

"Just because he felt like it?"

"Yes. He could, and he felt like showing that he could. Being the man is important to Major."

"So he helped you to prove he da man?" Rita said.

"Be my guess," I said.

"Is he proving it to you?"

"To me," I said. "Through me to Hawk, to Yang, to the rest of his crew, to himself. You don't know people will do what you tell them to do, unless you tell them and they do it."

"God, what a way to live," Rita said.

"It's the way he's got," I said.

"You saying he had no choice?"

I smiled and shook my head.

"I'm not navigating the nature/nurture shoals with you again," I said. "I got no idea."

"You know as well as I do," Rita said, "that whatever the psychological reality might be, civilizations have to act as if the individual is responsible for what the individual does."

"I'd settle for knowing who was responsible for shooting up the Dowling School," I said.

Rita nodded. She finished her coffee and put the empty cup on the edge of my desk. She uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way.

"Perfect moment for a smoke," she said. "If we smoked. Which we don't. You could take two cigarettes from a Chinese lacquered box on your desk, and light both of them and hand one to me."

"And look you up and down insolently," I said, "through the blue smoke."

"Aladdin's lamp is mine," Rita said. "You know what strikes me about Dowling?"

"What?"

"You know they did it, but you keep right on pushing."

"I want to know why," I said.

"I would, too," Rita said. "Everything you've told me says they did it, and it was premeditated. But nothing tells me why."

"It's telling me the same thing," I said.

"There's a reason," Rita said. "I've been in the criminal law business a long time for someone as young and seductive as I am, and there's got to be a reason. Doesn't have to be a good reason. But there's got to be something."

"Uh-huh."

"And you're going to find it out."

"I am."

"You could tell the grandmother the kid did it, take your fee, and go home," Rita said. "But, of course, you won't."

"No," I said.

"Because?"

"Because I won't."

"So what's your plan?" Rita said.

"Keep pushing at it," I said.

Rita shook her head.

"You are not a quitter," she said.

"No," I said.

Rita grinned and looked at the couch.

"Me either," she said.

Chapter 38

"HE WAS IN MANY WAYS the classic victim," Beth Ann Blair said. "Incommunicative, lonely, without any of the social or intellectual or athletic skills that would have made him acceptable to his peers."

"Is that why he started hanging with Dell Grant?" I said. "I don't know. He wouldn't talk to me much. I infer from what we did talk about that he saw Dell as a protector-big football player, hung out with the tough kids from the Rocks. Jared was bullied routinely. I assume he hoped Dell would protect him."

"Did he?"

"I don't know," Beth Ann said. "I don't see these kids except in a clinical setting."

"Did he complain of it?"

"Yes, of course."

"And?" I said.

"Bullying is very difficult to prevent," Beth Ann said. "Complaining to the school authorities usually serves only to exacerbate it. I did speak to Mr. Garner on Jared's behalf, and he said he'd alert the faculty to the problem."

"Did he?"

"I'm sure he did," Beth Ann said, "but I can't speak for Mr. Garner. You'll have to ask him."

"Mr. Garner is not talking to me," I said.

Beth Ann smiled. We were in her office at the hospital, with her degrees behind her on the wall, and her lipgloss gleaming.

"He's a very resolute man," Beth Ann said. "He feels that the school, and the students in the school, which is what he cares about, are best served by putting this event behind us."

"And you?" I said.

"I'm inclined to agree. I'm not a forensic specialist, obviously, but I'm quite sure Jared is not in any legal sense insane. He may have been driven to it by loneliness and fear. He may have been victimized by bullies. He may have been corrupted by an Internet life spent in the darker corners of cyberspace. But it is hard to argue that he was not aware that what he did was wrong."

"How about an irresistible compulsion?" I said.

"No," Beth Ann said. "No, I think it was simply revenge, and however sympathetic one might be, it resulted in mass murder."

"What kind of dark corners," I said, "of