School Days - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,51

to retrieve Pearl.

Chapter 50

I MET Dix in the parking lot of the Bethel County Jail.

"I thought you probably should know before you talk to Jared," I said. "There was a sexual relationship between him and Beth Ann Blair, the school shrink."

"You know this how?"

"I have photographs."

"Which you got how?"

"By breaking into Dr. Blair's condo," I said.

"Does the DA know this?" Dix said.

"No one knows it but you and me and, I assume, Dr. Blair."

Dix nodded.

"Okay," he said.

We went into the jail. Cleary was waiting for us at the interview room. I introduced them.

"Jared know who I am?" Dix said.

"He's been told you are a psychiatrist come at our behest to interview him," Cleary said.

"Did you tell him he had to talk with me?"

"I told him he had to show up. Talking was up to him."

"Is there any way you can overhear us?" Dix said.

"Sure," Cleary said.

"No," Dix said.

"No?"

"It will be private between the boy and me," Dix said.

Cleary didn't like Dix's manner.

"Why?" Cleary said.

"I need to be able to assure him that what he says is between me and him."

"You could lie a little," Cleary said.

"No," Dix said. "I couldn't."

"So what if I don't agree?" Cleary said.

"I won't do it unless you agree."

"So why do I care if you do or don't?" Cleary looked at me. "I'm doing him the favor."

"Private or not?" Dix said.

"Christ, you are a real hard-on," Cleary said. "Aren't you."

"Glad you noticed," Dix said. "Private or no?"

"Private," Cleary said.

"Thanks," Dix said and opened the door to the interview room and went in. The door closed behind him.

"Embarrassing," I said to Cleary, "the way he sucked up to you."

"I'm just the people's attorney," Cleary said.

"That's what filled him with awe," I said.

"Probably," Cleary said. "You want some coffee?"

"The coffee here any good?" I said.

"Unspeakable," Cleary said.

"I'll have some," I said.

The coffee was in fact brutal, but I drank it manfully.

"You're giving us a lot of slack," I said to Cleary.

He shrugged and sipped his coffee and made a face.

"I got a conviction," he said. "I can play it a little loose."

"And you want to know more than you do," I said.

He shrugged again.

"I'd like things to make sense," he said, "if they can."

"We both know they often don't," I said.

"Doesn't mean there's no sense to be made," Cleary said.

I nodded. We drank our coffee. Cleary put down his cup, as if he was relieved to have finished it. He stood.

"I got work to do," he said.

"Thank you," I said, "for setting this up."

"Dix finds out anything interesting," Cleary said, "you know where I am."

"I do," I said.

After Cleary left, I sat alone in the ugly room for two and a half more hours, and used the time to not drink any more coffee. It was nearly one o'clock in the afternoon when Dix came out of the interview room.

Chapter 51

THE RANGE of lunch choices around the Bethel County jail was narrow. We left Dix's car in the jail lot and I drove us to the village market in Dowling, where I had eaten pie with DiBella the first time I met him. We took a little table inside and ordered a couple of sandwiches. Dix ordered coffee with his. I had a glass of milk to cleanse my palate. A nearly intact pie sat promisingly under a glass dome on the counter.

"Your boy is retarded," Dix said.

"That's a fact or an informed guess?"

"Like most other branches of medicine, psychiatry is both an art and a science. Most of our conclusions tend to be informed guesses."

"His grades are good. He was on course to graduate. He seemed able to plan a shootout at his school. How retarded can he be?"

"Mildly," Dix said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means mildly. We can test him at length and come up with a number, but for our purposes, mildly retarded will work."

"So how come no one seems to have noticed it?" I said.

"No one else was looking for it. You knew that there was something wrong with him."

"Yes," I said.

"Actually, his parents probably noticed it, too."

"And didn't want to see it."

"Yeah. It's probably why his grandmother was so protective. He always been retarded?"

"I'd need a lot more time to answer that, and I'm not sure it would be time well spent. My guess is that he's functionally retarded."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning he has not learned to function at the level one would have anticipated."

"So he may not have been born retarded."

"He may not. There are a number of possible explanations. But the fact remains that he