School Days - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,9

day free in Dowling."

"Death threats?" I said.

"Sure."

"Serious?" I said.

"Maybe."

"How about the families?"

"They've had some threats," Taglio said. "Dowling cops are keeping an eye on them."

"That's reassuring," I said.

Taglio shrugged. Pearl resettled herself noisily on the couch. The rain came quietly down.

"You really going to try and get this kid off?"

"Not if he's guilty," I said.

"He's guilty."

"I don't know that yet."

"You don't?"

"Nope."

"Well, I give you credit for optimism," Taglio said.

"Glass always looks half full to me," I said.

Pearl saw me stand and scrambled off the couch. I attached her leash, which was not easy because she was jumping around with her eagerness to go. Just like human life. You want something so bad you make it hard to get.

"Besides," I said, "I like his grandmother."

Chapter 9

BETH ANN BLAIR was hot. She had long, honey-colored hair and a wide mouth with a petulant lower lip, and big blue eyes. She was not in any way fat, but she was big and well proportioned, and sumptuous and resilient. She almost trembled with energetic awareness of her body.

"I have a friend who's a shrink," I said, while I still had breath. "She's at Duke right now, giving a paper on the role of fantasy in romantic attachment."

"Really?" Beth Ann Blair said. "What is her name."

"Susan," I said. "Susan Silverman."

"I believe I know of her," Beth Ann said. "She's a Freudian?"

"I think she'd probably say she was eclectic."

Beth Ann Blair, Ed.D., had a small office with her name on the door in Channing Hospital, which was the regional medical center for most of Bethel County.

"I guess most of us are," she said. "You try everything and use whatever works."

"Talk to me about Jared Clark," I said.

"I prefer not to discuss my patients."

"You're going to have to discuss him in court," I said.

"Only up to a point," she said. "The law is quite specific on this."

"Are you ready to testify that he was in the grip of an irresistible compulsion when he shot those people? If he shot those people?"

"You question that he's guilty?"

"Just a working skepticism," I said.

"He has confessed, you know."

"Tell me what you can about him," I said.

"I saw him occasionally before the, ah, incident. I had office hours at the Dowling School several times a week. He came in a couple of times. He said he felt he was hurtling toward disaster and couldn't stop himself. He also said he felt as if a train were bearing down on him and he couldn't get off the tracks."

"Two different conditions," I said.

"Yes, in one he's propelled toward disaster; in the other it's propelled toward him."

Beth Ann was sitting sideways, facing me, at the end of her desk. Her skirt was short. She wasn't wearing stockings.

Her bare legs were crossed. She seemed to stretch a little in her chair, the way a cat does, and uncrossed and recrossed her legs. Susan always dressed down and wore understated makeup when she was working. She said the patient should not be distracted by her appearance. Beth Ann's appearance was distracting the hell out of me.

"Did you pursue that?" I said.

"He refused to come back. Said shrinks were all crazy anyway, and he wasn't."

"Have you talked with him since the event?" I said.

"After he was arrested, the police asked me to speak with him."

"And?"

"He said he did what he had to do and there was no turning back from it."

"And on that you're going to try for an irresistible compulsion plea?"

"We are hoping that he will talk with me more freely before we get to trial. If we went to trial today, I really couldn't argue the compulsion very well."

"Prosecution send in a shrink?"

"Yes. But Jared refused to speak with him."

Outside the window of Beth Ann's office, the rain still fell. It was colder rain today and was pushed a little more by the wind. Inside the office, it was bright and warm.

"Do you, in fact," I said, "regardless of what you can testify to, think Jared was in the grip of compulsion?"

"I don't know."

We sat for a time then. Beth Ann seemed comfortable enough with the silence. She rearranged her legs again. If she kept doing that, it was possible that I might begin to bugle like a stallion. Which would not be dignified. Beth Ann smiled at me and took a business card from her desk and wrote on the back.

"Perhaps you will want time to digest what we've discussed," she said. "I've written my home phone number on the back, should you need to