'They segregated in jail?' I said.
'Of course,' Taglio said. 'They wouldn't last ten minutes in the yard. Hell, they wouldn't last a full 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
