with a green silk T-shirt. She walked to her big picture window and studied her view of the south shore. Her pantsuit fit her very well. We were high, and there was no city sound, and her office was big and had a thick carpet, and there was almost no office noise.
'Okay,' she said with her back to me, which was not a bad thing. 'You say that since he was in the ninth grade ... how old is that?'
'Fourteen, fifteen,' I said. 'I believe he was fourteen when it began.'
'Since he was fourteen, he's been having sex with the school shrink who is, what, thirty-five? Forty?'
'Somewhere in there,' I said.
'And the kid is functionally retarded.'
'Mildly,' I said.
'And the school president... what kind of high school has a president?'
'It's a private high school,' I said, 'and it's aiming to become a junior college as well.'
'And the president finds out and blackmails the shrink into having sex with him, and she is feeling, ah, violated?'
'Violated is good,' I said.
'She talks the kid into killing the president,' Rita said. 'Thus freeing her from his unwanted attentions and allowing the two lovebirds, Jared and Beth Ann, to be together again.'
'Until Jared turns eighteen and they can marry,' I said.
'Gee, I didn't know he was the marrying kind... ' Rita said. 'Makes him more interesting.'
'He may be a little gun-shy right now,' I said.
She turned away from the window and looked at me. Her suit fit very well in the front, too.
'Aren't they all,' she said. 'So, he connects with the school badass, who hooks them up with a gangbanger, who gets them guns and teaches them how to shoot, and they go into the school like two commandos, only the president isn't there that day, perhaps out tapping the school shrink against her wishes? So the kids start shooting the place up, except that our kid, Jared, says he didn't shoot. Any way to prove that?'
'Probably not.'
'And the school badass says he did?'
'Wendell Grant, yes.'
'You don't suppose the cops told him that if he ratted out his pal, he'd get a break?'
'Cops do that?' I said.
'He's not going to get a break,' Rita said. 'Not for shooting up a school. He'd lose nothing by saying Jared didn't shoot.'
'He might just enjoy taking Jared down with him,' I said.
'Not easy,' she said.
Her mouth was open. She was tapping her bottom teeth with a ballpoint pen. Her thick, red hair came to her shoulders. She was something to see.
'You have a functionally retarded underaged boy whose parents really want to get rid of him,' I said. 'Who was sexually exploited by an older woman. You oughtta be able to do something with that.'
'Jared's going away somewhere,' Rita said.
'And probably should,' I said. 'But maybe he shouldn't spend the rest of his life somewhere, and maybe it should be a kinder somewhere.'
'If such a place exists,' Rita said. 'Will Beth Ann Blair stick to her story?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'And Jared?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'I love a nice, solid case,' Rita said.
I shrugged.
'The kid deserves better than he's getting,' I said.
She looked at me and smiled, which was something to see in itself, and walked to her desk and sat in her big leather partner's chair and put her feet up and tapped her teeth some more.
'Tell me something,' Rita said. 'You have stuck by this kid, whom you barely know, like he was your own. But you don't seem interested at all in the other one.'
'Grant?'
'Yes. Don't you suppose he might have serious problems that weren't addressed? Doesn't he need help? Isn't he a kid, too? Should he spend the rest of his life in jail?'
'Nobody hired me to stick with Grant,' I said.
'That's it?' Rita said.
