She crossed her leg. “She broke speed limits to get here, Alex. Began to unload before she sat down.”

“What a mess. I’m sorry, Ali- ”

“On balance, maybe it’ll turn out to be positive.” Her eyes met mine. Blue, cool, direct. “Are you really conducting research?”

“Of sorts.”

“Of sorts as in Milo stuff?”

I nodded.

She said, “That’s what I was afraid of. You felt deception was absolutely necessary?”

I told her what we’d come to suspect about Drew Daney. Lee Ramos’s pregnancy, abortion, and suicide. The trail of deceit and betrayal that had led me to Beth Scoggins.

“I’m sure that made it seem exigent,” she said. “Right now I’ve got an extremely vulnerable nineteen-year-old in my office. Ready?”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“You assumed it was a great idea before you knew she was my patient.”

“Allison- ”

“Let’s not deal with that now, Alex. She’s waiting and I’ve got another patient in forty minutes. Even if I didn’t think it was a good idea, at this point I can’t dissuade her. You opened up some kind of Pandora’s box and she’s a very persistent young woman. To the point of obsession, at times. I haven’t tried to quash that because at this stage of her life persistence might be adaptive.”

She slid off the desk. “Ready?”

“Any guidelines?” I said.

“Lots,” she said. “But nothing I need to spell out for you.”

Beth Scoggins sat stiffly in one of Allison’s soft white chairs. When I entered, she flinched, then she held her gaze steady. Allison made the introductions and I held out my hand.

Beth’s was narrow, freckled, cold. Nails bitten short. A hangnail caught on my flesh momentarily as she pulled away.

I said, “Thanks for meeting with me.”

She shrugged. Her hair was straw clipped in a page. Worry lines tightened a narrow mouth. Wide, brown eyes. Analytic.

Salesgirl at The Gap, but tonight she wasn’t making use of the employee discount. Her navy suit looked like vintage poly. A size too large. Grayish stockings encased skinny legs. Blue flats with square toes, blue plastic purse on the floor next to her. A string of costume pearls settled on her chest.

Costuming herself as a dowdy, middle-aged woman from another decade.

Allison settled behind her desk and I took the other white chair. The cushions were warm and smelled of Allison. The position placed me three feet from Beth Scoggins.

She said, “Sorry for hanging up on you.”

“I’m the one who should apologize.”

“Maybe you did me a favor.” She glanced at Allison. “Dr. Gwynn said you work with the police.”

“I do.”

“So what you told me, about research, it wasn’t true?”

“It’s possible that I may look into the general topic of foster care, but right now I’m focusing on some specific foster parents. Cherish and Drew Daney.”

“Drew Daney abused me,” she said.

I glanced at Allison. Allison’s eyes were on Beth. It brought back my intern days. Talking to patients while being evaluated by supervisors behind one-way mirrors.

Beth said, “He started off being really nice and moral. I thought I’d found someone honest.”

Her eyes turned blank. Then they came back into focus and shifted toward Allison. “Should I give all the background?”

“Whatever seems right, Beth.”

Beth breathed in deeply and squared her shoulders. “My father left my mother when I was eighteen months old, he’s some kind of roofer but I don’t know much about him and I don’t have any brothers or sisters. My mother moved from Texas to Willits- that’s up north- then she left me to raise horses in Kentucky when I was eight. I have severe learning disabilities. We were always fighting over school and everything else. She always told me I was a hard kid to raise and when she moved away I figured it was my fault.”

Her knees pressed together, glossy-silver knobs in gray nylon.

“She always liked horses. My mother. Liked them better than me and I’m not just saying that. I used to think it was because I gave her problems. Now I know she was lazy, just wanted an animal that was easy to train.”

CHAPTER 34

Beth Scoggins stopped talking and stared at the ceiling.

Allison said, “Hon?”

Beth lowered her head and nudged the purse on the floor with one shoe. Deep breath. Her tale of abandonment continued in a soft, flat voice.

Cared for by a widowed maternal grandmother who eked out a living running a thrift shop. Passing through school without learning much. Discovering boys and dope and alcohol and truancy at twelve, a habitual runaway by her thirteenth birthday.

“Grandma got mad but she always took me back. The cops said she could declare me incorrigible but she figured she had to be a responsible person.”

If she’d been my patient, I might’ve suggested that her grandmother cared about her.

This wasn’t therapy.

What was it?

“The last time, I ran all the way to Louisville. Took the bus and hitched and I finally found her after a week. My mom. She had different hair, had got skinny, was married to another horse groom and they had a baby, real cute, a little girl. Amanda. She didn’t look a thing like me. My mother was like freaked because I showed up. She couldn’t believe how big I got. She said I could stay. I hung around for a few days but I don’t like horses and there was nothing for me to do, so I came back. Grandma got liver disease from her drinking and died and they collected her junk from the shop in boxes and took it away. Some people from the state wanted to talk to me but I got out of there.”

She went silent again.

A history not unlike Troy ’s and Rand ’s. They’d murdered a child. This young woman was struggling to make it. Coming along nicely, until a stranger called.

Allison said, “You’re doing great, Beth.”

Beth’s freckled hands gathered skirt fabric. “I went all the way up to Oregon, then back to Willits. Some people were coming down to L.A. To see a concert at the Anaheim Pond, they said they’d get me tickets. They didn’t but I was here so I stayed. In Hollywood. I met some other people.”

She blinked several times. “I ended up at a shelter in Glendale run by this church school. They assigned me to Mrs. Daney and she was nice, her hair reminded me of my mom’s. She said I could leave the shelter and move in with her, she had other girls, everyone was cool, I just couldn’t use drugs. I moved in and it was okay except there was too much praying and the other kids were mostly Mexican. Mrs. Daney was homeschooling everyone, had all these books and lesson plans. I was seventeen, hated school. Mrs. Daney said you should do something, so I ended up being Mr. Daney’s assistant. That meant I’d go with him when he went to all these places and help out.”

“What kind of places?” I said.

“Sports programs, churches, church camps. He drove around doing jobs.”

“Church jobs?”

“Sometimes he’d lead prayers or grace,” she said. “Mostly he was like a camp counselor or a coach. Or he’d teach Bible. He did it because he needed the money.”

“He told you that?”

“He said that after he gave up a career as a minister he didn’t make enough money to do just one job. Said all the foster money went to the kids. They did feed us pretty good and we always had clean clothes even though it was mostly cheap stuff. I was being his assistant for about a month when he started to abuse me.”

She stared at the carpet.

Allison said, “You can stop any time.”

Beth chewed her lower lip. “I think what he did was put something in my Seven-Up, a roofie or something.”

“He drugged you?” I said.

“I’m pretty sure. We were in the car, driving home from some camp, and it was late and he said he was hungry. We stopped at a Burger King and he bought a cheeseburger for himself and two Seven-Ups. After I drank mine, I started to feel sleepy. When I woke up, we were parked somewhere else, some road, real dark. I was in the back of the car now, and he was next to me and my pants were off and I knew from the smell that we did it.”