“You know, I shouldn’t be doing this. These files are supposed to be sealed.”

“I appreciate it, George, and I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important.”

George grunted and leaned back as Shindler read through the files.

“You know, I was their counselor for a while.”

“The Coolidges?” Shindler asked, looking up.

“For a year before they turned eighteen. Billy was a rough customer. I took an active dislike to him.”

“Why was that?”

“There was just something about him. The other one, Bobby, was more human. I guess that was it. Billy was a cold fish. No moral setup. He operated on pleasure-pain principles. If it hurt him, it was bad. If it felt good, it was good.

“I think the first time I worked with him was when he was brought in for a rampage at school. He beat up three kids in the course of one morning. Really brutal stuff. He had been drinking and the judge just gave him a talking to and let him go, because no one was seriously hurt, but that was no thanks to Billy.

“Anyway, I was assigned as counselor, but I couldn’t reach him. He showed no remorse. The only emotional reaction was his anger at the boys for telling on him.”

“What about the other boy, Bobby?”

“He’s a little different. I think he would turn out okay if he had half a chance. Of course, he doesn’t. Father died when they were young. Mother’s an alcoholic. Bobby is bright. So is Billy, for that matter. But they don’t apply themselves in school.”

“What was Bobby’s problem?”

“Also fighting. He beat up a banker’s son at school. The kid had it coming, but the father made a stink. The banker’s kid had made some remark about Bobby’s clothes. He told me that his mother had been drunk and he had washed them himself. He admitted, in an indirect way, that he was jealous of the other boy’s clothes.”

“You mean he disliked the other boy for being rich?”

“That was Billy’s favorite theme. He’s in a juvenile gang, you know. It’s called the Cobras. I would get him talking about the gang and you couldn’t stop him. He felt that the gang membership gave him status. He told me that he had earned his membership and that made him better than the kids at school who were rich only because of their parents. They both resent their parents. They feel that the father somehow betrayed them by dying and leaving them to fend for themselves.”

“Have Billy or Bobby ever gotten into trouble for using a knife?”

George thought for a moment.

“Not that I can recall.”

“George, do you mind if I keep these files for a day? I want to study them and I don’t have the time now.”

“I shouldn’t, but go ahead. Just don’t get caught. I’d be in real trouble if anyone found out.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll have them back to you by tomorrow.”

“This is important, huh?”

“Very. I’d tell you about it if I could, but I want to be sure before I accuse anyone.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll admit it’s a possibility,” Harvey said.

“Then you agree that I should bring them in for questioning?”

Marcus thumbed through the stack of papers that Shindler had put on his desk forty-five minutes ago. They contained police reports, notes from juvenile records and a psychiatric profile that had been done on William Ray Coolidge. The stack of papers painted a picture of two alienated, low-income juveniles who harbored a deep resentment against a society with which they could not cope. Shindler thought that he saw a pattern.

“They crash the party to see how the other half lives. They are jealous of these kids. One of the boys I talked to said he thought that Billy might even have a crush on Alice Fay, the girl who threw the party.

“Then, they’re beaten up and humiliated by the very people they despise. They get drunk. Later, they run into Walters and Murray. They know them from school. They see two perfect representatives of the very social class they hate.”

“Nice theory. But you have nothing to connect the Coolidges with the killings.”

“Esther Freemont’s glasses.”

Marcus shook his head.

“Not enough. According to her, she didn’t even have them on the evening of the crime.”

“She’s lying. I know it.”

“But you have to prove it. Only don’t go off half-cocked to the D.A. until you can.”

“What about questioning the Coolidges?”

Marcus looked down at the reports again.

“All right, let’s bring them in.”

Shindler had developed a mental image of Billy Coolidge and he was surprised at how accurate it was. The thing that surprised him most was the physical reaction the boy produced in him. There was something there that repelled him. The boy was good looking in an almost effeminate way. His lips were too thick and they curled naturally into a sneer. The hair was thick with grease. Whenever he saw one of these punks with their slicked-back hair and black leather jackets, he felt a slow hate. They stood for too many things that he did not.

“Have a seat, Billy,” Shindler said, motioning to a wooden chair on the other side of a wooden table. Shindler was seated in a comfortable chair on the far side of the small, bare interrogation room.

Billy took a cautious look around. There was nothing to rest his eyes on except Shindler, so he stopped there. His brother had been taken to a room on another floor by a policeman as big as the one who was standing behind him. There did not seem to be much he could do, so he looked at Shindler.

“What is this all about?” he asked.

“I’d like to have a talk with you,” Shindler replied.

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you. So let me go, or let me call a lawyer.”

“You don’t need a lawyer, son. All I want you to do is answer a few questions.”

“About what?”

“Sit down, first,” Shindler said in a voice still calm.

“I don’t want to sit down and I’m not answering any questions. Now, let me out.”

The defiant tone. The scared, defiant look. Like Nazis. Shindler hated them. He nodded and the big policeman twisted the boy’s arm behind him and sat him down.

“Listen to me, asshole,” he whispered, “when Detective Shindler asks you to do something, you do it. Do you understand?”

Billy groaned and writhed in the big man’s grasp. He gasped out an “okay” and grunted with relief when he was released. He rubbed his shoulder and cast a frightened look behind him. He was scared now. That was good.

“Would you like a cigarette?” Shindler offered. Billy shook his head and Shindler lit one for himself.

“You were born in Portsmouth, weren’t you?”

“You know that shit from my records, so why ask?”

The policeman took a step forward and Billy swiveled his head to watch him. Shindler raised his hand.

“All right. Yeah. I was born in Portsmouth. So what?”

“You and your brother have been pretty much on your own since your father died, haven’t you?”

“I guess,” Billy replied grudgingly.

“Are you working now?”

“You know I’m working at McNary Esso.”

He was sulking. He had turned away from Shindler so that his profile was to him and his eyes were on the floor.

“Do you like working at McNary’s?”

“What are you? Some kind of social worker? I want out of here and I’m not answering any more questions.”

“Not even about what you were doing on the evening of Friday, November twenty-fifth?”

Uncertainty. Coolidge cocked his head and looked at Shindler.

“What’s that?”

“Last November twenty-fifth. The Friday after Thanksgiving.”

“How the fuck should I know what I was doing then. That’s six months ago.”

“Maybe I can help you. You had a little fight at Alice Fay’s house. Do you remember that?”

“I don’t remember nothing.”

“Now you’re being stupid, Billy. We have a dozen eyewitnesses who will swear under oath that you had a fight with Tommy Cooper, his brother and some other boys that night.”