She probably understood about 10 percent of it, but it seemed to calm her down.

"You can say that again, natural. She daydreams all the time."

"Exactly. Hypnosis is like that."

"Teachers complain all the time, say she's driftin' off, not doing her work."

She was talking as if she expected me to do something about it.

Milo broke in.

"Has Melody told you anything more about what she saw, Mrs. Quinn?"

"No, no." An emphatic shake of the head. "We haven't been talkin' about it."

Milo pulled out his notepad and nipped through a few pages.

"What I have on record is that Melody couldn't sleep and was sitting in the living room - in this room at around one in the morning."

"Must've been. I go in by eleven - thirty and I got up once for a cigarette at twenty after twelve. She was asleep then and I didn't hear her for the while it took me to fall off. I'd 'a' heard her. We share the room."

"Uh - huh. And she saw two men - here it says "I saw big men." The officer's question was "How many, Melody?" And she answered, "Two, maybe three." When he asked her what did they look like, all she could say was that they were dark." He was talking to me now. "We asked her black, Latino. Nothing. Only dark."

"That could mean shadows. Could mean anything to a seven - year - old," I said.

"I know."

"Which could mean two men, or one guy with a shadow, or - "

"Don't say it."

Or nothing at all.

"She don't always tell the truth about everything."

We both turned to look at Bonita Quinn who had used the few seconds we had ignored her to put out her cigarette and light a new one.

"I'm not sayin' she's a bad kid. But she don't always tell the truth. I don't know why you want to depend on her."

I asked, "Do you have problems with her chronically lying - about things that don't make much sense - or does she do it to avoid getting in trouble?"

"The second. When she don't want me to paddle her and I know something's broken, it's got to be her. She tells me no, mama, not me. And I paddle her double." She looked to me for disapproval. "For not tellin' the truth."

"Do you have other problems with her?" I asked gently.

"She's a good girl, Doctor. Only the daydreams, and the concentration problems."

"Oh?" I needed to understand this child if I was going to be able to do hypnosis with her.

"The concentratin' - it's hard for her."

No wonder, in this tiny, television - saturated cell. No doubt the apartments were Adults Only and Melody Quinn was required to keep a low profile. There's a large segment of the population of Southern California that views the sight of anyone too young or too old as offensive. It's as if nobody wants to be reminded from whence they came or to where they will certainly go. That kind of denial, coupled with face lifts and hair transplants and makeup, creates a comfortable little delusion of immortality. For a short while.

I was willing to bet that Melody Quinn spent most of her time indoors despite the fact that the complex boasted three swimming pools and a totally equipped gym. Not to mention the ocean a half - mile away. Those playthings were meant for the grownups.

"I took her to the doctor when the teachers kept sendin' home these notes sayin' she can't sit still, her mind wanders. He said she was overactive. Somethin' in the brain."

"Hyperactive?"

"That's right. Wouldn't surprise me. Her dad wasn't altogether right up there." She tapped her forehead. "Used the illegal drugs and the wine until he - " she stopped cold, looking at Milo with sudden fear.

"Don't worry, Mrs. Quinn, we're not interested in that kind of thing. We only want to find out who killed Dr. Handler and Ms. Gutierrez."

"Yeah, the headshrinker - " she stopped again, this time staring at me. "Can't seem to say anythin' right, today." She forced a weak smile.

I nodded reassurance, smiled understandingly.

"He was a nice guy, that doctor." Some of my best friends are psychotherapists. "Used to joke with me a lot and I'd kid him, ask him if he had any shrunken heads in there." She laughed, a strange giggle, and showed a mouthful of teeth badly in need of repair. By now I had narrowed her age to middle thirties. In ten years she'd look truly elderly. "Terrible about what happened to him."

"And Ms. Gutierrez."

"Yeah, her too. Only her I wasn't so crazy about. She was Mexican, you know, but uppity Mexican. Where I come from they did the stoop labor and the cleanup. This one had the fancy dresses and the little sports car. And her a teacher, too." It wasn't easy for Bonita Quinn, brought up to think of all Mexicans as beasts of burden, to see that in the big city, away from the lettuce fields, some of them looked just like real people. While she did the donkey work.

"She was always carryin' herself like she was too good for you. You'd say hello to her and she'd be lookin' off into the distance, like she had no time for you."

She took another drag on her cigarette and smiled slyly.

"This time I'm okay," she said.

We both looked at her.

"Neither of you gents is a Mex. I didn't put my foot in it again."

She was extremely pleased with herself and I took advantage of her lifted spirits to ask her a few more questions.

"Mrs. Quinn, is your daughter on any sort of medication for her hyperactivity?"

"Oh yeah, sure. The doc gave me pills to give her."

"Do you have the prescription slip handy?"

"I got the bottle." She got up and returned with an amber vial half full of tablets.

I took it and read the label. Ritalin. Methylphenidate hydrochloride. A super - amphetamine that speeds up adults but slows down kids, it's one of the most commonly prescribed drugs for American youngsters. Ritalin is addictive and potent and has a host of side effects, one of the most common of which is insomnia. Which might explain why Melody Quinn was sitting, staring out the window of a dark room at one in the morning.

Ritalin is a sweetheart drug when it comes to controlling children. It improves concentration and reduces the frequency of problem - behaviors in hyperactive kids - which sounds great, except that the symptoms of hyperactivity are hard to differentiate from those of anxiety, depression, acute stress reaction, or simple boredom at school. I've seen kids who were too bright for their classroom look hyper. Ditto for little ones going through the horrors of divorce or any other significant trauma.

A doctor who's doing his job correctly will require comprehensive psychological and social evaluation of a child before prescribing Ritalin or any other behavior modifying drug. And there are plenty of good doctors. But some physicians take the easy way out, using the pills as the first step. If it's not malpractice it's dangerously close.

I opened the vial and shook some pills onto my palm. They were amber, the 20 - milligram kind. I examined the label. One tablet three times daily. Sixty mg was the maximum recommended dosage. Strong stuff for a seven - year - old.

"You give her these three times a day?"

"Uh - huh. That's what it says, don't it?"

"Yes, it does. Did your doctor start off with something smaller - white or blue pills?"

"Oh yeah. We had her takin' three of the blue ones at first. Worked pretty good but I still got the complaints from the school, so he said it was okay to try these."

"And this dosage works well for Melody?"

"Works real fine for me. If it's gonna be a rough day with lots of visitors comin' over - she don't do real good with lots of people, lots of commotion - I give her an extra one."

Now we were talking overdose.

Bonita Quinn must have seen the look of surprise and disapproval that I tried unsuccessfully to conceal, for she spoke up with indignation in her voice.