“Is that bad?”

“Hell no. But Al still thinks he’s living in a world where a white coat makes you bulletproof and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

Clare reflexively reached back and twisted her hair more tightly into its knot. “Last summer, I saw you hauled off getting the word out about the dangers of PCBs. How come you’re not helping Debba spread the alarm about this vaccination thing?”

“Because, unlike the known link between PCBs and cancer, there’s not a shred of scientific evidence to back up the autism-vaccination connection.” Laura looked over to the sofa, where Debba had subsided into sharp, deep breaths. “Autism can be so cruel to a family. I can’t blame parents for searching for something, anything, to explain how their perfectly normal one-year-old grows into a child trapped inside his own mind. It’s like the changelings in a fairy tale. You know, where the baby starts out healthy and is replaced by a sickly imposter? Except nowadays, instead of saying ‘Fairies stole my son,’ parents are crying that mercury-contaminated vaccines did the deed.” She shook her head, thumping her braid along her back. “If I thought that were true, I’d be breaking into warehouses to destroy any stockpiles myself.”

“But you don’t blame Debba for what she’s been doing.”

“I don’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s wrong. And she’s wasting her time fighting a war that doesn’t need to be won.” She squeezed Clare’s hand. “I’d better get back there. I know he sounded in fine fettle, but Al was really shaken up when she came at him like that.”

Clare lifted a hand in parting and turned back to the sofa. She shucked off her heavy parka and draped it over the back of one of a pair of orange plastic chairs appropriated from the waiting room. She dragged the chair over to Debba and plopped down, flashing a smile at Kevin Flynn, who was looking even younger than his twenty-one years this morning. Then she touched Debba’s hands, twisting together beneath the steel shine of the handcuffs.