Ever since the Tyler Bell case the year before, when I was literally stalked in my own office, I'd had to seriously reevaluate my life. The upshot: I'd decided my criminal cases were too high-profile too often for me to keep the private in private practice anymore. Now, I saw only two or three patients a week, usually pro bono, and I was satisfied with that. Most days, anyway.

    But I didn't want to see this particular patient-not today.

    It was ironic that I had a session with Bronson “Pop-Pop”

    James that morning. He was eleven years old and probably the most advanced sociopath at that age I'd ever seen. Four months before, he'd made headlines when he and a seventeen- year-old beat two homeless men half to death. They had used, cinder block. It was Pop-Pop's idea. The district attorney hadn't figured out how to try the case yet, and Bronson was being held in juvenile custody. The one thing he had going for him was a very good social worker from Corrections, who made sure he got to his appointments with me.

    At first I thought it best to keep the events of the last night out out of my head. Once the session got going, though, I changed my mind.

    “Bronson, you hear about what happened at the service plaza in Virginia last night?”

    He sat across from me on a cheap vinyl couch, fidgeting, the whole time, hands and feet always in motion. “Yeah, right, I heard. They was talking 'bout that shit on the radio. What of it?”

    “The boy who died… he was twelve.”

    Bronson grinned and put two fingers to his head. “Heard he got X-Boxed.”

    His confidence was prodigious; it gave him a strange adult quality-while his feet dangled about six inches off the floor in my office.

    “You ever think something like that might happen to you?” I asked him.

    He snorted. “Every day. It's no thing.”