Were you bullshitting her, Adam?'

'Huh?'

After watching Sarah's parents escort her out of the building, Adam turned back to Beckett. 'Was I bullshitting about what?'

'Going to Washington Irving.'

'Oh, no, that's very true, unfortunately,' Adam sighed. 'My parents insisted that I go to private school since the options in the neighbourhood where I grew up wasn't exactly known for its academic prowess.'

'That must have been pricey as hell.'

'I was a scholarship kid,' he admitted. 'At school I was Brennan the Beggar Boy and at home the kids on my street called me Uptown Girl, like the Billy Joel song.'

'That's awful.'

'Taught me a lot though, about the kind of person I wanted to be and not to be too. Kids I went to school with were not like Sarah Ritter that's for sure.'

'She seems like a decent girl,' Beckett agreed, then stuffed her hands in her pockets. 'Something about her story doesn't add up though.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, Lanie's got a severe allergy like Sarah, right?'

'Yeah, shellfish. She eats it, she dies but if others eat it near her, she just gets itchy and has problems breathing right?'

'Exactly. So if Sarah had ingested something with peanuts or trace amounts of peanuts, I sincerely doubt she would have been with it to talk to us and give us such a coherent statement.'

'You're thinking someone in the room had something with peanuts in it?'

'I don't know, it's just something to think about.'

Beckett stopped talking when the other witness came in, this one not as pale as Sarah was but just as shaky-looking. He too looked like a child of a multi-racial marriage, what she imagined Carey or Finn Parrish Robbins might look like at age sixteen - he had toasted almond skin and muddy green eyes, and his posture was stiff as a tin-man when he sat on the edge of the cot in the nurse's office.

'Nicholas Tomasi, I'm Detective Kate Beckett, this is Detective Adam Brennan. I'm terribly sorry you had to see something like that.'

'Call me Nicky,' he said numbly. 'Everyone else does, you can too.'

'Okay Nicky. Can you take us through your morning?'

'I got up about six-thirty, had a shower, and-'

'From when you got to school,' Beckett clarified.

'Oh, okay. My chauffeur dropped me off at ten to eight. I hit the lounge, got my books ready and went to the French room. I had a presentation to do and wanted to get into the room early.' Nicky heaved a sigh. 'Mademoiselle Tonya let me in at eight o'clock and I was there until the warning bell rang at eight-ten. I took a minute to go and get a drink at the fountain before the start of class since my presentation was the first one on the docket.'

'Understandable, get it out of the way first,' Adam concurred and Nicky let out a short laugh.

'Nah, it was reverse alpha order. In junior AP French, I'm the last kid on the roster.'

'What time did class end?' Beckett prompted Nicky.

'At nine. We have five minutes to get to our next class, which is easy since all our classes are on the same floor. I had ISP with my sponsor, Professor Hill, right afterward.'

'Sarah said when you came into class you looked angry about something.'

'Yeah, I was angry because Professor Hill was there and said I couldn't talk to him during ISP time, I had to wait until my scheduled appointment. I'd asked him the day before about it and he was such a hard-ass on things like that, it's so annoying.' Nicky cracked his knuckles, sighed again. 'I know he's dead and it's wrong to say things like that about him but

'What did you want to talk to him about?'

'My AP algebra placement test. School policy says if you get a three on the test you can take the course, but Hill said no one with lower than a four could be in his class. I wanted to tell him I wanted to retake the test so I would have six AP courses on my transcript for applying to the Big Three.'

'The Big Three?'

'Stanford, Harvard, Princeton. I'm going to be in civil engineering and AP algebra and geometry would go a long way to getting into those schools.'

'I see,' Beckett said neutrally; she wondered what it was like for students like Nicky, so used to spouting off their parents' desires that they lost sight of what they wanted for themselves. 'Did you speak to him at the start of class?'

'No, I just started working on my biology project on the computer. I'm researching the impact of algae on sources of drinking water. But he left to take Sarah down to the girls' WC and came back a few minutes later. She was looking a little shaky so I suppose it's a good thing he took her. Then... God, it feels like I'm telling a story, not what happened.'

'It's okay, everyone processes things differently,' Adam told him, much like he'd reassured Sarah. 'You're doing really well.'

'Then he came back and I kept on working, and about nine-thirty or so, Professor Hill asked me to go down and wait for her outside the girls' room to make sure she was okay and bring her back to class.'

'Why do you think he asked you to do it? Why not just go himself?'

Nicky shrugged. 'He said he wanted to keep marking tests he had to hand back that afternoon. Mostly, I think he liked to pick on me for kicks because I had something he didn't.'

'What's that?'

'Money. Everyone knew that Hill was going through a divorce and he was spending more than he made. It's one of those things that was supposed to be private, like when we know one of our female teachers is knocked up but everyone knows because they know what preggos look like. I mean, we're not stupid kids, we can see what's going on.'

'Wait until you're a parent,' Beckett said dryly. 'What time did you leave to get Sarah?'

'About nine-thirty, maybe a few minutes before? I don't wear a watch-' Nicky held up his naked wrists '-so unless I'm in a class room or a car, I have no idea what time it is.'

Adam filed this away, kept his face even as he made the next inquiry. 'What did you do when you saw him there?'

'I...I couldn't move. Sarah was beside me screaming, and she ran across the hall to get Mademoiselle Tonya and she went somewhere, called Professor Leung I guess because the next thing I knew she was there telling us to stay out of the room.' Nicky's eyes took on a far-away light as he relayed his recollection of the events. 'She closed the door and locked it, made us all leave the second floor and go outside until the cops got here. Professor Leung made me and Sarah come in here until you guys got here.'

He sighed, clamped his linked fingers on the back of his head in frustration. 'I should have done something, instead of just standing there like an asshole with Sarah while she was freaking out. I should...I'm a man and her friend, I should have helped her calm down or something.'

'I'm sure you'll have a chance to talk to her once things settle down here and you get home, get something to eat and relax,' Adam told him. 'Maybe you two might get together for a meal and give each other an ear.'

'Can...do you know what killed him?'

'The ME is still in the early stages of his own investigation,' Beckett said, and when another set of parents appeared at the door this time with Leung, she pulled out a card from her pocket. 'If you need to talk to me about anything else, you can reach me at this number.'

'Thanks.'

Nicky left with his parents, his back still stiff and straight even as his mother put her arm across his shoulders. When they were gone from the building, Beckett turned to Adam. 'He's sweet on Sarah.'

'You got that too?'

'Loud and clear. You get that he hates Hill's guts?'

'Because he dared to keep that spoiled brat from getting his own way because he lacked the talent? Loud and clear too.'