I spelled my last name slowly. As I hoped, the presence of a lawyer kept Ms. Paxton from demanding Mr. Contreras’s name—he didn’t want to call himself Aguinaldo, and he’d told me on the way over if he was going to take part in this scheme he didn’t want his name taken down.

“And what seems to be the problem?” The administrator’s smile was as bright as her lipstick, but no warmth came with it.

“The problem is, my little girl is dead. I want to know how she could have got out of here with no one the wiser.”

Ms. Paxton put the pen down and leaned forward, a motion learned in media training school: lean forward forty–five degrees to show concern. It wasn’t reflected in her eyes.

“If a patient wants to check out, even if it’s not in her best medical interest, there’s little we can do to stop her, Mr. Uh—”

“Huh, that’s a laugh. She come over from the jail, in chains like as not, and you say she can check herself out if she wants to? Then I bet the waiting list from the jail over to here must be five miles long. How come we never was told she had female problems? How come when she called home she never said nothing about that, that’s what I’d like to know. You tell me you can let someone waltz away from this hospital without their family knowing they was even in here to begin with?”

“Mr. Uh, I assure you that every precaution—”

“And another thing, who even did the diagnosis—some prison warden? She didn’t have nothing wrong with her that we ever heard of. Not one person from this hospital got in touch with us to say, “Your baby is sick, do we have your permission to do surgery?’ or whatever it was you was planning on doing. What happened—did you mess up on the surgery and—”

I had briefed Mr. Contreras as best I could over lunch, but I needn’t have worried: with the bit in his teeth not much short of a bullet can stop him. Ms. Paxton kept trying to interrupt, growing progressively more angry at each failure.

“Now, now,” I said soothingly. “We don’t know that they did surgery, sir. Can you look up Ms. Aguinaldo’s record and let us know what you did do?”

Ms. Paxton jabbed her computer keys. Of course, without a subpoena she shouldn’t tell us anything, but I was hoping she was angry enough to forget that part of her training. Whatever she saw on the screen made her become very still. When she finally spoke it was without the fury that I had been counting on to push her to indiscretion.

“Who did you say you were?” she demanded.