“If he decides to file the suit, the hospital’s lawyers will be allowed to interview him for discovery. Until then, if you have any questions for him, you can direct them through me. By the way, it would lessen the chance of a lawsuit if I could get him more concrete information about what made you send Ms. Aguinaldo to the hospital in the first place, and how she was able to escape from what is clearly a tightly secured ward.”

“The information I have from my staff is that she had female difficulties. You’d probably know more than me what that meant.” The sneering smile played again around the corners of his mouth.

“Ovarian cysts or cancer, which wasn’t present when the doctors in Chicago opened her.”

That not only effectively destroyed his smile but caused him to forget himself: he blurted out that the body was missing, that no autopsy had been performed.

“You do keep a lively interest in your prisoners, even after death,” I marveled. “It’s true her body disappeared from the morgue before they could perform an autopsy, but the surgeon in the emergency room where she was sent did a detailed report on her abdominal cavity after he failed to save her life. He wondered if the peritonitis might have been caused by an ovarian or uterine rupture and looked specifically at those organs.”

Of course I was making all that up, but it didn’t matter. I was convinced that whatever had sent Nicola Aguinaldo to the hospital, it hadn’t been an inflamed ovary. At any rate, for the first time since I’d come into his office, I’d made Ruzich uneasy. What was it he was afraid an autopsy would have shown?

“Why don’t you let me see the model workshop where Ms. Aguinaldo was working when she took so ill she had to go to the hospital? If I can assure her grandfather that it’s a safe environment, it might make him less inclined to sue.”

He scowled, an ugly expression but easier to watch than his smile. “Definitely not. You have no reason to be involved in that part of my operation.”

“Not even if that’s where Ms. Aguinaldo’s injuries occurred?” I suggested softly.

“She was not injured there, despite the wild rumors Veronica Fassler was spreading. Yes, Ms. Warshawski, we monitor all those phone calls. We have to. It’s the best way to keep track of drug and gang traffic between the cities and the prison. I’m sorry you made that long drive for nothing, but there’s nothing else for you to do here. Unless you’d like to come up with the name of another prisoner to pretend you represent.” Ruzich pushed his intercom and demanded that a CO escort me from the building.

Chapter 32: Midnight Caller

32 Midnight Caller