“You’re a writer?” one asked.

She was sixteen tops, her Alonzo Mourning jersey long, like a dress. The other was no older and hung back, gnawing her nails.

“That’s right.”

“You’ve been writing about us?”

“Just looking.”

She eyed Gwen and Vince. “At them?” she asked. “At the purple people?”

“Yes.”

The other girl cut in: “You know where they took Jules?”

I glanced at her bruised legs.

“Not Jules, retard,” said the girl in the jersey. “Julia, Julia Rawls?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I haven’t heard anything about her. What happened?”

“This guy Deck—”

The other girl said, “Don’t,” and told me: “They took her in the truck.”

“When?”

“A couple months ago. December.”

I said I was sure they’d brought Jules to the hospital, Ocean General.

“Why hasn’t she come back?”

“I don’t know. Want me to look into it?”

“Don’t say we asked, okay?”

“Okay.”

The girl reached into her jersey and brought out a photo of their friend. It was the face of a small white girl—her smile still looked full of baby teeth—two ponytails cinched with white scrunchies.

“She’s a bit older now,” said the girl in the jersey.

“How much older?”

“Like two or three years, maybe.”

I was about to hand the photo back, but the girl said, “Keep it.”

I pocketed the picture and said I’d do what I could. The girls gave their names, Tori and Lina, and the address of Tori’s grandmother. I could find them there, if I heard anything.

I’d packed a light lunch of fruit and cold cuts. As we ate by the water and Vince fooled with the dogs, I took out the photo and asked Gwen about Julia Rawls.

“Sure, I remember her, the little one.”

“Was she in the trial?”

“Yeah,” said Gwen. “We never got the whole story, but when we found her, one of her breasts was nearly severed. I think it was a pimp thing.”

“What happened to her after that?”

“Once you discharge them, you can’t really follow the patient anymore,” Gwen said. “It’s too much, too heartbreaking. You have to detach a little, you know? You probably aren’t close with everyone you write about, are you? It’s not like they’re your friends.”

8.

I dropped by Ocean General after that day’s ride-along, and had just parked the Escape when Dr. Behniwal, the trial’s supervisor, emerged from the hospital. Both hands compressed his bald head, as if to crush it. He staggered into the parking lot and suddenly started running.

I called, “Dr. Behniwal!” but he didn’t stop. By the time I hustled through the parking lot, between cars, he’d driven off.

In the hallway, nurses cleaned and sorted and evaded each other’s eyes. When I knocked, Dr. Kriss’s shout pierced the office door: “What?”