She was embarrassed when it turned out to be me.

“Whitney, sorry, sit down. What is it?”

“What’s going on? I just saw Dr. Behniwal—”

“Quinn got out, that’s what.”

“Got out?”

“Sometime last night. Dr. Behniwal was on duty. I had to let him go.”

“Just like that?”

“I have to present my findings to Inland,” she said, “and cases like Quinn’s are key to the data pool. It’s unacceptable that Dr. Behniwal would fail to secure him.”

I brought out my notebook and inquired about the patient named Julia Rawls, who’d been taken to the hospital in December. “Her friends on the south side are asking about her.”

Dr. Kriss relaxed. “Julia was a milestone in the trial,” she said, “the youngest patient to receive the solution, just fourteen.”

“They say she didn’t come back.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Dr. Kriss. “I really hate to admit this, but we get stories like that all the time. We’ve had a lot of debate over giving out money when the subject leaves. Sometimes they just go on a bender with it, and that can spell catastrophe.”

“Julia Rawls was a little young for a bender.”

“I’d like to think so too. More likely, she hopped on a Greyhound and got the hell out of there. Whoever hurt her in the first place is probably still on the south side, after all.”

A pimp thing, Gwen had said.

“You know what’s funny?” asked Dr. Kriss.

“What?”

“When I was persuading Rubicon to give you access to the trial, one thing they were scared of was you writing about Common Dreams. They don’t like the idea of everybody knowing they sponsor a needle exchange and hand out condoms. Anything progressive is embarrassing, it leaves them vulnerable. Meanwhile, they have no objection to the idea of you exposing a situation like Julia’s. Can you imagine that? I mean, god bless Rubicon, honestly, for their commitment to the trial, but—off the record?”

“Sure.”

“Sometimes their priorities make me sick.”

9.

Vince and Gwen advised me never to visit south-side Retreat alone, never to leave the car, and certainly, at all costs, not at night. And so, naturally, I was curious to do all these things. After another ride-along failed to produce a subject for the trial, I became restless, unwilling to spend another night in Candy’s bungalow, staring at myself in a mirror.