“You mustn’t contact them,” Millicent said.

“Don’t be silly,” Joanna said. “Their daughter has been injured and is in the hospital. Of course I have to contact them. Why wouldn’t I?”

Millicent took a deep breath. “Do you know anything about how Jeannine was raised or why she left home?”

“A little, I suppose,” Joanna conceded. “She told me once that she’d had a troubled childhood.”

“Troubled?” Millicent snorted derisively. “I’ll say it was troubled. Her father sexually abused her regularly from the time she was little. It’s her first conscious memory. When she finally got up nerve enough to tell her mother about what was going on, her mother called her a liar and threw her out of the house. Those people are monsters. The way they treated Jeannine is absolutely criminal, but to have them called in when she’s lying helpless in a hospital bed and has no say in the matter… No. You just can’t do that.”

“Millicent,” Joanna said. “Someone needs to be here with her.”

“And I will be,” Millicent said at once. “It’ll take me a little while to cancel my appointments and make arrangements to close the clinic for the day, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. You say she’s at UMC? What’s her doctor’s name again? I’ll need to talk to him.”

“Waller. Dr. Grant Waller.”

“All right,” Millicent Ross said. “I’m on my way.”

After Millicent hung up, Joanna paced in the breezeway. Dr. Waller had already alluded to the new patient privacy rules on more than one occasion. And the sign posted on the door into the ICU had been plainly marked: Authorized Visitors Only.

In the narrowly observed rules of medical treatment, Joanna guessed that the relationship between Millicent Ross and Jean-nine Phillips wasn’t going to qualify Millicent as authorized. For more than ten minutes, Joanna walked back and forth, wrestling with what was the right thing to do in a wrong situation. Finally she redialed Millicent Ross’s number.

“Has something happened?” Millicent demanded as soon as she heard Joanna’s voice. “Has her condition gotten worse?”

“No,” Joanna said. “Nothing has changed. But I was thinking. How much older are you than Jeannine?”

“Love is love,” Millicent snapped back, her voice suddenly cold. “Age has nothing to do with it.”

“How much older?” Joanna persisted.

“Several years,” Millicent conceded reluctantly. “My daughter’s a year older than Jeannine is and my son’s a year younger. But still, I don’t see how the difference in our ages has anything to do with-”

“Actually it does,” Joanna said. “In fact, it’s the whole point. Dr. Waller is a stickler for the rules. He expects me to contact Jeannine’s mother, so presumably he’s expecting her to show up even though he has no idea where she lives or what her name is.”

Suddenly Millicent grasped where this was going. “If I were to show up claiming to be her mother, how would he know the difference?”

“Exactly,” Joanna said, “but you never heard it from me.”

“No,” Millicent Ross agreed. “I certainly didn’t. Thank you, Joanna. I owe you one.”

Joanna thought about Jenny, who wanted to be a veterinarian. Even though Jenny wasn’t yet in high school, Millicent Ross had been unfailingly encouraging about the chances of Jenny’s achieving that somewhat lofty dream.

“No, you don’t,” Joanna said. “You don’t owe me a thing.”

“I’m coming as soon as I can,” Millicent said. “Will you still be at the hospital when I get there?”

“Maybe,” Joanna said. “But it might be best if we didn’t cross paths.”

“I understand,” Millicent returned.

“But there is one other thing we need,” Joanna added. “Dr. Waller didn’t do a rape kit.”

Joanna heard Millicent’s sharp intake of breath. “You think she was raped?”

“I don’t know for sure, but performing the exam is the only way to confirm whether or not she was. And it’s also the only way to gather possible DNA evidence and photograph her wounds for the legal record. Without a signed consent form, that isn’t going to happen.”

“Believe me,” Millicent said determinedly. “There will be a signed consent form.”

“And insist they photograph whatever bruising there is and also that they do scrapings from under her fingernails,” Joanna added. “If she fought them-and from the way the truck looks, I think she did fight-there may be usable DNA material under her nails as well. The problem is,” she added, “there’s always a chance that, if word gets back to them, Jeannine’s parents will show up at the hospital after all. What you do then, I don’t know.”

“I’ll be able to handle it,” Millicent Ross returned.

Relieved that she had done as much as she could, both for Jeannine and for Millicent, Joanna put her phone away and headed back to the emergency room, where she corralled the first available clerk.

“I’m investigating that beating victim who was brought in early this morning,” she said, showing the clerk her ID. “I need the names of all the attendants who were on duty at the time she was admitted.”

“I can get you a list if you like,” the clerk said with a shrug. “But you see that guy over there-the tall skinny one?”

“Yes.”

“His name’s Horatio. Horatio Gonzales. He’s pulling a double shift right now. I’m pretty sure he was here overnight.”

Horatio Gonzales was indeed tall-six-four at least. And he wasn’t exactly skinny. Well-defined muscles showed under his hospital scrubs. “What can I do for you?” he asked when Joanna approached him with her ID in hand.

“Were you here this morning when that beating victim was dropped off?”

His dark eyes went even darker. “I was here,” he said. “She was hurt real bad.”

“What about the three men who brought her in. You saw them?”

“I guess,” he said.

“What can you tell me about them?”

Horatio shrugged. “Not much,” he said.

“Do you think they were the ones who did it?”

This time there was a spark of real anger when he spoke. “No way!” he declared.

“But if they weren’t responsible, why didn’t they stay around after they dropped her off?”

“Why do you think?” he said. “They didn’t speak much English. Maybe they were illegal or something. Or maybe they didn’t have the right kind of insurance for their vehicle or the right kind of license. I’m sure they were scared. If they’d talked to a cop, even a little lady cop like you, they might have gotten in some kind of trouble.”

On most occasions a “little lady” comment like that would have sent Joanna into a fury, but somehow, coming from Horatio Gonzales, she understood it was due to their very real disparity in size rather than a patronizing put-down. Joanna Brady was tiny compared with him.

“They wouldn’t have gotten in trouble with me,” she said. “That woman is a member of my department. They saved her life. All I want to do is thank them.”

That wasn’t entirely true, of course. Joanna did want to thank them. And they wouldn’t be in any trouble as far as she was concerned, but she desperately needed to know where they had found Jeannine. Locating the crime scene was most likely her investigators’ only chance of finding any real evidence. The attack had begun inside the truck. The rest of it had been carried out elsewhere-in the desert someplace. Whatever evidence remained would be there, too, waiting to be discovered.

Despite ten more minutes of questioning, Hector Gonzales was unable to recall anything of use. Looking at the list of names the clerk had given her left Joanna feeling even more discouraged. The other ER attendants probably wouldn’t be any more interested in answering Joanna’s questions than Hector had been. She was standing near the entrance, thinking, when an ambulance rolled up to the door. Watching the action unfold, Joanna noticed, for the first time, the security cameras discreetly set in the supporting columns on either side of the driveway.