Even Mr. Contreras grew quiet when we passed the front gate. Three layers of high fencing, with razor wire along the tops and current running through the outermost, separated us from the prison. It looked in some ways like a modern industrial park, with its low white buildings laid out in a kind of campus—except that the windows were mere slits, like the arrow holes in a medieval castle. Also like a castle, watchtowers holding armed guards covered the perimeter. A kind of reverse castle, where the guards thought the enemy lay within rather than without.
Although the land around the prison was dotted with wildflowers and trees, inside what wasn’t concrete had become hardscrabble from too many marching feet and too little care. In the distance we could see some women playing what might be softball; as they ran they kicked up dust eddies.
“Umph.” Mr. Contreras let out a grunt after I turned around and headed back into town. “If you wasn’t desperate before you landed in that place, you sure would be after you’d been there a day or two. If that didn’t cure you of a life of crime nothing would.”
“Or it would get you feeling so hopeless you’d feel you didn’t have any choices.” My neighbor and I do not think as one on most social issues, but that doesn’t stop his wanting to be involved in helping me tilt at whatever windmill I’m charging on a given day.
The hospital lay inside the town boundary, off the main road leading to the prison. Behind it ran Smallpox Creek, flowing northwest to the Mississippi, although not at any great pace. We let the dogs out again to cool off in the water, then checked the side roads around the hospital. Just as my maps had shown, you could either go directly to jail or into town from the hospital, but you didn’t have any other choice for escape than the creek. After driving the route long enough to memorize it we returned to the hospital and parked.
Coolis General had started as a small brick building. With the arrival of the prison and wealth, two enormous wings had been attached, giving it the appearance of a dragonfly. We walked up a long path, past beds of summer flowers, to the entrance, which was in the old part, the body of the insect. Signs directed visitors to the Connie Brest Baladine Surgicenter, to radiology, and to patient information.
“Howdy,” Mr. Contreras said to the bored woman at the information desk. “I need to talk to someone about my granddaughter. She—well, she was a patient here up to last week, and things didn’t turn out too good for her.”
The woman braced herself. I could see what to do if family threatens a malpractice suit running through her mind as she asked Mr. Contreras for his granddaughter’s name.
“Nicola Aguinaldo.” He spelled it for her. “I ain’t saying we blame the hospital or anything, but I sure would like to know how she come in and how she left and all. She—well, she got herself in a little bit of trouble up in Chicago, and she was over here in Coolis, in the jail, when she took sick.”
Once he got past his initial nervousness, he was in full stride. I began to believe that Nicola Aguinaldo really had been his granddaughter, with the family that worried about her, but you know how it is with today’s young people, you can’t ever tell them nothing. The woman at the desk kept trying to interrupt him—she wanted to explain that she couldn’t talk to him about patients, especially not when they were prisoners, but she finally gave up and summoned a superior.
In a few minutes a woman about my own age showed up. If she’d been sprayed with polyurethane she couldn’t have been glossier or more untouchable. She introduced herself as Muriel Paxton, the head of patient affairs, and invited us to follow her to her office. The back of her crimson suit barely moved as she walked, as though she’d figured out how to use her legs without involving her pelvis.
Like all modern hospitals, Coolis General had spared no expense on their administrative offices. Radical mastectomies may be done now as outpatient procedures, but heaven forbid that management skimps on any attention to comfort. Muriel Paxton enthroned herself behind a slab of rosewood that clashed with the red of her suit. Mr. Contreras and I, feet sinking to our ankles in the lavender pile on the floor, sat in faux–wicker side chairs.
“Why don’t we start with your names.” Ms. Paxton held a pen like a dagger over a legal pad.
“This is Nicola Aguinaldo’s grandfather,” I said, “and I’m the family lawyer.”
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.