“I've told you everything I remember.”

“No, you haven't,” Molly said quietly. “But maybe you will later.” She handed the girl her card. “If you want to see me, call me. And if you don't, I'll be back to see you again anyway. You and I are going to have to spend some time together so I can write a report.”

“About what?” Grace looked worried. Dr. York scared her. She was too smart, and she asked too many questions.

“About your state of mind. About the circumstances of the shooting, such as I understand them. You're not giving me much to work with for the moment.”

“That's all there is. I found the gun in my hand, and I shot him.”

“Just like that.” She didn't believe it for a moment.

“That's right.” She looked like she was trying to convince herself but she had not fooled Molly.

“I don't believe you, Grace.” She looked her right in the eye as she said it.

“Well, that's what happened, whether you believe it or not.”

“And what about now? How do you feel about losing your father?” Within three days she had lost both of her parents and become an orphan, that was a heavy blow for anyone, particularly if she had killed one of her parents.

“… I'm sad about my dad … and my mom. But my mom was so sick and in so much pain, maybe now it's better for her.”

But what about Grace? How much pain had she been in? That was the question that was gnawing at Molly. This was not some bad kid who had just blown away her old man. This was a bright girl, with a sharp mind, who was pretending that she had no idea why she had shot him. It was so aggravating to listen to her say it again that Molly would have liked to kick the table.

“What about your dad? Is it better like this for him?”

“My dad?” Grace looked surprised at the question. “No … he … he wasn't suffering … I guess dais isn't better for him,” Grace said without looking up at Molly. She was hiding something, and Molly knew it.

“What about you? Is it better for you like this? Would you rather be alone?”

“Maybe.” She was honest again for a moment.

“Why? Why would you rather be alone?”

“It's just simpler.” She looked and felt a thousand years old as she said it.

“I don't think so, Grace. It's a complicated world out there. It's not easy for anyone to be alone. Especially not a seventeen-year-old girl. Home must have been a pretty difficult place if you'd rather be alone now. What was ‘home’ like? How was it?”

“It was fine.” She was as closed as an oyster.

“Did your parents get along? Before your mom got sick I mean.”

“They were fine.”

Molly didn't believe her again but she didn't say it. “Were they happy?”

“Sure.” As long as she took care of her father, the way her mother wanted.

“Were you?”

“Sure.” But in spite of herself, tears glistened in her eyes as she said it. The wise psychiatrist was asking far too many painful questions. “I was very happy. I loved my parents.”

“Enough to lie for them? To protect them? Enough not to tell us why you shot your father?”

“There's nothing to tell.”

“Okay.” Molly backed off from her, and stood up at her side of the table. “I'm going to send you to the hospital today, by the way.”

“What for?” Grace looked instantiy terrified, which interested Molly gready. “Why are you doing that?”

“Just part of the routine. Make sure you're healthy. It's no big deal.”

“I don't want to do that.” Grace looked panicked and Molly watched her.

“Why not?”

“Why do I have to?”

“You don't have much choice right now, Grace.

You're in a pretty tight spot. And the authorities are in control. Have you called a lawyer yet?”

Grace looked blank at the question. Someone had told her she could, but she didn't have one to call, unless she called Frank Wills, her father's law partner, but she wasn't even sure she wanted to. What could she say to him? It was easier not to.

“I don't have a lawyer.”

“Did your father have any associates?”

“Yes … but … it's kind of awkward to call them … or him, he had a partner.”

“I think you should, Grace,” she said firmly. “You need an attorney. You can ask for a public defender. But you're better off with someone who knows you.” It was good advice.

“I guess so.” She nodded, looking overwhelmed. There was so much happening. It was all so complicated. Why didn't they just shoot her, or hang her, or do whatever they were going to, without drawing it out, or forcing her to go to the hospital. She was terrified of what they would find there.

“I'll see you later, or tomorrow,” Molly said gently. She liked the girl, and she felt sorry for her. She had been through so much, and what she had done certainly wasn't right, but Molly was convinced that something terrible had caused her to do it. And she intended to do everything she could to find out what had really happened.

She left Grace in the holding cell, and went out to talk to Stan Dooley, the officer in charge of the investigation. He was a veteran detective, and very little surprised him anymore, though this had. He'd met John Adams a number of times over the years, and he couldn't imagine a nicer guy. Hearing he had been shot by his own kid had really stunned him.

“Is she nuts, or a druggie?” Detective Dooley asked Molly as she appeared at his desk at eight o'clock in the morning. She had spent an hour with Grace, and in her mind, had gotten nowhere. Grace was determined not to open up to her. But there were some things that she wanted to know, that they could find out whether or not Grace wanted.

“Neither one. She's scared and shaken up, but she's lucid. Very much so. I want her to go to the hospital today, for an exam, now in fact.” She didn't want too many hours to elapse before they did it.

“What for? Drug screen?”

“If you like. I don't think that's the issue here. I want a pelvic.”

“Why?” He looked surprised. “What are you after?” He knew Dr. York and she was usually pretty sensible, though every now and then she went off the deep end, when she got carried away over one of her patients.

“I've got a couple of theories here. I want to know if she was defending herself. Seventeen-year-old girls don't usually go around shooting their fathers. Not from homes like this one.”

“That's bullshit, and you know it, York,” he said cynically. “What about the fourteen-year-old shooter we had last year who took out her whole family, including grandma and four younger sisters? You gonna tell me that was self-defense too?”

“That was different, Stan. I read the reports. John Adams was naked and so was she, and there was come all over the sheets. You can't deny it was a possibility.”

“Yes, I can, with this guy. I knew him. Straight-arrow as they come, and the nicest guy you'll ever meet. You'd have liked him.” He gave her a look, which she ignored. He loved to tease her. She was very good-looking, and she came from a pretty fancy family in Chicago. He loved to accuse her of “slumming.” But she never fooled around on the job, and he also knew that she had a regular guy who was a doctor. But it didn't hurt to razz her a little. She was always good-humored and pleasant to work with. She was smart too, and Dooley respected her for it. “Let me tell you something, Doctor, this guy would not have been fucking his kid. He just wouldn't. Trust me. Maybe he was jacking off. What do I know?”

“That's not why she shot him,” Molly York said coolly.

“Maybe he told her she couldn't have the keys to the car. My own kids get nuts when I tell them that. Maybe he hated her boyfriend. Trust me, it's not what you think here. This is not self-defense. She killed him.”

“We'll see, Stan. We'll see. Just do me a favor, get her over to Mercy General in the next hour. I'm writing an order.”

“You're terrific. And we'll get her there. Okay? Happy?”

“Thrilled. You're a great guy.” She smiled at him.

“Tell that to the chief,” he grinned at her. He liked her, but he didn't believe a word of her self-defense theory. She was clutching at straws. John Adams just wasn't that kind of guy. No one in Watseka would have believed it, no matter what Molly York thought, or the hospital told her.

Two women officers came to pick Grace up in her cell half an hour later, handcuffed her again, and drove her to Mercy General in a small van with grilles on the windows. They didn't even talk to her. They just chatted to each other about the prisoners they'd transferred the day before, and the movie they were going to see that night, and the vacation one of them was saving up for in Colorado. And Grace was just as glad. She didn't have anything to say to them anyway. She was just wondering what they were going to do to her at the hospital. They had a locked ward they took her to in an elevator that went up directly from the garage, and when they got there, they uncuffed her and left her with a resident and an attendant. And they let Grace know in no uncertain terms that if she didn't behave herself they would handcuff her again and call a guard to control her.

“You got that?” the attendant asked her bluntly, and Grace nodded.

They didn't bother explaining anything to her. They just went down a list of tests that Dr. York had ordered. They took her temperature first, and her blood pressure, checked her eyes and ears and throat, and then listened to her heart.

They did a urine test, and an extensive blood test, checking for illnesses as well as drug screens, and then they told her to undress and stand naked in front of them, and they checked her over carefully for bruises. She had a number of them that caught their interest, there were two on her breasts, several on her arms, and one on her buttocks, and then in spite of her efforts to conceal them from them, they discovered a bad one on her inner thigh where her father had grabbed her and squeezed her. It was high up, and led to another that surprised them further. They took photographs of all of them, despite her protests, and wrote extensive notes about them. She was crying by then, and objecting to everything they were doing.

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to. I admitted I shot him, why do you have to take pictures?” They had taken several graphic ones of her crotch, but there were two bad bruises hidden there and some lesions, and they told her that if she didn't cooperate they would tie her down and take the pictures. It was humiliating beyond words, but there was nothing she could do to stop them.

And then, as they put the camera down, the resident told her to hop on the table. Until then, he had scarcely spoken to her. Most of the directions had been from the attendant, who was a very disagreeable woman. Both of them ignored Grace totally, and referred to various parts of her as though they were looking at them in a butcher shop, and she weren't even a human being.

The resident was putting on rubber gloves by then, and covering his fingers with sterile jelly. He pointed at the stirrups and offered Grace a paper drape to cover herself with. She grabbed it gratefully, but she didn't get on the table.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a terrified voice.

“Haven't you ever had a pelvic?” He looked surprised. She was seventeen after all, and a good-looking girl, it was hard to believe she was a virgin. But if she was, he'd know in a minute.

“No, I …” Her mother had gotten her birth control pills four years before, and she'd never been to a doctor for an examination. No one knew for certain that she wasn't a virgin, and she didn't see what difference it made now. Her father was dead, and she had admitted that she had shot him. So why put her through this? What right did they have to do this? She felt like an animal, and she started to cry again as she clutched the paper drape and stared at them, as the female attendant threatened to tie her down. There was no choice except to agree to do it. She got up on the table, with shaking legs, and she pressed her knees tightly together, as she lay back and put her feet in the stirrups. But given everything that had happened to her, it wasn't the worst thing that she'd ever been through.

He made a lot of notes, and put fingers into her at least four or five times, shining a light so close to her that she could feel it warm her bottom. Then he in-serted an instrument into her, and did all the same things again. This time he took a smear and made a slide, which he set carefully on a tray on the table. But he said nothing to Grace about his findings.

“Okay,” he said indifferently to her, “you can get dressed now.”

“Thank you,” she said hoarsely. She had no idea what they'd found, or what he'd written, but he had made no comment on whether or not she was a virgin, and she was still naive enough not to be entirely sure if he could really see the difference.