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hospitalization; however, with shrewd attorneys and plea bargains he bypassed judge and jury.
    There was no plea bargain for the fifth offense of attempted murder.
    Ellie was on her way home from school. She was with three girls who tried to protect her, but Patterson was big and strong. He grabbed Ellie and threw her into his car. The authorities found her two hours later, brutally beaten and left for dead in a ravine two miles out of town.
    By the time she reached the emergency room, she had lost a lot of blood and her prognosis was bleak. She was flown to a trauma center, and the surgeons worked through the night to save her. She spent her twelfth birthday in the ICU.
    “Ah, man,” Max whispered as he read the last report. “That son of a bitch.”
    He was sitting in the local FBI office across from his partner, Ben MacBride, who had just hung up the phone.
    “What are you reading?” Ben asked as Max was closing his laptop.
    “Ellie Sullivan’s background.”
    “Must be bad,” Ben said. “The look on your face when you were reading . . . like you wanted to kill someone.”
    Max nodded. “Then I nailed it.”
    Ben rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s bad, huh?”
    “Yes.”
    “Want me to read about her now?”
    He shook his head. “No need.”
    Ben pushed his chair back. “Does Hughes expect us to file our reports tonight?”
    Max said, “How long have you been an agent, Ben?”
    His partner laughed. “Long enough to know that I just asked a dumb question. Still, I always hold out hope.”
    “Hope for what?”
    “That we get finished at a normal time.”
    “Are you in a hurry to get back to the hotel?”
    Ben was going through the drawers in the desk. “No. I’m in a hurry to eat. I’m starving.”
    “What are you looking for?”
    “Candy, gum, anything.” He shut the last drawer and shook his head. “Maybe we should move Sullivan’s interview to tomorrow.”
    Max stood. “No, we need to talk to her tonight while it’s still fresh in her mind.”
    “I’m betting she won’t be forgetting what happened for a long while.”
    “Doesn’t matter. We need to do it tonight,” he countered, walking to the door.
    Ben trailed behind. “Okay, so here’s what we do. We talk to her quick, grab something to eat, then come back here and finish our reports. Right?”
    “Right.”
    “The interview will be quick, won’t it? She’s not one of those arrogant, obnoxious doctor types, is she? If she is, we could be there for hours before we get the information we need. You know what I’m talking about. Some of those older, crabby doctors have the superiority complexes, and they have to impress you with their knowledge before they’ll answer questions. I hate that type. Is she one of those?”
    Max remembered Ben hadn’t met Ellie yet. He had been stationed on the other side of the park when the shooting started, and Max hadn’t felt the need to tell him about her. It was going to be really interesting when he did meet her.
    “Is she that type? Ah, hell, she is, isn’t she? We’ll be there till morning.”
    Max didn’t answer but was smiling as he tossed the car keys to Ben.

FOUR
    E llie’s home was a sparsely furnished studio apartment a block west of Cranston and Glenwood. Just five miles from the hospital, it was an easy commute. Her apartment was on the second floor of a redbrick building that sat between two similar structures on a quiet, tree-lined street. Built in the 1940s, it still maintained some of the charm of a bygone era when even the smallest apartments were constructed with high ceilings and intricate moldings. For a studio, it was large and spacious, but it didn’t offer much of a view. Her living room window overlooked the Dumpsters in the back alley.
    There wasn’t anything luxurious about the place, but it was home, and she was comfortable there. Each tenant needed a key to get into the front door of the building, and there were strong dead-bolt locks and peepholes on all