The nurse returned. "There's a Mercedes convertible out there. The motor was running. I parked it." She hung the keys on her clipboard and made a note of the license number. Someone came in with the X rays. Miller clipped them to a light box and peered at the chest.

"Good lungs. Two broken ribs." He looked at the head shots. "Mmmm," he said. "I want a plastic surgeon to see her. Who's got the duty?"

"Griffin," a nurse said.

"No!" the woman on the table said.

"Griffin's good," Miller told her.

"Harry Estes," she said.

"He's good, too. You know him?"

"Yes."

"Can I tell him your name?" The woman said nothing.

Miller went to the desk, looked up a number, and dialed. "Hello?" a sleepy man's voice said.

"Dr. Estes? This is Martin Miller in the Piedmont ER. I've got a woman here I'd like you to see."

"Dammit, I haven't got the duty! Can't you read the list?"

"She asked for you. Says she knows you."

"What's her name?"

"She won't say."

"What's her condition?"

"She's been raped and badly beaten; the eyes are swollen shut; there are lacerations about the cheeks and eyes; the nose is flat. X rays show the maxillary sinuses are full of blood. The maxilla is movable; I think she's got a Ce Fort three fracture."

"What did you say she was beaten with?"

"Fists."

"A Ce Fort three is impossible."

"When you've seen her you can tell me that."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes." Harry Estes lived near the hospital; he made it among his patients this could be. His main practice was in Northside Atlanta, the most affluent part of the city. The women he treated came to him for breast implants or reductions, nose jobs, facelifts-the gamut of elective cosmetic procedures; occasionally, one was injured in a car accident. In his Northside practice he had never dealt with the results of a beating; no patient of his, to his knowledge, had ever been raped.