We reviewed the garage footage once more.
My exterior camera showed Lorraine approaching me at eight fourteen.
My interior camera, unplugged when I found it, had recorded its last clip at eight eleven.
The clip showed an older woman in a brown raincoat entering through my side garage door.
She placed the folder on the workbench and disconnected the camera before leaving.
Her face was partly hidden by a baseball cap.
I had assumed Lorraine was the person who left the folder.
Now I wasn’t certain.
Munroe copied the clip and asked for a description of anyone who possessed a garage key.
Only Erin and Paige had legitimate copies.
The side door had not been locked because the latch stuck in damp weather.
I had meant to repair it for months.
Munroe inspected the latch, wrote down its condition, and told me that neglecting maintenance might have helped someone enter unnoticed.
I almost laughed at the irony.
My entire job involved fixing other people’s neglected buildings.
The investigator left just before eleven.
He took the physical folder under a documented receipt and told me not to publish the images.
Officer Ortiz remained a moment longer.
She said Lorraine had been unusually specific when officers asked whether she needed medical assistance.
She wanted to know if they would hold her in the station until the next morning.
Ortiz had said she could not promise that.
Lorraine then asked whether her husband could speak to her without a lawyer present.
That made Ortiz cautious.
Lorraine’s husband, Warren Kessler, had died seven years earlier.
I said as much.
Ortiz opened her notebook.
Lorraine had given the correct name but the wrong decade, she said.
I remembered the funeral, a gray November day when Lorraine stood beside a casket and refused to sit until the last visitor left.
Warren had been a radio technician for the ambulance company.
He had also volunteered at the county communications center.
I had helped Lorraine clean out his garage after the funeral.
At the time, she kept a battered shortwave radio that could pick up emergency broadcasts from neighboring towns.
The folder mentioned a small radio.
I asked Ortiz whether police could check Lorraine’s house for evidence she was in immediate danger.
She told me a welfare concern could be assessed, but a criminal search needed proper legal grounds.
She did not invite me to conduct my own investigation.
Before leaving, Ortiz said one more thing.
