The initials beside it looked like L.K.
Lorraine had been in the library that month, I remembered.
She volunteered at the annual used-book sale.
She might have picked up the device legitimately.
Or she might have removed the only copy of a recording that nobody else knew existed.
The archivist warned against assuming either explanation.
She was right, but my mind continued working.
Munroe arrived at two forty with an evidence technician.
They photographed the cabinet, bagged the cassette, and recorded everyone’s names.
I signed a statement confirming the cabinet had remained locked during my employment.
When the detective asked about visitors to the basement, Rosa produced the access log.
Two temporary contractors had entered the area the previous Friday to check the sprinkler pipes.
Their company was listed as Harborline Facilities.
I knew Harborline.
They had bid unsuccessfully for our maintenance contract last year.
The foreman’s name in the access log was Paul Kessler.
Lorraine’s son had not moved completely away after all.
He had returned to town, entered the library under a contractor badge, and gone downstairs near the cassette cabinet just days before his mother attacked me.
I asked Munroe whether Paul had been interviewed.
He said he could not discuss that.
Rosa saw how upset I was and sent me home.
She reminded me that the city’s staff handbook required employees to report suspicious access, not conduct interviews or pursue suspects.
I agreed.
Outside, the air had turned heavy and humid.
The library’s clock struck three as I reached my car.
My phone rang before I started the engine.
The caller identified herself as Isabel Wynn’s sister, Maren.
She said she had been trying to reach me because Lorraine had left my name with her in an emergency contact notebook.
Maren spoke quickly, as if she was afraid someone might interrupt.
Isabel had not gone missing voluntarily, she said.
The day before she vanished, Isabel had told Maren that a man was following her from work.
She had also said that a recording would change what everyone believed about the Bellwood fire.
Maren paused, then asked whether I knew what the phrase the second patient meant.
I said I had seen those words in the blue folder.
Maren whispered that the second patient had not been a patient at all.
He was a person the ambulance crew had been ordered to remove from the fire scene before police could speak to him.
