Sonia didn’t come back until three. I stayed up watching an Eastwood marathon, Firefox followed by Two Mules for Sister Sara. Not having cable at my own flat, I found the commercials and the bowdlerized films a comforting parade of colors.
She patted my neck to see if I was awake. I sat up and made room for her on the couch. “He’s alive?”
“Recovering,” she said, “though it’s slow. I watched him for an hour or so to see if he’d wake up. I didn’t see anyone suspicious, and I checked the entire hospital.”
“By yourself? At night?”
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. She pushed away slightly on the couch.
“You need to find a way to accept that I know what I’m doing. You helped me, Dave, and now it’s my turn.”
“You’re right,” I said, with little to no sincerity. Her look told me she’d caught the subtext. “I shouldn’t be afraid for you?”
“Afraid is okay, but you have to have faith. Otherwise”—she spread her hands—“we can’t go on.”
“Makes sense. Going to bed?”
“Unless there’s something on.”
“Eiger Sanction’s coming up. Eastwood as a mountain-climbing hit man.”
In the morning I woke up to find her at the kitchen table, rereading the Late Start files.
“You and Blatchford had it narrowed to three,” she said. “Henshaw in Creston. Crowhurst in Washington. Petrie on Vancouver Island. One of them is likely the cut man.”
“Or put Essex in touch with the cut man,” I said.
“Blatchford thought it was Petrie. Essex wrote more on the entries about Petrie. See?” She tilted the screen to show me the scanned pages. Dana’s blue cursive filled a report template that looked like a photocopy a few dozen generations removed from the original.
“Petrie acted out, sounds like.”
“A lot. The other two, the reports are more rote. Subjects studied, progress or lack of. Less writing.”
“Maybe she thought more of Petrie.”
“Maybe,” Sonia said. “But reading them, it seems she was trying to get her bosses to pay attention to Petrie’s antics. Like she wasn’t being heard.” She tapped the screen. “Here. The part about this tantrum ‘being a continuation of last week’s, resulting in a similar lack of progress, to the point where lesson delivery itself is impeded.’ That’s the voice of someone, a woman, struggling to get her bosses to see what’s really going on.”
“You’d know,” I said.
“You never told me how Blatchford got hold of these,” she said. “Do all PIs steal?”
“No,” I said. “Only Blatchford, and me once in a while. Bob Aries, I guess. Pretty much everyone except Jeff.”
“And he’s the successful one, which should tell you something.” Before I could retort she said, “Look here.”
On the screen was a session progress report on Lee Henry Crowhurst. Essex had ended the report with a request:
While slow and barely literate, he is NOT in this writer’s prognosis developmentally disabled, and in fact demonstrates tremendous powers of ratiocination and problem-solving. I humbly request to amend my course plan, elongating the curriculum and increasing the total number of sessions, in order to aid Mr. Crowhurst in adapting his fundamental skills to academic pursuits.
“Only a grad student could write ‘in this writer’s prognosis’ without a hint of shame,” I said.
“She asks to spend more time with him. She’s denied. The next bunch of reports are all rote. ‘Mr. Crowhurst made little progress. Failed to meet his monthly goals.’”
“Sulking,” I said. “Saying I told you so to her superiors.”
“Right. Petrie’s a nuisance and Henshaw’s plugging away, but Crowhurst is all unrealized potential. She can see there’s a thought process with him. She’s intrigued.”
“What’s their connection like?” I asked.
“I don’t know. She resents administration, and Crowhurst comes across as a victim of his own psychology. Felons are pros at sizing people up. Maybe he manipulated her into thinking she saw the real him.”
“What if it works the other way?” I said. “Maybe she’s using him. When Tabitha double-crossed her, maybe Dana got back in touch with Crowhurst, promised him a cut of the—what?”
She was looking at me with the patient expression of a teacher waiting for a student to come around to the right answer on his own.
“We know someone who knows,” she said.
“She phones me. She changes numbers every time.”
“Try the one she called from last.”
I dialed. No answer.
“Least it’s not disconnected,” I said.
“She’ll call,” Sonia assured me. “Until then, we have to figure out what to say to her.”