Nate is waiting for me at baggage claim.

“Well, this is pretty good service.”

“We aim to please,” he says. “How was Vegas?”

“Wild. Two days of huge buffets and elastic women. They actually have the elastic women at the buffets, which saved a lot of time. I’m exhausted.”

“Asshole.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“We got a hit on Lewinsky’s emails,” he says.

“What kind of hit?”

He tells me that he’ll show me in the car, and goes off to get it. I retrieve my bag and go outside, where he picks me up. I can definitely get used to this kind of treatment.

When I get in the car, he says, “Jessie and her people started going through the emails. They began by focusing on the period starting two months before Carlisle went missing.”

“Personal or business?”

“Personal, for now. Anyway, about three weeks before Carlisle disappeared, Lewinsky sent an email with just two words … William Simmons. That’s it, just the name.”

“Who did he send it to?”

Nate shrugs. “We don’t know. The recipient was listed with a fake name, and the account was closed the next day. So no way to know who it was.”

“And who is William Simmons?”

He takes a manila envelope that was on the dashboard under the windshield and hands it to me. “I’ll drive; you read.”

So I read, and on the first page I learn that my question should have been, “Who was William Simmons?” because he is dead. And he died in Bergen Hospital nine hours before Lewinsky, the head of that hospital, sent the email consisting only of his name.

Simmons died of a fractured skull, inflicted by an assailant who has never been found. He was homeless and spending the night in an alley behind a Hackensack restaurant when he was attacked. It was considered a random killing; Simmons was thought to have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are some pages that construct as best as possible the life of William Simmons, and they read as an American tragedy.

For years William Simmons was a productive model citizen. He grew up in Fair Lawn, raised by a single mother who died when he was fourteen. He went to live with family members in Ohio, but came back to New Jersey to attend Rutgers. He graduated with a degree in business administration, and ultimately wound up having his own insurance agency.

Simmons married and had two daughters. Life was apparently good, and Simmons seemed to be leading it the right way. He gave to charity, was active in his church, listed himself as an organ donor, and even took on a close but unsuccessful run at city councilman. Friends and neighbors described him as someone who was always there for them, ready with a smile or anything else they needed.

It was six years ago that Simmons’ wife and one of his daughters were killed in an automobile accident driving on Route 80. Simmons and his other daughter were also in the car, and suffered injuries that were not life-threatening.

A drunk driver’s car went over the center median and crashed into them head-on; they never had a chance. Simmons had vision problems, so his wife was driving, and he was a passenger. He and the surviving daughter were in the backseat.

As so often can happen in situations like this, Simmons’s life went into an almost immediate descent, spiraling out of control. He lost his business and his home, and wound up on the streets. Those same friends and neighbors that had praised him completely lost track of his whereabouts, and apparently didn’t care enough to do anything about it.

Then came that night in the alley that ended it all. The cause of death was a crushed skull; someone literally stomped his head into the pavement and left him there to die.

Because Simmons was not thought to have any possessions of value, robbery was eliminated as a motive. It was thought to be a random thrill-killing, and the killer left no forensic trace. The most unusual thing about it was that it was apparently the killer that called 911 and alerted authorities to the crime.

First responders were there within minutes, but the assailant was gone, and there was no saving William Simmons. He died at Bergen Hospital within minutes of his arrival; there was nothing doctors could do.

The official time of death was three minutes past midnight, just nine hours before Daniel Lewinsky sent an email consisting only of his name.

I’ve just finished reading the materials when we pull up to Jessie’s house. “Come on in,” I say. “Let’s kick this around.”

Jessie opens the door as we approach, and her greeting is a warm one, including a significant amount of hugging and kissing. It’s far preferable to the welcome I got from Nate at baggage claim.

“Am I the only one getting nauseous?” Nate asks.

“I think you are,” I say.

We go inside and sit around the kitchen table as Jessie makes coffee. She puts down some cookies as well, and Nate eyes them. “What’s in those?” he asks.

Jessie shrugs. “I don’t know; cookie stuff.”

“Fattening? Because some cookies contain, like, no calories. Some people are on all-cookie diets.”

Jessie smiles. “Every time I want to lose some weight, I eat a few hundred of them.”

I don’t take any cookies, but I give Bobo a few dog biscuits; I want to get on his good side.

Nate puts five cookies onto his plate. Then, with his mouth full, he asks, “What do you think about William Simmons?”

“The head of the hospital sends an email mentioning a person who died at that hospital the night before. There could certainly be a benign explanation for that.”

“He sent it to someone who was concealing their identity, and who closed the account after getting the email. Maybe Lewinsky wasn’t supposed to have communicated that way, so they blew it up.”

“How does it fit into our overall theory?”

Jessie says, “It doesn’t yet. We’re going to do a full dive into Simmons’ life. At this point there’s no drug connection; but that’s not to say there isn’t any.”

“What about the toxicology report?”

“No drugs in his system. His uncle in Ohio said he’d never used them, that he hated them.”

I nod. “Also get the hospital records. For all we know they’ll show that Simmons was given heavy drugs for weeks, even though he died that night. It could be a way to explain how all the drugs they took in were accounted for.”

“Good idea.”

“If you guys are right that this is significant, then we need to make a connection. Simmons at one point had an insurance agency; did he ever sell life insurance to any of the players? Or to a lot of other people that might have died at this hospital?”

“He was out of that business for years,” Nate says.

“But insurance policies live on. I doubt we’ll find anything; maybe there’s nothing to find.”

We talk for a while longer, and then Nate says, “So what’s on television? I’m not tired at all.”

Jessie and I look at each other, and she says, “The television is out, Nate.”

“Then what do you have to eat?”

“The refrigerator is out, Nate.”

“Anybody up for three-man poker?”

“You’re out, Nate,” I say.

He shakes his head and stands up to go. “Did I mention that you guys make me nauseous?”