Daniela had a rough night. She kept waking up. Twice she got up and went to Sari’s room to make sure she was still there. Obviously Angel’s call had rattled Daniela more than she’d expected. It was pretty distressing to have nightmares like this, but to know a real threat was behind them made it that much worse because it was no longer a nightmare; it was something that was possible.
To lose Sari at this stage would be devastating. Daniela had gone through the process in good faith, believing it was all legal and upfront. But was it? Her husband had handled that aspect of things, and now she had to wonder if she trusted him. While he’d been alive, she had, at least up until his last few months, when she found out he’d been so anxiously spreading love around the world, but now what? Had he done something to deliberately screw her over, like make that paperwork not be legal?
She didn’t want to believe he could have been so vindictive. But, toward the end, he had been full of anger, hate and frustration. There definitely hadn’t been love.
She tried to push that thought into the back of her mind, as she once again crawled into bed. A branch brushed against her window, making her look out at the early morning darkness. It was still summer here, but winter set in fast and early.
Did she want to leave? She hadn’t for all the time she had been here. She’d been totally okay to stay, right up until Weston brought up the possibility of moving south. And now she wondered if she could make that happen somehow. She would miss her sister, but she wouldn’t miss the hardship of being here.
Alaskans were a unique breed of people, and she loved them dearly, but she had never really felt like one of them. Five years in Alaska hadn’t been enough to make her the same hardy homestead stock most of them were. Of course a lot of the people in the cities were no different here than anywhere else. Would she have an easier time finding a job down South?
She had an online business, so it didn’t matter if it moved or not. Could she make it something more full-time so she could afford the higher rents down South, or could she find a place that was a compromise between weather and location, so the rent was still something she could afford? These thoughts only served to keep her emotions flipping from one side to the other as she lay here, dry-eyed, staring as the sun slowly crept up over the horizon. She finally gave up any pretense of trying to sleep and got up, heading into the shower.
As she came out, wrapped in a towel with her robe on, she dressed quickly, feeling a sudden chill in the air. Almost as if a chill were in her soul. Stopping to check in on Sari, she found her daughter sound asleep. Soon she was in the kitchen, and, after she put on the coffee, she stared out at the hills around her home. She was in an odd mood. Everything had suddenly flipped, and she didn’t like it. When warm arms wrapped around her, she wasn’t even surprised. She leaned into his gentle comfort. “It all feels so weird now.”
“I was afraid you weren’t sleeping after all of Angel’s phone calls.”
“And what does the lawyer have to do with any of this?” she exclaimed, twisting in his arms.
He smiled, wrapped her up close and gave her a hug.
Nothing sexual was in it, just comfort. Just somebody who realized she was upset and wanted to help.
And when he stepped back, he walked over to the cupboard and pulled out two coffee cups. As soon as the pot had finished dripping, he poured the coffee. “Shall we enjoy the early morning sun?”
She smiled and took a cup from him and followed his lead outside. “Did you come to any realizations overnight?” she asked.
He looked a little surprised and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’ve been in this business long enough to know I have to shut down my mind. Otherwise it revolves around and around with no answers. Besides, you need information before you can start making deductions.”
She just nodded.
“Or is that not what you meant?” he asked, his gaze on her face.
She smiled and took a deep breath. “This doesn’t even feel like home now.”
“Why is that?” He frowned.
“I don’t know.” She had trouble even trying to explain it to herself. “I was fine to stay in Alaska, until you mentioned the possibility of moving elsewhere.”
“Ah,” he said. “Some suggestions are like that. You don’t realize there is another way to live until somebody says, ‘Hey, what about this?’ Right?”
She nodded. “I have a small budding online business that can go with me anywhere, as long as I have room for my garden. Plus I was working at the local dollar store, doing temporary shift work, but haven’t had a shift in weeks. They keep canceling them.”
“And then you have offsetting babysitting costs,” he said.
“Yes. Or I have also done babysitting for other people,” she said. “And that works well.”
“That can’t pay too much, does it?”
“It’s very irregular and in just short periods at a time,” she said.
“So what would you really like to do?” he asked. “If all this trouble with Angel wasn’t hanging over your head, would you still be considering a move?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “A lot about my husband still is here, and a part of me says I need to have a clean break from it all.”
“A lot of people find it difficult to leave an area where their spouse or child passed away,” he said.
Something searching was in his gaze, and she didn’t know quite what it was. She dropped her gaze to look at the yard. “I need to mow this grass,” she said nervously.
“I’ll take care of it later,” he said. “It’s too wet at the moment.”
She just nodded.
“So tell me about your husband,” he said.
Something more than a gentle suggestion was evident in his words. Her back bristled slightly, and then she shrugged. “What is there to say?” she said. “I married him because I loved him, and we were happy for a time, and then we weren’t.”
Silence. “Well, that’s an interesting analysis,” he said. “How did he die?”
“I told you. He drove off a cliff.”
“Come on. Tell me the rest of it.”
“Pancreatic cancer,” she said abruptly. “He changed in his last few months. The treatment kept him functioning fairly well up until the end, but he was a changed man once he got a terminal diagnosis.”
“And?”
She gave a broken laugh. “Bitter, angry, frustrated, depressed. I think his love turned to hate.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess that’s the other side to a terminal illness a lot of people don’t discuss. So often they can’t make peace with dying. And take it out on those around them. Then there’s that whole survivor-guilt thing.”
She studied him for a long moment. “I hadn’t considered that, but I guess that’s partly what was going on.”
Once again he turned and looked at her, his gaze direct but understanding. “Is that why you weren’t happy at the end?”
She stared down at her hands. “If you’ll be around town much, you’ll hear the rumors, so I might as well tell you. He kind of went nuts. One of the things Charlie did in the last few months after the terminal diagnosis was particularly difficult.” She took a deep breath before going on. “He decided he didn’t want to miss out on anything anymore.” Her voice fell silent.
He just waited until she could go on.
She took another deep breath, and this time shuddered a bit. “What he felt he’d missed out on was being with other women.” She stared at Weston as she said it, watching his gaze widen. “That wasn’t something I would have expected. I didn’t find out right away. He was completely unapologetic when I did. So all these women around town he had his last hurrah with—it’s mortifying. I ran into one at the grocery store this week. But there are at least half a dozen more.”
“Wow,” he said. “That’s a pretty shitty deal.”
“I think it was also his way of getting back at me,” she said softly. “As a punishment for being healthy. Punishment for not dying, like he was.” Her lips crooked up at the corner as she watched Weston shake his head in disbelief.
“I don’t care what his damn reason was,” he said. “Dying of cancer is terrible, I get that. But you don’t have to drag everybody else through the muck just because you’re on your way out.”
“I never would have thought Charlie would be the kind to do that,” she said, “so the betrayal was that much more shocking.”
“And, of course, you stood by him the whole time, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what he was doing at first,” she said. “And honestly, he’d gotten so unpredictable, it was easier when he was away from the house. Eventually it became clear it wouldn’t be all that long before he was gone, or at least bedridden, and it was hard enough dealing with Sari and my own conflicting emotions, without having to figure out a way to move out and to get us set up again. We’d already moved once, when we had to sell the house we’d bought to pay for his treatments. In a way it all became a waiting game. And I hate to say it, but I was waiting for him to die.”
“He didn’t deserve you. The fact that you stuck by him is huge. I can’t believe he did that to you.”
“I’m no better,” she said. “I stayed and kept the little we had left after the medical bills came out of the sales proceeds because I knew he wouldn’t be here much longer. I’m not very proud of myself for that.”
“You were married, so everything was yours together,” he said. “He was dying, and he couldn’t take anything with him. Even if you had moved out, no judge in the world would fight you over taking a few possessions. I presume you had wills?”
“Yes,” she said. “And he left everything to me, just as my will left everything to him.”
“Which is normal in a marriage, so I don’t think he cared so much about making sure you didn’t have anything at the end, as much as making sure he got to enjoy whatever time he had left for himself. Which is pretty selfish.”
“Maybe selfish but, in some ways, understandable,” she said softly. “It didn’t do much for my self-confidence, or for my own grieving process, because it brought in a whole lot of other elements, including a wish he would die sooner, so I didn’t have to deal with any more of his affairs.”
“How many?”
“Eight that I know of,” she said. “Maybe nine, if Angel isn’t lying. Could be more. I don’t want to know if there is. This has been hard enough.”
“Jesus. That’s horrible.”
“More than horrible,” she said, but she could feel a deep sigh rumbling through her ribs and up every neck bone before finally releasing.
He looked at her and smiled. “Maybe you needed to let that go too.”
“Maybe,” she said in a more cheerful voice. “I didn’t realize how much I’d been hanging on to it. Something about Trudy chattering away her fake condolences at the grocery store the other day really bothered me, and I couldn’t keep it to myself another minute. I actually called her out on it.”
“I’m sorry I missed that,” he said with a twitch of his lips. “I’m sure you created quite a scene.”
“I’m not a scene-creating type of woman,” she said sadly, “but I didn’t have any self-control over it. I wanted Trudy to know I knew what she had done and that she was in good company with the rest of them, and I was more than happy to have everyone else in the store know it as well.”
“Did you feel better afterward?” he asked curiously.
She tilted her head sideways, trying to remember. “I was pretty shaky and upset, but maybe I did. The only person to blame in all this was Charlie. But, at the same time, it took two to tango, and Trudy definitely had tangoed with Charlie. If she hadn’t been so two-faced, I wouldn’t have said anything. But, once she approached me, I let her have it. She is married too, by the way.”
“Ouch.”
“I know,” she said. “I think that’s one of the biggest things—you’re taken for a fool, and everybody else is laughing behind your back at you.”
“Trudy won’t be laughing anymore,” he said gently. “Or her poor husband. He probably ought to get a checkup.”
That got a giggle out of her, which was what he was hoping for.
“Sometimes I feel like Charlie’s up there, laughing at me, for the way he got to walk away from it all. He created all this chaos. He spent a ton of money at the end, which I could have used, and then he just happens to drive off the road.”
“The whole thing was a real shit move on his part,” he said. “It sounds like he was only about Charlie at the end, not about you and Sari at all.”
“No, that’s exactly what it was,” she said. “It was pretty distressing to see how little he cared about us.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s not an easy thing to deal with.”
“No, it isn’t. But I’m quite prepared to find a way to get past it all,” she said. “It’s just not that easy.”
“No, none of this is easy,” he said. “But you are a braver person than I am.”
She laughed at that. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, I do,” he said. “Through all this you’ve maintained your same ethical and moral standards, and you’ve held your head high. You’ve done what’s right, and you’ve looked after Sari at the same time. There isn’t a whole lot more that can be asked of you.”
Weston thought about her words and the situation she’d gone through for the rest of the morning. It kept popping back up as he did research on the lawyer, on Angel, and on Ginger and Grant. Weston was no closer to finding any answers, and it was starting to irritate him. He stared out the window, wondering if he should just get out and take another look around Ginger’s place. Not that it was likely to show him anything, particularly if Grant was there, but he wouldn’t mind taking a better look at the crash site.
He doubted if the police had done much. A vehicle that’s off the road can look like murder or an accident.
He sent the detective a text, asking for any updates, and got a fairly quick answer back, saying there was nothing. That just pissed off Weston more. He picked up the phone and called Badger. “Hey, any updates?”
“Yes,” Badger said, his voice light. “I was just going to call you.”
“Oh, what’s up?”
“We paid for a rush on the DNA,” he said. “Sari is definitely yours.”
He sank back. He hadn’t really wanted to consider it until he knew for sure; yet, at the same time, it was a huge relief. “Well, that’s good to know,” he said warmly, twisting to look down at the little girl. To think, she was actually his flesh and blood. And though he’d known it before, he hadn’t really known it. Not like this.
“Does it change anything for you?”
“It just confirms what we had already hoped,” he said. Sari was lying on her back playing with her toes, Shambhala right beside her. “Shambhala has definitely taken to her as well.”
“That is a really good thing potentially,” Badger said.
“Potentially,” he said. “I’m just not so sure about the future.”
“The future doesn’t have to be secure right now either,” Badger said. “Remember that. One day at a time.”
“Did you have any luck tracking down Angel’s whereabouts for the last eighteen months?”
“She worked in Vegas at one of the casinos for about six months. She lost her job and was at a different casino for another few months after that. She seemed to have a pattern of a job every couple months and then leaving.”
“Any reason for why she left the jobs?”
“She was fired from the first one for drug abuse,” he said, “and she’s got a history of gambling, drugs and even prostitution.”
Weston winced at that. “That sounds like a spiral that’s hard to get out of.”
“I would say so. Yes.”
“So I wonder what she’s doing back up here,” he asked.
“The only reason theoretically would be you and the baby,” Badger said.
“She didn’t know I was here, until I spoke to her on the phone recently, as she made one of her calls to Daniela,” he said, as his fingers drummed the top of the table. “But then there’s also the case of the murdered lawyer.”
“Right. We’re having trouble getting any cooperation from the police on that one.”
“I’m not surprised. I sure would like to get into that law office though.”
“We did access his computer files. Nothing suspicious is there, except for the fact there is no file on Sari.”
As soon as Weston heard that, his heart sank. “Seriously?”
“Yes. If there was one, it’s been deleted. Although I’m beginning to suspect there wasn’t one.”
“Like no digital copy but strictly a paper copy?”
“It’s quite possible somebody other than the murderer could have deleted any digital materials,” Badger said. “Somebody like Angel.”
“So there would be no record of the adoption.” Weston shook his head in disgust.
“It was registered in the US system though. According to the adoption registry, Sari officially belongs to Daniela.”
“If that’s the case, then she doesn’t have anything to worry about,” Weston said with a bright smile.
“Except for the fact that you’re Sari’s father, and you never signed away your rights. You could potentially have a claim on her.”
“That’s a different story,” he said, “but it means Angel can’t take her away, correct?”
“Unless she has a good sob story and can prove the baby’s better off with her.”
“That’s terrible,” he said. “Can’t adoptive parents ever have the peace of mind of knowing someone can’t come back on them?”
“It is definitely a confusing issue,” Badger said. “Nothing’s clear-cut these days. It’s supposed to be finished, legal, all over, done with, but it never really is.”
“You realize none of this makes any sense.”
“It’ll make sense,” Badger said quietly. “Unfortunately it never makes sense until more shit happens.” On that note he hung up.
Weston put down his cell phone and turned to look at his daughter.
“Who was that?” Daniela asked from the kitchen.
He looked up to see her leaning against the doorway, chewing on her bottom lip.
“The DNA came back,” he said with a smile. “Sari is mine.”
A look of happy surprise washed across her face. “That is excellent news,” she said.
Sari looked over at him and gave him a toothy grin, then rolled back over, pushing at Shambhala with her feet as she lay on the floor.
“It is good news,” he said quietly with a big smile on his face. “I hadn’t realized how much I wondered until we got a confirmation.”
“I’m sorry you had to wonder,” she said. “Once Angel said you were the father, it never crossed my mind to think she might have been lying. Although, in retrospect, that wasn’t very astute of me.”
“Well, the reality is, she might not have known for sure,” he said. He hopped to his feet and said, “I’ll go into town and talk to the cops. I want to see if I can find out where Angel is staying, if she’s even in town, and see if I can get any more information on her brother and all that.”
“Did your friend have much to add?”
“Not much. Apparently Angel got into a spot of trouble in Vegas and ended up in drugs and eventually even prostitution. She went through a lot of jobs working at casinos. One lasted six months, and others were shorter.”
“Ouch,” Daniela said. “That would make for a tough eighteen months.”
“Very,” he said. “The problem is, we don’t know what kind of a downward spiral she’s come here with, and the truth is, we don’t want her here at all.”
“That’s for sure.”
He smiled. “I’ll take Shambhala with me.”
She hesitated and looked at Sari. “Okay. I’m still not all that comfortable with her here without you. Though it seems foolish to be uncertain because look at the two of them.”
“I won’t be too long anyway. We’ll get out of your hair for a bit.” He stopped as he headed toward the front door. “Do you want me to pick up anything while I’m out?”
She shook her head. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ve got some work to do on my online business, and then I may have a nap with Sari. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“If you think of anything,” he said, “you can text me.”
She nodded.
He called Shambhala, who hopped to her feet and came running. He laughed. “You’re just as happy to get out and do something as I am, aren’t you, girl?” He opened the front door and walked out to his rental truck.
He had a lot to think about, and not the least of which was what the hell he would do with his future. When he had been considering his future before, he had only himself in mind, not a family, but now he had a daughter. No way in hell he would let her out of his life on a permanent basis. The question really was, what did he want, and was it fair to even consider something other than 100 percent?
Weston loaded Shambhala into the vehicle and headed back into town, his mind full. Not getting answers wasn’t good, and getting out of the house was more a case of staying busy. While he looked into these legal things, hopefully he could free up his mind and let all the thoughts and information flow through him.
He stopped in at the police station first.
The detective was there and looked surprised. “I told you that I didn’t have any updates,” he said.
“That may be,” Weston said, “but I have news that Angel was into prostitution and drugs pretty heavily down in Vegas. I also know Daniela is really worried Angel will try to take custody back.”
“I didn’t think that was possible,” the detective said. “I did send the paperwork to the legal department, but I haven’t heard back yet.”
“The adoption has been formally registered too,” Weston said. “I just wondered if there was any chance Angel could upset the applecart and get Sari back.”
“That I don’t know,” the detective said, then looked down at his files. “We haven’t found anything helpful so far.”
“So no forensic evidence?”
“Some, but that’s classified.”
Weston nodded. “Is the crime scene still locked up?”
“Why?”
“Because I’d like to take a look at the attorney’s office,” he said boldly. “I’ve done a lot of this kind of work in the past.”
The detective studied him for a long moment, then making a sudden decision, he stood, grabbed his keys and said, “I’ll meet you there.”
“Good,” Weston said, then strode out to his truck. Shambhala lay in the front seat, waiting for him. She barked in delight when he arrived, her tail wagging like crazy. He hopped in and reached over to give her a scratching.
“Let’s go, girl, and see if we can get into trouble somewhere else.” Starting the truck, he headed down the few blocks to the lawyer’s office. He walked the block and took photos of the other offices in the same area. By the time he walked back, the detective frowned at him.
“What did that do for you?”
“It depends on if someone heard anything, saw anything,” he said.
At that, the detective frowned. “We have spoken to several of the people in these nearby businesses, and nobody heard anything.”
“Of course not. That’s the way of it, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
Weston held his thoughts to himself, but he wondered if anybody had seen Angel. Was there any strife with the lawyer? What kind of a person was he? These were all things he would take the time to find out. The detective unlocked the door and motioned inside.
Weston stepped in and stopped. “Did you guys make this mess?”
The detective stepped in behind him and frowned even more. “We shouldn’t have,” he said. “This isn’t normal.”
“It wasn’t like this before,” Weston said, as he turned in a slow circle. “All the files have been dumped upside down. Even if the killer were looking for something, why would you dump it like that?”
“Frustration? Rage?” The detective frowned as he pulled out his phone and calling forensics to see when they had been here last.
“The crime scene tape was down, correct?”
“Yes, the scene had been cleared.”
“Do we know if this guy had any other relatives besides Angel?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I haven’t been working the case.”
At that news, Weston just lifted an eyebrow. “Are there that many detectives here?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “We’ve had two call in sick today.”
Weston took a quick look around, wondering just what this was. To him it looked like rage. Somebody expected to find something, and, when they didn’t, they decided to trash the place. Or they did find something, but it was something they didn’t want to see.
He wondered what the lawyer was like. Was there any chance he was supposed to draw up the agreement and make sure it was not quite legal? That would be shitty on Angel’s part.
But he didn’t know what kind of a person she was. Unfortunately she was a ship that passed him in the night. They rocked the boat for a few hours, and that was it. He couldn’t regret it now because Sari was the result, but it was certainly not something he even vaguely remembered. And that made him feel sad.
He squatted beside a stack of files on the ground. He didn’t recognize any of the names. He didn’t touch anything but continued to search through the material on the floor. Surely something was here. He found a pack of matches off to the side from a Vegas hotel. He studied it because it was of particular interest, since it was on top of the files. If it came from Angel, that meant she had been here, either before or after this destruction.
When the detective got off the phone, he had information. “The technicians were done yesterday. The crime scene tape was removed afterward, and the office was left locked.”
Weston nodded, then pointed at the matches. “Angel lived and worked in Las Vegas,” he said. “If those are from her, she’s been here since this was done or was here at the time.”
The cop squatted beside him and nodded. “What purpose would she have for searching through these records and leaving them in such a mess?”
Weston replied, “Either she was looking for something and couldn’t find it, or she found something and didn’t like it.”
“Right,” he said. “Well, I’ve got the team coming back, so make sure you don’t touch anything.”
“You know I won’t.” Weston walked through to the private office in the back, where he’d seen the body and saw bloodstains still on the carpet. He looked with a new insight because now all the information around this killing had changed.
“Do we know what the weapon was?” Weston asked.
“No, not for sure. A small handgun we assume. I’m still waiting for the autopsy to come back.”
“So a gun that could be purchased almost anywhere,” Weston said.
“There’s more. The lawyer had a license himself and kept a gun on the premises. It’s the same caliber he was killed with.”
“Has it been found?”
“No,” he said, “but it seems likely it may have been involved, one way or another.”
“So somebody comes in here with ill intent. The lawyer pulls the gun to protect himself. Then they end up killing him with it?”
“It could play that way,” the detective said. “Again, what’s the motive?”
“Somebody wanted help,” Weston said. “And either the lawyer didn’t like it or didn’t like the price.”
“That sounds familiar,” the detective said. “I was here for an hour after the body was removed, going through everything, but I didn’t find anything of interest.”
“So you didn’t expect this aftermath?”
“No.”
“Even now I don’t see much point. An awful lot of case files are here, but depending on what he specialized in—”
“Mostly estates,” the detective said. “We’ll have to go through this paperwork, make sure nothing’s missing. But we won’t know on a lot of this if parts of the files are missing.”
“So, like wills?” Weston said, turning to look at him.
The detective frowned and then nodded. “That’s possible. He had a legal assistant, and we spoke with her yesterday. She wasn’t sure what she was even supposed to do at this point.”
“I’d like to talk to her.”
“And what would you ask her?”
“I’d ask about any estates in the process of closing, and any clients or others who were disgruntled over a will.”
“I did ask some of that but not all of it. Given this, I think more questioning needs to be done.” The detective brought out a notepad and wrote down notes as he walked around the office, but Weston didn’t bother too much about that.
“The next thing to question is, did this lawyer have anything to do with the wills for Grant and Ginger?”
The detective stopped, looked at him and said, “I have no idea.” He pulled up his phone and started talking, “I think it’s time I contacted that assistant again.”
When a woman answered on the other end, he identified himself and told her the office had now been broken into, and paperwork was strewn everywhere. He said he needed to meet with her to go over a few more questions, but he also wondered if she could answer one right away.
As Weston listened with half an ear, he heard her acknowledge they had, indeed, done wills for Grant and Ginger. He nodded and said, “I’ll come around this afternoon, and I’d like to show you some photos of the offices. I wonder if you’d feel up to helping us determine if anything is missing.”
At that, Weston turned and asked, “Can she just come down here?”
The detective frowned. “Actually, would you mind running down here and taking a look? There are files everywhere.” When he hung up the phone, he glared at Weston.
Weston held up his hands. “I know. I know. This is your case, not mine.”
“Exactly,” he said, “but it’s a good idea to have her come and take a look. She should at least be able to say which ones were their current cases.”
“And, if the office did handle Ginger and Grant’s estate, in theory, this is now a connection to that case as well.”
“He was a lawyer, and not too many were in this part of town,” the detective said. “There could be a lot of different reasons for that connection.”
“Possibly,” Weston said cheerfully, “but it’s better to have too much information than not enough.”
“So says you,” the detective said. “It’s a fine line. Sometimes too much information clouds everything.”
Weston had to agree.
Just then came a knock on the door, and it was pushed open, as a middle-aged woman stepped inside. “I’m Roseanne,” she said. “The legal assistant.” She stopped, took one look and gasped. “Oh my,” she said, “all these files.” She bent down to straighten them up and then stopped and looked at the detective. “May I?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll have the forensic techs come back and take another look at this.”
She frowned, noting some of the names and the open drawers.
Weston stepped forward and asked, “Did you utilize the files in this cabinet much?”
“No,” she said. “Actually, we’ve been going digital, and we rarely used the paper files. Besides, that cabinet is old past clients.”
“How old?”
“Well, last year anyway,” she said. “Once we’ve crossed over a year, we digitized any completed cases and got rid of the paper copies.”
“So, these are all files from the last year that you haven’t had a chance to digitize yet?”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s it exactly.”