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At 7:00 he called in an order for a large pizza with onions, jalapeños, and anchovies, a couy on the phone said it would be thirty ed into sweats and slippers and then went into the den where he unfolded a TV tray and set it with a paper napkin, a dinner plate, and silverware When the pizza arrived, he’d make himself a proper drink that he’d nurse while he ate He pictured an early evening, ht All he had to do was hang tight and act like everything was fine

10

Friday, April 8, 1988

I skippedand went into the office early I knew a three- sense of melancholy I felt, but sometimes when you’re down in the dark, you lose the will to come up The mood would pass as the day wore on In soraph of Mary Claire In that brief gliht in her eyes Before that moment, she’d been little h who’d vanished from the face of the earth Now her life had touched mine and her fate had left a erprint

I made a note in Michael Sutton’s file and stuck it in the drawer, then went back to the rough draft of the report I’d begun writing two days before I revised and polished and typed it into final for I’d have to take two or three runs at it This part of the business always felt like high school to rade depended on it I suffered so h, it just about shut me down Once Ben Byrd and Morley Shine had trained me and I was out on my own, I understood that the whole point of a client report was clarity, laying out the sequence of events in an orderly fashion with sufficient detail that a stranger reading the file years later could follow the course of an investigation That, I could do I’d even learned to enjoy the process, though it didn’t come easily

I paida collection ofthe week, plus the five hundred dollars Sutton had paid me, which I’d removed from my office safe While I was out, I picked up a sandwich and chips at the deli near the bank The sandas a wicked one that I allowed myself once a year: a thick layer of liverwurst, with mayonnaise and thinly sliced dill pickle on freshly baked sourdough While I would never drea liver between two slices of bread, liverwurst was close to heaven, the poor an meats play hell with ence would prove fatal I was in the habit of eating so fast, h the sandwich, I heard the outer office door open and close I slid the sandwich, waxed paper and all, into my pencil drawer and wiped myatblack turtleneck and a short preppy-looking pleated skirt over black tights Her low-heeled patent-leather shoes had little brass buckles across the tops that were ever so pert Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a style that lasses

She said, "Mind if I sit down?"

"Be htened her skirt under her to avoid wrinkling the fabric Over one shoulder she had a s on a thin leather strap I’ that small Hers probably contained her driver’s license, a tube of lipstick, her mad money, one credit card, and her little spiral-bound notebook with a pen stuck through the wire loops I was hoping she had a tissue tucked in there soencies

"What’s on yourthe day before Maybe she’d apologize for being pushy and deceptive, traits I found attractive inin her

"We need to talk about Michael Sutton," she said

I went through an auto:

1 How and what she knew about Michael Sutton;

2 Whether she was fishing to confirm my professional relationship with him; and

3 Whether I was still bound by ethical constraints now that our one-day business dealings had co, was I at liberty to disclose?

"Where did that name come from?"

"Cheney Phillips told me he talked to Michael at the station and then referred hi yesterday, and since you were at the scene as well, I’ he hired you Is that correct?" Even without her spiral notebook at hand, she was confir the facts