Like a bird, I followed east to where the water had been dammed up years earlier. Farther along the plain, I saw the red clay pits that were famous in this area, the burnt sienna color a residuum of what’s left when chemical weathering erodes the calcite and dolomite.

In my dreams I heard Jonas’s voice. Telling me it was okay to sleep. But only if I got through the rest of my work first. Only then could I move on. Could I let go.

“Look further,” he said. “Look further, Dad,” he repeated, and I woke with a start.

Purvis had found a place in the corner of the room, and he sat up, alert and staring at me.

I pulled my feet off the bed and touched the cold hardwood floors of Marvin’s house. Stared over at my duffel.

Taking the bag up onto the bed beside me, I grabbed the pile of papers that I hadn’t finished going through from Harrington’s stash. The stuff I’d gotten from my floor safe before I left home.

As I carried the pile out to the dining table, I noticed that Marvin had relocated from the couch and was now asleep in his bed.

I turned on the lights in the dining room and spread out the last few papers I had not yet gone through before I left to get drunk.

The first ten pages were a journal of sorts.

Jed Harrington had tracked where Monroe had gone for a period of weeks. He’d followed the governor to Atlanta and over to Macon. To Athens. And then up north into Tennessee.

The next two pages were black-and-white printouts of pictures.

The photos were shot at night and were grainy. Pictures of someone taking pictures. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at.

But as I got to the last one, I recognized a man. He worked for Monroe. A nebbish-looking administrative aide that I’d seen at some event.

In the picture, the aide sat in a sedan, a camera in hand, his driver’s side window down.

If Monroe had suspected that Harrington was the author of the blog I’d found, the governor might’ve sent one of his trusted guys to check out the reporter. To take pictures. And this guy had become the subject of a picture himself. Because Jed Harrington had caught him on camera.

I considered what happened next. Because if the governor suspected that Harrington was onto him, then Monroe would send someone more serious than an administrative aide. More dangerous.

This triggered a thought, and I grabbed my cell. Called the front desk at the precinct. Hope Duffy picked up on the second ring, working the night shift again.

“Hey, partner,” I said. “It’s P.T.”

Hope made a noise with her nose. She was still waiting for the payoff of being my partner.

“Hope,” I said. “Was Billy Walker there tonight? He’s a sketch artist we use.”

I wanted to know if someone had sat with Kelly Borland and drawn a picture of the man she’d claimed to see outside of Jed Harrington’s.