It had given Mrs. Creeden a bit of extra cash, and kept Leah from worrying. As she looked around, she realized there was no dust. When Leah had lived here, there were places where dust accumulated, but no more. Things had undoubtedly been very clean after the first week’s visit. Since then they had been polished. Before she left again, she would have to tell Mrs. Creeden that she could relax her standards a bit.

Leah showered. She had brought a couple of detective suits on the hunt for the killers. She had worn them only a couple of times, but they had been packed and unpacked a lot, so they were going to the dry cleaner. She looked at the supply in her closet. There were black suits, dark gray, navy blue, and light gray, all pressed and in cleaners’ bags. She picked black this time, because it looked enough like a Weldonville police uniform to fool the eye from a distance, and she wanted her time here to look professional. Two people knew what she had been doing while she was away. Most didn’t, and there was also a chance that strangers might visit who expected things to be the same.

She put her badge and cuffs on her belt, and her Glock in its holster, where it would be hidden by her coat. She stepped into the closet so she could see herself from two sides in the full-length mirrors.

She put on her polished black cop shoes and went into the kitchen, made instant coffee, and heated a frozen egg-and-bagel object in the microwave. She had not yet turned in the rental car, so she drove it to the police lot at the Public Safety Building. She would have somebody follow her to surrender it at the lot in Denver later.

Because she was over an hour early for the day shift, she got out and walked around the building to the front entrance. There was a new sight, a plaque in bronze and black about the size of a door.

The sense of familiarity that had been like a gentle current moving her along went away. The plaque had been delivered at least a year after it had been ordered and was installed while she was gone. The top of the metal surface had big letters and numbers that said only “JULY 19” and the year.

Below it in smaller letters were a few lines about the mass escape from the federal penitentiary at Weldonville. Under that was a heading that said, “FEDERAL CORRECTIONS OFFICERS WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES.” There were forty-two of them, some of them familiar—the warden, Gene Humphry, Paul Scott, Will McGovern, Bill Halvorsen’s brother Nick. She noticed Ciccio, Decker, Yashinsky, Tiedemann, Polk, Pelletier, Costa.