“I’m telling you, Vicki, this isn’t a joke. If you know where Benjamin Sadawi is and you’re sitting on him, like you sat on the autopsy, I am personally going to tie you up in pink ribbon and deliver you to the federal marshals.”

“Use some other color, okay?” I forgot I was going to think things through before speaking. “You know I hate sex stereotyping.”

He slammed the phone in my ear. I sat staring at nothing for a long time. The front door bell finally roused me from my stupor.

It was a messenger with a large envelope from Cheviot Labs, which included the salvageable material from Whitby’s pocket organizer, separated and placed in protective plastic, as well as several pages summarizing the work done on them and the results. Excitement at the contents made me forget my frustrations for a moment.

Kathryn Chang’s cover letter explained that she’d had to come in on a different project yesterday and had found my packet.

You said your need for analysis was urgent, so I took care of it. Most of the paper had been destroyed, first by being wet too long, and then by drying out. For future reference, if you ever need this kind of work done again, keep the paper damp until we can work on it. As far as I can tell, a small notepad suffered the most damage.

Two documents had been folded and placed in a side compartment; these were relatively intact and I was able to restore them. Of course it’s very difficult to judge paper and ink after they’ve been soaked as long as these pieces had. One was handwritten on school exercise paper that dated to the nineteen-thirties; the other typed on a 20-pound cream stock, around forty or fifty years old. I’ve placed the originals in protective casings; you should be very careful about touching them. Attached are photographed copies and transcriptions (photography preserves the original document better than photocopying).

I laid out the photoed pages. One was a typed letter to Kylie Ballantine, the other her own spidery handwritten response. So Marc had found some documents. The letters so precious that he’d kept them in his breast pocket, over his heart. My own heart beat faster as I read the typed letter.

Dear Kylie,

Despite the turns of Dame Fortune’s wheel, which dictate when we mortals shall enjoy fame and money and when we shall live by writing bilge for women’s magazines under pseudonyms (my own, in case you haven’t been reading Woman’s Day lately, is Rosemary Burke) I have a few friends remaining at the august institution you no longer grace. One of them tells me that Olin Taverner somehow came by a photograph of you dancing at the lodge for ComThought back in ‘forty-eight. He sent it to the university president with a demand that they dismiss you. I don’t know who was at the resort with a camera, and who would have supplied that prize Fascist with a picture, but you might ask Taverner.