“I’m not familiar with it. He told me that remembering death was the key. I’m not sure if he was referring to any specific death—Jon Murray’s, for instance—or just death in general.”

“We can analyze it, though, right?” Thurman said to me. “Have our team decode it?”

“We can try.”

DeYoung looked at me curiously. “What was all that about plea bargaining?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself.”

A knock on the door. When DeYoung answered it, Collins appeared with our phones in hand.

As she was passing them out, she said, “Pat, your latest backup on the system was twenty-four hours ago, so we don’t have your most up-to-date messages.”

“Okay. And the other matter?”

“Renaldo’s. Just down the street. A coffee shop.”

I knew the place.

I gave her a description of Tessa and what she was wearing. “Do me a favor. Call the manager and confirm that a girl fitting that description is in there. And that she’s alone.”

“Done.”

Collins told us to contact her if we needed to, then slipped into the hallway again.

Once she was gone, I said to DeYoung, “There are five things we need to do.”

“Go on.”

I ticked them off on my fingers as I listed them. “First, provide protection for Agent Thurman’s family. If Mannie and Blake know where they live and decide to make a move on them, I want them safe and agents waiting in the house instead.”

“Good call,” DeYoung told me. “I’ll get a team over there.”

Thurman nodded, looking relieved.

“Second,” I said, “contact Ralph Hawkins. He told me last night that he was planning to fly up here today. He needs to know that Mannie escaped. Third, let’s see if Ralph has any information in his case files that might give us a bead on where Mannie might have gone. Fourth, check traffic cameras and exterior CCTV cameras from the surrounding blocks to see if we can catch sight of Mannie.”

He was taking notes. “And number five?”

“Mannie told me to follow the Selzucaine back to the source. Let’s work our CIs to find out all we can about the drug’s dealers and distributors.”

“Thurman, that’s you,” DeYoung said. “You handle high-level confidential informants, don’t you?”

“I do. I’m on it,” he said.

As DeYoung put things into play, I stepped aside and texted Tessa again, this time from my own phone, asking her one more time to call me as soon as possible.

I was considering how to gracefully make an exit so I could follow up with Collins and confirm Tessa’s location when DeYoung’s receptionist knocked once on the door and then pressed it open before waiting for him to invite her in.

“Annalise, I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed.”