“I just fell into it,” he told her flatly. He wasn’t even sure why he studied violent crimes and wrote about them. But they were filled with negative emotion, and maybe that was why he did it. Maybe it was self-punishment. Retribution. “It’s puzzle-solving. And it pays the rent.”

He handed her a file folder he had put together that morning of pertinent info. “Go ahead and read this.”

Sara took the folder Gabriel was handing her and tried to make eye contact with him. But his eyes darted over behind her, and she sank back on the couch and opened the folder. Her brain felt swaddled in thick cotton, her body exhausted from lack of sleep. She’d lain in bed for four hours, staring at the ceiling of her stark rental, before giving up and surfing the Internet mindlessly until dawn. She’d taken an hour nap around ten, but besides that was running on about six hours of sleep over the last three days.

The folder contained the police report from Anne Donovan’s murder. The handwriting was hard to read, the photocopy a little spotty, but Sara could decipher the pertinent facts.

October 7, 1849

Second District

Name of Deceased: Anne Donovan

Residing at 25 Dauphine Street, The House of Rest, a gaming and drinking establishment

Location of murder the same

Murder assumed to take place between the hours of eight p.m. on October the 6th and 2 a.m. on October the 7th according to witnesses

Victim discovered by John Thiroux, reported to authorities by Madame Conti, owner of the dwelling

No arrests made at this time

Witnesses: John Thiroux, Madame Conti, various and sundry other women in residence at The House of Rest

That was it. No description of the body, the room. No interview with John Thiroux, no mention of a weapon. Nothing useful at all. The reports from her mother’s murder had seemed thirteen miles long, the questions endless, every hair, every fiber, every scrap of anything out of the ordinary collected, catalogued, saved. Sara glanced up. Gabriel was at his computer.

“Is this the only police accounting of the crime scene?”

He glanced back at her and gave a brief smile. “Not exactly stellar police work, was it?”

“No. It doesn’t tell us anything at all. If you line the two crime scene reports up next to each other in your book, you’ve proved your point already. Forensics has essentially altered the entire face of criminal investigation. I know you want to see if we can solve the Donovan case, but how can you solve a crime based on this piece of nothing?” She felt shut down, disillusioned already.