One of the town parks was behind the library. I walked through it, slow pace, looking for cars that were dawdling, for bicyclists, anyone on foot. It was morning rush hour, and even a small town has a lot of rush-hour traffic, so it was hard to be a hundred-percent sure I was clean, but no one was on foot, and I didn’t think I saw any Buick Enclaves, at least not twice.

When I got to the nurses’ station at the ICU, a young woman at the counter texted Nurse Heinz for me. The charge nurse appeared a moment later and escorted me into the back.

Heinz paused outside the door to the unit. “Do you really think her life is in danger? It sounds extremely dramatic, like the kind of thing Sonia would make up, not something that could actually happen.”

“You know her personally?” I asked.

“We were in high school together. She didn’t have friends, so she’d say anything to get attention. And it was always something made up—about the Russian spies her father was outwitting or the lover who died a tragic death trying to reach her through a fire.”

“I’ve never talked to her when she’s been awake, so I don’t think she’s infected me with melodrama. A week or maybe ten days ago, Sonia was out in the country and encountered Doris McKinnon.”

“Who’s she?”

“A farmer, around ninety, who was murdered soon after Sonia saw her. Yesterday McKinnon’s body disappeared from the state’s morgue before the pathologist could perform an autopsy. It was all over the local news.”

“I see so many hard things in here that I keep away from real life when I’m off duty,” Heinz said.

“Who can blame you?” I said. “But here’s what has me worried: Last night I was reexamining the pictures I took outside the bar where I found Sonia. I hadn’t looked at them before, but I recognized someone in the background, a guy who supposedly is here in Lawrence from some army college—it has a fancy name—something something staff college.”

“Oh, yes,” Heinz said. “Over in Fort Leavenworth.”

“I don’t know if he’s there or not. I get a different story about him every time I ask, and I’m not sure I’ve even been told his real name. I was photographing a trio of guys who’d been hanging around outside where I found Sonia and the young college student, and Mr. Staff College was in the background. Did he give her roofies? Or give them to this trio to give her?”

“Or he was a drinker who happened to be at a late-night bar at the same time,” Heinz said sharply. “I would think a detective like you would have enough experience to know that coincidences do happen.”