I nodded. “You could be right—maybe I am melodramatic. I don’t want to take a chance, that’s all. Sonia saw something odd at Doris McKinnon’s farm last week. If anyone is afraid she’ll start spreading it around . . .”

“No one would believe her.” Heinz smiled sourly. “Everyone in Lawrence who knows her is so used to her theatrics that they don’t pay attention to her.”

“But the people who don’t know her . . .”

Heinz thought about it. “Maybe. However, you’re the only person who’s been here for her the whole time she’s been unconscious. One of her brothers has called several times, but I don’t think she’s on anyone’s radar, for good or bad. And in any event, it’s most unlikely she’ll remember anything from the Lion’s Pride—she was extremely drunk before she took the roofies on board.”

She let me into the room. Although Sonia was breathing on her own, she had an oxygen feed attached to her nose, a heart monitor, tubes dripping saline and sugar into her arms.

When I sat next to her and lightly clasped her hand, her eyes fluttered open. “Doctor?”

Her throat was dry, her speech slurred. Heinz pointed at a carton of lemon-glycerin swabs. I took one and put it in Sonia’s mouth.

“I’m a detective, Sonia. I found you last Tuesday. You called me from the Lion’s Pride because you’d seen the people I was trying to find. You’d seen Emerald Ferring and August Veriden.”

She sucked on the swab, her eyes closed. “Em’ral’. Show-off.”

I kept my fingers around her hand, pressed lightly, didn’t speak.

“People at missile, muns, muns. Em’ral’ comes July Fourth, picture in papers.”

Months and months, I finally translated. “Were you there for months and months?”

Her slack mouth contorted in a frown. “No, Daddy shit fit. Always wrong. Get out bed, wrong. Wrong clothes. Fat, stupid. Matt, darling dear. Dad super mad, stupid boy, what he doing?”

“Matt didn’t camp at the silo, did he?” I said, voice just loud enough to carry over the machines. “He went out to visit Jenny Perec. And the baby.”

“Jenny, baby, try keep Matt. No good. She died. I saw her on the cartafalque.”

The effort to speak wore her out, and she drifted off. Cartafalque? I supposed she meant catafalque, but it was an odd image.

I sat for a time, resisting the urge to pull out my computer and answer e-mails or to look up. The hardest thing in the world, just to sit. One of the nurses came in several times to check on Sonia, but she didn’t try to make me leave.

After about fifteen minutes, Sonia opened her eyes again. “Doctor?”