I called Cheviot, my forensics lab, on one of my burners. I explained my concern and asked if they could do a sweep remotely from Chicago. It wouldn’t be cheap, and they needed all my passwords and access codes. I put those into a text to them on the burner and went back to work.

The biggest file in my in-box came from Cady Perec, with the sheriff’s report on her mother’s death. The incident report was terse:

Responded to a call from John and Jim Pendleton, who’d gone down to the Wakarusa to fish. Boys had found the half-submerged Toyota, had seen the body inside, tried unsuccessfully to open the doors.

The boys had run the better part of a mile up the road to a filling station, where the manager let them use the phone. Responding deputies Kenneth Gisborne and Lucas Gerstenberg had called for a tow truck with a winch. Once the car was out of the water, they’d been able to pull the victim from the driver’s seat. They’d recognized Jennifer, or at least Gerstenberg had—he’d gone to school with her.

I scrolled through the file looking for an autopsy report but couldn’t find one. I turned to the photos, which had transmitted with surprising clarity.

The county photographer had been thorough. I looked at the skid marks, where the Toyota had gone off the road, the trail of broken bushes and crushed weeds the car created as it careered down the bank to the Wakarusa.

There were a dozen shots of the Toyota nose-down in the river. Jennifer Perec’s hair floated over the steering wheel, looking like river grasses, until the deputies opened the door and lifted her out and laid her on the verge.

Her face was swollen, with what looked like bruises around the ears and cheeks. Blows from the steering wheel? Distension from her time in the water? Or perhaps my comforting suggestion to Cady last night had been accurate and her mother had been hit with some kind of chemical or radioactive gas.

I pushed my uneaten food aside and paid the bill. The Law and Justice Center was only a couple of blocks away. I walked there and put in a request at the county information counter to look at an old file; yes, I had the file number. I copied it out of my computer and handed in the form.

While I sat waiting, Deke Everard strolled past. “Warshawski! I hear you caused quite the dustup at the hospital this morning.”

I lifted my jeans legs to stare at my ankles. “I don’t see a tracking device.”

Everard grinned. “I like to show the computer jockeys that old-fashioned gossip is quicker and more reliable than sifting through a quintillion text messages. What are you doing here?”

“Someone will tell you before you get to your office,” I assured him.