I stared at it. Dr. Roque was the pathologist who’d died—was it two days ago?—of flu. Why was an envelope with his name in my— And then I remembered: I’d removed it from Doris McKinnon’s hand yesterday afternoon. An oddity I definitely was not going to mention to the three musketeers.

“When do you want these back, honey?”

The “honey” was laced with impatience; it was the third time the woman at the counter had asked me that question. In the hope things might wind up quickly enough for me to leave Lawrence soon, I chose second-day service.

Back in my car, I continued to look at the envelope fragment while I ate my sandwich. Dr. Roque had written to Doris McKinnon. Why? That was easy: because she’d written him. Maybe her last cow had died and she wanted an autopsy, but I was betting she had soil samples she wanted tested.

I started to pull out my computer to look up Dr. Roque but remembered in time that nothing I did online was private right now, not until the Cheviot lab could confidently say they’d removed all the spyware from my devices. I drove over to the library to use their computers.

Francis Roque, M.D., had been the chief medical examiner at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in Topeka, but he also taught pathology at the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Kansas City. He’d lived in Kansas City, close to the medical school, not in Topeka where the KBI offices were. A widower, he lived alone, his two grown children in Texas and Florida.

He’d been twenty years younger than Doris McKinnon, so they hadn’t gone to school together, but she must have had some kind of personal connection to him: she was worried about what was happening on her land; she wouldn’t have just pulled a name out of a phone book.

After thinking over my meager contacts in the area, I called Barbara Rutledge again, using one of my burner phones. Before I could ask about Roque, Rutledge thanked me for letting her know about Nell Albritten’s collapse: it was a help to building bridges in Lawrence for Barbara and other Riverdale members to bring her casseroles as they would if someone at Riverside took sick.

Ms. Albritten had seemed in good spirits when Barbara visited. Albritten’s son and daughter-in-law were staying with her until she was fully recovered. Her pastor, Reverend Clements, came regularly to sit with her, as did other members of the St. Silas family, along with Reverend Weld, Riverside’s chief pastor.

I felt guilty—I’d forgotten Albritten in the rush of other activities, like going to jail—but when Rutledge came to a halt, I asked her if she knew of any connection between Doris McKinnon and Dr. Roque.