“I always think about roofies when I find comatose women outside bars,” I said dryly. “There was a college student nearby who seemed to be in the same state. She may be in your unit, too—Naomi Wissenhurst? Did Ms. Kiel have any drugs on her when they brought her in?”

I could hear Cordley tapping on a tablet. “I don’t think so. It’s not listed here, but we’ll double-check the clothes she was wearing.”

“The department will send someone over when she’s able to make a statement,” I promised, wondering if they would, hoping Cordley wouldn’t mention my name if they did.

Before I hung up, I asked about the college student. Yes, Wissenhurst was in the ICU, but she was young and healthy; she was making a quick recovery.

Peppy gave me a few sharp barks: she is not a fan of sedentary detecting. “Right you are, girl.”

We were only a few blocks from the downtown parks. I jogged over, and Peppy chased a tennis ball for half an hour, with a few breaks for treeing squirrels and running around with other dogs.

St. Raphael’s, the group home where Sonia Kiel lived, was on the west side of town. According to their website, St. Rafe’s was designed for people in recovery from addictions and people in transition from homelessness to permanent housing. The facility held twenty studio apartments, along with single rooms for sixty more people who shared kitchens and bathrooms. The photographs showed a three-story building made of native limestone. There were prairie grasses and a few deer in the background, while residents chatted in happy earnest groups around a small pond.

It wasn’t easy to find St. Rafe’s, not because of the wide prairie around it but because a strip mall had sprouted on the land. I finally discovered the entrance behind the back wall of an outsize Buy-Smart. A small sign, with the insignia of the Episcopal Church, announced that we were arriving at St. Raphael’s House and to please turn down all noisemakers. Another sign begged shoppers not to block the driveway.

As I pulled into the drive, bulldozers were churning up the land west of the home. A parking lot held a handful of cars, most in spaces reserved for staff. Mine was the only car in the visitors’ area. A woman with a small child whose hair was elaborately braided and decorated with plastic butterflies was sitting at a picnic table drinking from a Styrofoam cup while the girl bent over a handheld game, frowning in almost desperate concentration.