LaPorte clasped her hands on the desk and looked at me earnestly. “I know his cousin and her friend, the little hockey player—”

“Bernadine Fouchard,” I supplied.

“I know they think I gave the police his name because he’s black, but honestly, three of our other trainers are black, one of them from Kenya. We have seventy-eight people working here, everything from janitors to trainers to PTs and massage therapists, and seven people on the management team, including me. August is the only one we can’t locate. I don’t want to finger him, but it does look suspicious.”

“How long has it been since you last saw him?” I asked.

She made a face. “This morning I had to check that on my computer, but between talking to the police and to corporate, I know all this by heart. He left ten days ago, said he wanted personal time for a private project. That’s all any of us here know.”

I digested that: if he wanted to break in and steal the gym’s drugs, he’d waited an awfully long time. “You have a doctor on staff, right?”

“Oh—you’re thinking of the medical-supplies closet. We have two doctors who oversee any injury treatments that our PTs or exercise trainers do, but they’re not employees.”

I asked to see the medical closet. She got up readily—I’d saved her from assault, she wanted to help. As she opened her door, she even managed to joke that she wished she had a disguise.

A few people tried to stop her on our way down the hall, but she told them I was a detective, that she needed to show me part of the crime scene.

The door to the medical office was open, but the entrance was crisscrossed with more crime-scene tape, this time intact. I ducked underneath to inspect the drugs cabinet.

“Should you be doing that?” LaPorte glanced around the hall.

“I’m not going to touch anything,” I assured her.

The room held a desk and a couple of exam tables. All the drawers—in the desk, under the tables, and in cabinets along the walls—were open. Some had been dumped on the floor with a rough hand, scattering latex gloves, swabs, test tubes across the room. I tiptoed through the detritus to the supply closet at the back, which also stood open. I squatted to shine my flashlight on the lock. It hadn’t been forced, but whether someone had a key or was good with picks, I couldn’t tell.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves had held everything from support tapes to plastic boxes of medicines. I shone my flash on the labels—over-the-counter painkillers along with an eye-popping collection of controlled substances. The rolls of stretchy tape had been unwound, leaving elastic coiled over the lips of shelves onto the floor like a nest of flesh-colored vipers.

I rejoined LaPorte in the hall.