I reminded her that we’d been speaking about Emerald Ferring, that I was in from Chicago looking for Ferring.

Albritten tried to struggle upright. I pressed the buttons on the bed, but a nurse who’d been hovering outside the cubicle came in.

“No disturbance for you, Ms. Albritten.”

“One thing,” Albritten said through narcotic-thickened lips. “What I say ’bout Em’ral’?”

“That she and Lucinda had moved out to Doris McKinnon’s farm east of town.”

“I say ’bout McKi . . . Kin?”

“No more,” the nurse said, taking me by the arm.

“Need know,” Albritten insisted.

“You said she was a white woman who rented to black students. You said you hadn’t seen her for years. And then you collapsed.”

Albritten relaxed into the bed and shut her eyes. “S’right. Not see. Long time.”

The nurse nodded significantly toward the exit. I bent to assure Albritten that her son would be arriving soon, and a corner of her mouth twitched into a smile.

Before leaving the hospital, I made my way to the intensive-care unit. I identified myself to the charge nurse as the detective responsible for getting Sonia Kiel and Naomi Wissenhurst to the ER. Had that really been early this morning? I felt as though I’d already spent months in Kansas, as if finding Sonia belonged to an earlier age, when I was jumping double Dutch with my friends, not jumping through flaming hoops for my clients.

“Oh, yes, Detective. We were able to release Naomi. She needs medical attention but can get that at home. She’s taking a leave of absence from the university for the rest of the term. Sonia is still unresponsive, but of course she was in worse shape before she took the drugs, and at least she’s able to breathe on her own. The next twenty-four hours will be important.”

“Have Sonia’s parents been here?” I asked, curious. “Or anyone from St. Rafe’s?”

“A man phoned around noon. I think he said he was one of her brothers, but you’re the first person who’s actually come here. Would you like to see her?”

She led me into the back, where Sonia seemed like an appendage to the computers surrounding her. Her breathing was slow and shuddery. At the end of each exhalation, there was a dreadful pause, as if she weren’t sure she should start up again.

They’d bathed her, of course, and put her into a clean gown. Her face was slack, so it wasn’t easy to imagine what she would look like if she were awake and animated. She had her father’s square face and dark coloring, not her mother’s pale skin. Her wiry black curls were also like her father’s, at least in the pictures of him as a young man that I’d seen online.