Hayes pushed his wheelchair back with obvious effort. His small living space was not meant for a person maneuvering in a large chair. It took several attempts to get the chair turned and headed toward a side table piled high with miscellaneous clutter. Samuel dug around, both Phil and D.D. keeping their gazes fixed on his hands, prepared for any sudden movements, because wheelchair or not, something about Sam Hayes just didn’t add up.

“Got it.”

He returned, equally laboriously. D.D. had to fight the urge to rush over and shove his chair back into position herself.

Phil took a second to pull on a pair of latex gloves. First he inspected the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven manila envelope. No writing was on the outside, nor had the envelope been stamped or sealed. Just a plain envelope, looking like it’d come straight out of the box.

Next, Phil opened the flap, then slipped out half a dozen pieces of paper.

“Birth certificate,” he read out loud, for D.D.’s benefit. “In the name of Harry Day.”

She raised a brow.

“A personal letter to a customer, about some carpentry project he was working on. Three notes to his wife. And this.”

The last item was a piece of faded yellow construction paper, folded in half to form a card. On the outside, it read in a small child’s script, Daddy. Inside, a more mature handwriting had written out Happy Father’s Day. The card was decorated with red and blue crayon forming various squiggles and what might have been a cluster of stars. Inside the card, in a large scrawl, the S turned backward, the card was signed: SHANA.

A Father’s Day card. From a little girl to her daddy. From one killer to another.

“Do you have any idea what this might be worth?” D.D. exclaimed.

“Yesterday, not much,” Hayes said. “But now . . .” His voice trailed off. He seemed to realize the increased value of his cache wasn’t doing him any favors.

Ten thousand dollars was D.D.’s first guesstimate. Then again, an item this rare and personal . . . For the right collector, it could be priceless.

“You found this?” Phil pressed again.

“Swear to God.”

“And you didn’t question it? Ask your neighbors if they saw who dropped it off? Call the police to tell them you had just received items that once belonged to a murderer?”

“Talk to my neighbors? I don’t even know who they are. Before this, I worked dawn to dusk. Now I’m a shut-in, except for my twice-weekly stair crawl. Either way, I’m not neighbor-of-the-year material. In this building, we do our own thing, and everyone is happy.”

“But you must have wondered . . .”