“Someone’s here, though,” I said. I already knew the bottom line on this search. “They’re going to try to say I knew this somehow,” I muttered, “and they’ll try to keep me here.”

The body wasn’t in the shed itself, or right behind it. The ground behind the shed sloped down to a drainage ditch, where earth and grass thinly covered a culvert. Victoria was in the culvert; her body had been stuffed up inside, and it wasn’t visible at all. But I could tell she was there, and I could tell she’d been shot and had bled out.

Rudy looked down uncomprehendingly, and I pointed to the mouth of the culvert. There was nothing for me to say. He scrambled down the slope and fell to his knees. He bent over and peered inside.

And he yelled.

“Here! Here!” he bellowed, and they all came running, every law enforcement person on the scene, including the guy who’d been examining the vehicle. Rudy was thinking, I suppose, that there was a chance she was still alive, but he was just dreaming or staving off the truth. I can’t find the living.

I got out of their way, and went back to Victoria’s abandoned car.

The trunk was standing open. I found myself staring down into it, trying to look uninterested. There were file folders, lots of loose ones and some in a bundle bound together with a huge rubber band. The top one was labeled Lizzie Joyce, and before I could think about what I was doing I picked up the bundle and tossed it in Rudy’s car. There were still plenty of file folders left, I told myself—and I also told myself that we owed it to ourselves to find out about our enemies.

I saw afterward that this had been the wrong action to take, incidentally. I should have left things to the police. But at the moment, it seemed a natural, even clever, tactic. That’s all I can say in my own defense. One of these people was shooting at us; I had to find out which one was the most likely.

I got into Rudy’s car. He had an old jacket tossed into the backseat, and I pulled it into the front and bundled it around me as though I were cold, which wasn’t far from the truth. After a few minutes, a uniformed guy came up and said he was supposed to take me back to the hotel. I had put on the jacket and zipped it up with the files inside, by that time. I got out of Rudy’s car and climbed into the squad car.