The uniform, a man in his thirties, had a shaven head and a grim face—not too surprising, considering the circumstances. He said exactly one thing to me on our drive. “As far as we’re concerned, we found her during our search,” he said, and he gave me a look that was supposed to make me quake in my boots. It was easy to nod in agreement. I must have looked cowed, because he didn’t speak after that.

I made a clumsy job of getting out of the car because of the files. He must have wondered if I was physically disabled in some way, but it didn’t soften his attitude any. With my arms wrapped across my middle I strode into the hotel, blessing the automatic doors that allowed me to keep my hands in place, my contraband secure, as I made my way to the elevator.

My hands were cold, and I had a hard time fishing out my plastic key card and putting it in the lock the right way, but the door opened and I almost leaped into the room.

“What happened?” Tolliver called instantly, and I hurried into the bedroom. The maid had been in, and the bed had been made; he was in clean pajamas and lying on top of the bedspread, with the blanket from the foldout couch spread over him. The curtains were open on the dismal gray day. It had begun raining while I was in the elevator. That would complicate things at the cemetery. Raindrops were sliding down the window glass. I went up to the bed, leaned over it, and pulled the bottom of Rudy Flemmons’s old jacket open. The files landed on the bedspread with a thud.

“What have you done?” Tolliver asked, not in an accusatory way, but more as if he was simply interested. He clicked off the television and reached out for the bundle, but I was there ahead of him. I pulled off the rubber band, putting it aside for future use, and I handed him the top file, the one labeled Lizzie Joyce.

“So she was there,” he said. “Dammit, she loved her little girl. This is getting worse and worse. Did it take long to find her?”

“Ten minutes,” I said. “A patrolman brought me back.”

“You stole the files?”

“Yeah. Out of her trunk.”

“How likely are they to come looking?”

“Don’t know how hard they’d looked before everyone scrambled to see if she could be revived. Maybe they’d already taken pictures.” I shrugged. I couldn’t undo it now.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“We’re trying to find out which one of these people is most likely to be the one who shot you.”

“Then you have my undivided attention,” he said.

I took off my wet, muddy boots, climbed up on the bed with him, and started in on Kate’s file while he tackled Lizzie’s.