If I hadn’t been fed up to the gills with Todd, Dick, Murray, and even Freeman, I would have shut the windows and gone home. It was ludicrous to think anything of value, let alone of interest, might be in that landfill. But I needed something, a crowbar to pry Todd Pichea loose from Mrs. Frizell, and I was out of ideas. All I wanted was some kind of document that would give me, if not a crowbar, at least a wedge.

As I surveyed the horrors in front of me I couldn’t help wondering how much of my determination was due to concern for Mrs. Frizell, and how much was due to my own feelings of humiliation. I’m a sore loser and so far Todd—and Dick—had beaten me in every encounter.

“You’re not driven by revenge—you fight for truth, justice, and the American Way,” I grinned to myself.

Presumably Mrs. Frizell had filed her papers on the LIFO system—last in, first out. The trick would be to remove the top layer—from the book shelves as well as the writing shelf—without disturbing the Paleozoic regions underneath.

Despite Mrs. Hellstrom’s work the living room carpet—a threadbare gray mat that might once have been maroon—was still too thick with dust to sit on. I went upstairs and found one of the sheets she’d laundered. Spreading it on the floor, I carefully began lifting documents from the secretary and putting them on the sheet.

In the midst of the kitchen squalor I’d noticed a huge pile of paper bags—Mrs. Frizell never threw anything away. I brought those in and stood a row of them next to the secretary. I was making an arbitrary decision to examine everything dated after 1987 and to put earlier stuff in bags by year.

By five o’clock I’d filled two dozen bags. The sheet below me had turned black from the grime I’d shaken from the papers. Mrs. Frizell was on the mailing list of every animal-care products company in North America and she’d saved all their catalogs. She’d also kept her vet bills going back to 1935—the earliest year that had floated to the top so far—and newspaper clippings detailing cruelty to animals. I hadn’t found anything that concerned her son, but most of the stuff I’d handled only dated to the late seventies.