Even Tessa absorbed in work would have responded to the racket made by this wantonness. Would the intruders have hurt Tessa? Again I wanted to run to the hall, run to look in her studio, but fear kept me locked inside.

I finally pulled my cell phone from my handbag and phoned Tessa’s home. She lived with her parents in their Gold Coast duplex. Her mother answered, the rich contralto that worked magic in courtrooms around the country vibrating the airwaves.

“Victoria. How are you? I didn’t recognize your voice.”

“No, ma’am. I’ve had a bit of a shock. I just got in from out of town and found my office vandalized. I wanted to make sure Tessa was all right.”

Mrs. Reynolds made the proper statements of alarm and concern but reassured me about Tessa. She had picked her daughter up at the studio for a cup of coffee around noon. Tessa was off for a weekend’s sailing with friends, and Mrs. Reynolds, back from a busy week in Washington, had wanted to see her alone for a few minutes.

“When the police come, have them examine her studio to make sure nothing’s wrong in there. I’ve never liked her being that close to Humboldt Park. I don’t care how big her lats are, as she keeps telling me, or how good you are in a fight, you two young women need to be in a safer part of town.”

“You’re probably right, ma’am,” I agreed, as the easiest way to end the conversation.

I leaned back on the couch and shut my eyes. Imagined lying in Lake Michigan with the sun overhead until my breath was calm enough for me to think about my situation. If this were Baladine’s work it could be an attempt to terrorize me, but if he were also looking for something what would it be? I thought through my conversations during the last week, with Frenada, with Alex. With Murray. The last name came most reluctantly to mind.

I’d told Murray about my LifeStory report on Frenada, that I had proof he was clean. But this was not Murray Ryerson’s work. It could not be. Murray was a journalist. The story and the chase, wherever the road led you, that was what mattered to him. Global couldn’t have destroyed that in him in a few weeks, he was better than that. Really, he was.

I was saying the same thing over and over in my mind, as if standing in front of the bench pleading his case. I needed to find the hard copy, if it was still there, although with the leisure to search my absence had guaranteed them, the intruders could have turned over every piece of paper in the room.