She gave me more of the impatience. “You don’t understand. Mark and I have known each other since the seventh grade. We fell in love in the ninth grade. That’s how long we’ve been going together. I love him and he loves me and I know him better than anyone else in all the world.” She opened the album so that I could see and flipped through the pages. She would find a page, and point, and I would nod. I don’t know how old they were in the first photograph, but they looked like babies. Here we are holding hands. Here we are laughing. Jennifer Sheridan’s breasts had only just begun to bud. Here’s Mark playing football. Here’s Jennifer presiding as student council vice-president. Jennifer Sheridan turned the pages and pointed and it was like watching a newsreel of their lives. Here we are at the homecoming game. Here we are at the prom. They grew and they matured, and they were always together. See us at the graduation? Maybe she did know him better than anyone else in the world. “I know who he is and what he likes and how he feels about everything that he feels anything about. I know him and that’s how I know that he is in trouble and he needs my help.”

“All right. Do you have any clues?”

She frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“Clues. An overheard snatch of conversation. A sub-rosa glimpse of a secret bank account. Clues. Something that I can use in ascertaining the nature of this crime.” I hadn’t used ascertaining in three or four weeks.

She said, “Are you making fun of me?”

I was getting one of those headaches that you get when your blood sugar starts to drop. She thought that she knew, but then they always think that they know. I looked at the ceiling. “No, I’m trying to make you consider what you want and why you want it, Ms. Sheridan. You claim that Mark Thurman is involved in criminal activity, but you have no direction in which to point me. That means that you’re asking me to surveil an active-duty police officer who may or may not be involved in illicit activities as you so suspect. Police officers are paranoid by nature and they move around a lot. This will be expensive.”

She looked uncertain. “How expensive?”

“Two thousand dollars. In advance.”

You could see her swallow. “Do you take Visa?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She swallowed a second time. “That seems an awful lot.”

I spread my hands.