I left the letters on my desk and took a walk around the room. Then I sat down in my swivel chair, opened my pencil drawer, and pulled out a pack of index cards. It took me fifteen minutes to jot down the facts as I remembered them, one piece of information per card until I'd exhausted my store. I laid them out on my desk, rearranging the order, shuffling them into columns, looking for connections I hadn't seen before. It didn't amount to much from my perspective, but there'd soon be more information available. The autopsy was done by now and the medical examiner would have a concrete opinion about the manner and cause of death. We were all assuming Guy died from blunt-force trauma to the head, but there might be some underlying pathology. Maybe he'd died of a heart attack, maybe he'd been poisoned, expiring in his sleep before the first blow was struck. I couldn't help but wonder what difference any of it made. Guy would be laid to rest, his body probably taken back to Marcella for burial up there. The various forensic experts would go on sifting through the evidence until the case was resolved. Eventually, the story would be told in its entirety and maybe I'd understand then how everything fit. In the meantime, I was left with all the unrelated fragments and a sick feeling in my stomach.

I took the letters down the hall, the one still encased in its plastic sleeve. At the Xerox machine, I made a copy of each so that I now had two sets. The copies I placed in my briefcase, along with the notes I'd made on my index cards. The originals I locked away carefully in my bottom drawer. When the phone rang, I let the answering machine pick up. "Kinsey, this is Christie Malek. Listen, the police were just here with a warrant for Jack's arrest –"

I snatched up the receiver. "Christie? It's me. What's going on?"

"Oh, Kinsey. Thank God. I'm sorry to bother you, but I didn't know what else to do. I put a call through to Donovan, but he's out in the field. I don't know where Bennet's gone. He left about nine, without a word to anyone. Do you know the name of a good bail bondsman? Jack told me to get him one, but I've looked in the Yellow Pages and can't tell one from the other."

"Are you sure he's in custody? They didn't just take him to the station for another interview?"

"Kinsey, they put him in handcuffs. They read him his rights and took him off in the back of an unmarked car. We were both in shock. I don't have any money – less than a hundred bucks in cash – but if I knew who to call..."

"Forget about the bondsman. If Jack's being charged with murder, it's a no-bail warrant. What he needs is a good criminal attorney and the sooner the better."