Pia reckoned she had four or five hours to search Berman’s home. The fact that her host was drunk and drugged up didn’t stop Pia from going back and checking on him twice in the hours since he’d finally succumbed. Pia had arranged Berman in a kind of a recovery position on his large couch with his head a little over the side in case he became nauseous. She was confident that to the world, he appeared to be sleeping like a baby. Pia spent ten minutes in the kitchen, drinking several glasses of water until she felt slightly more human herself. She wanted all her faculties.

Pia had no notion of what she was looking for in Berman’s house. She walked through the whole place, making a mental note of the location and function of each room. The property was on three levels, with guest rooms, a workout room, a wine cellar, and access to the garage downstairs. She had seen the whole of the first floor, but nothing of the second. The two main rooms up there could be reached by a main staircase from the living room, and by a back stair from the kitchen.

Berman’s giant master bedroom, with two huge baths, occupied most of the space. But there was another room as well, and it was the one Pia was most interested in. It was clearly a home office.

Wearing a pair of latex examination gloves she’d picked up in the ER when Paul Caldwell was off getting her Temazepam capsules, Pia sat at Berman’s desk in his chair and looked around. The table was glass and on it sat a large Mac, the latest model with retina display. To the right was a six-inch-high stack of papers; to the left, a flat-panel charger for Berman’s iPhone and Android. To the side, below the table, was a cherrywood filing cabinet that was locked. Pia swiveled around and took in the room. Unlike the rest of the house, there was a smooth finish to the walls, wood paneling that lent the room a more businesslike air than the rest of the timbered home.

There were a couple of low cabinets against one wall and Pia tried the door handles on both. Each was locked. Bookcases lined the other wall, filled with what Pia saw as a standard guy’s collection of business books, sports biographies, and thrillers, with a few coffee table books on the Rockies thrown in. She pulled a few of the books back but the wall behind was solid. There was no drawer in the glass desk, and Pia ran her hand along the flat surfaces in the room, looking for keys. Nothing.

All Pia had ready access to was the pile of papers on the desk.