As I started to walk out of the building, I heard the faint tapping of an electric typewriter coming from behind the door to Medical.

Turning back around, I pulled out my keys and opened the door.

Standing next to the storage room where the typewriter was, Nurse Anderson jumped when I opened the door. The door to the storage room was parted slightly, and she moved in front of it.

“Chaplain,” she said as the typing stopped. “How are you?”

“Who’s in there?” I asked.

She looked puzzled. “Where do you—”

I pushed past her and opened the door.

Inside, Allen Jones was stuffing a sheet of typing paper into his pants pocket. I reached out and ripped it from his grip, tearing the corner as I did.

One glance let me know it was another letter warning and threatening me. I looked at Jones.

He was looking down at the floor, his weary shoulders slumped forward, his head downcast. “I’s just trying to protect her,” he mumbled.

Nurse Anderson appeared behind me. “What’s this all about? What is that?”

“Another piece of the puzzle,” I said, and walked out of the room.

“Chaplain, wait,” she called after me. “You don’t understand. I was only—”

39

That night, alone and lonely, I focused the full weight of my attention on the case, the crimes, the murders.

I was sore and aching, but thought better when I moved around, so paced up and down the length of my trailer as I went over everything.

Something was bothering me, needling a small spot of my subconscious with the irritation at the frustrating edge of my memory like a name once known but now forgotten.

Before finally giving in to pacing and thinking, I had tried to do many things when I came home after work—among them, watching the local news, reading, cooking, anything—but nothing worked but bumping around my trailer.

As I paced through the tight quarters I was temporarily calling home, I occasionally careened off the thin walls and the cheap furniture, the pain further focusing my thoughts and attention.

As I walked and thought and ricocheted around my rooms, I wondered how Molly’s death figured into the others. Skipper most likely killed her in order to keep her quiet. She was the only one who could link him to all of the crimes he was involved in, and she had nothing to lose by telling all. Nothing to lose, that was, except her life.

The thought at the edge of my consciousness slowly drifted in. I saw the stack of videotapes, images of Maddox, Johnson, and Thomas flickering on the screen.

What was it? What had I missed when I previewed the tapes?

I walked over and pulled the tapes out of the linen closet. I placed them on the floor in front of the TV stand and pulled the chair over in front of the TV.