She could be my Girl Monday through Sunday. That would be just fine with me.

“I’ve been thinking more about the notes I’ve been receiving. I really think they’re about you.”

“Could be.”

“It’s obvious how much I care about you, and the letters are coming from within the institution. Somebody who has seen us together . . .”

She nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“Don’t go anywhere alone. Let me or Merrill or someone you trust be with you. Just take extra precautions for the next little while.”

“I can do that.”

“Thanks.”

We drank a little more.

“I need to look in some of the rooms down here, and I need someone to cause a distraction and keep lookout.”

“Why don’t you create a distraction and keep lookout while I look for clues?” “I don’t think the officer in the infirmary would find me as distracting as you.”

She smiled. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

While she plied her charms to distract the infirmary officer, I went to take a look in the caustic storage closets for the cleaning chemicals found on Johnson’s uniform.

Both were locked.

I reached in my back pocket, whipped out my wallet, and withdrew the Visa card. Sliding it down the side of the doorjamb, the door opened easily. Too easily. Someone had done this before—many times.

The first closet had a single metal shelf that looked like it should have been in someone’s garage. It was filled with boxes of garbage bags, paper towels, toilet paper, and rubber gloves. The bottom shelf was filled with white plastic bottles of PRIDE chemicals: wax, stripper, floor cleaner, glass cleaner, and two cans of the spray that killed HIV and hepatitis on contact.

Getting down on my hands and knees, I took a closer look, resisting the urge to touch anything. When I moved to the side of the shelf, I saw it. On the back side there was a bottle of cleaner leaking, the liquid standing around the base of the bottle, the shelf, and the floor.

Walking back up toward the front, I saw Allen Jones, the elderly inmate orderly mopping the floor.

He was so quiet, his moves so understated, I wouldn’t have heard him if he hadn’t been whistling—a soft, airy whistle version of “As Time Goes By.”

When I arrived at the infirmary control room, Anna was still beguiling Ron Straub.

“How’s it going?” I said.

“Fine,” he said, not bothering to mask his irritation at the intrusion.

“Do you have an inmate in the infirmary named Anthony Thomas?”

“Jones,” he yelled to the orderly out in the hallway, “wasn’t Thomas put in Confinement Tuesday morning?”

“Yes, sir,” Jones said.

“He’s in Confinement,” Straub said.

“Thank you. I’ll see him over there.”

When I began to leave, he smiled.

When Anna joined me, he stopped.