“Well it isn’t finished. And it‘s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Bousquet nodded. “That’s an accurate description of many phenomena and their relation to time. Has there been trouble?”

“More than a little.”

He spoke to Nazari. “Police matter?”

“Not officially.”

“That’s not good.”

She agreed, “No it’s really bad. But as Tom said, there has been trouble.”

Bousquet pursed his lips. “And there will be more before this is finished. What’s it about, in a nutshell?”

Nazari spoke, “Migrants, most likely females.”

Father Bousquet looked sad. “The most vulnerable suffer. We must do all that we can do help them.”

She held out her phone with the list of names. “Do you recognize any of these names?”

He took the phone from her and looked at it for a while, reading the names out loud in a soft voice.

“Layan Baqir, Yamina al-Zahawi, Safiya Raena Alshaibi, Nejla Ashkouri, Jamila Alasadi, Maryam Al-Ali, Khawlah al-Baghdadi. Beautiful names.” He looked up below those massive eyebrows. “Safiya Alshaibi, that rings some kind of a bell.” He kicked the wheeled office chair over to the desk, muttering as he rolled. “Problem is the names all sound the same to me still.”

He unleashed a flurry of keyboard stabs, like a man who has had a lot of practice in two-fingered typing. “I’m not very good with this computer stuff, but Miriam showed me how to search my emails.”

Nazari said, “Do you want me to help you?”

Father Bousquet waved her away. He triggered another machine gun clatter of key clicks. Bousquet looked into the screen. “I don’t think it’s right no. I’ve got Safiya Khaled, Safiya Rahal. No other Safiya.” He pushed back in his chair and thought for a moment. “Maybe the alphabetical spellings are wrong. The priest launched himself back to the keyboard and typed furiously, biting his lip. I stood up and looked over his shoulder. He was trying different combinations. S’fiya, Sufiya, Safeya. Nothing was working.

I said, “You may want to try that with all the names. Must be multiple spellings of each in the Latin alphabet.”

He nodded, looking at the monitor as if staring at it would force the machine to produce something. “That’s a good point. Problem is, I’ve had Miriam setting up the system. We might need her help if we are to really do this right.”

Bousquet turned back to the monitor and resumed his assault on the keyboard. For a while, the clacking of his fingers on the keys was the only sound in the room. Nazari and I just stayed still, watching. I don’t know about her, but I was just hoping that he’d squeeze some kind of a breakthrough out of that machine. But it wasn’t to be. The dinner bell rang from downstairs, and Bousquet froze in his chair. He swiveled around. “Can you leave me the list?”