Frannie grinned. “God, you’re really on one today. One of you guys going to ride with him?”

“I will,” Hazard said.

“No,” Somers said, a hand flat on Hazard’s chest. “You’ll just beat yourself up more. I’ll go.” He fished out his keys and handed them to Hazard. “Come on, Frannie, before I have to borrow your paddle.”

“I’ll drop the Mustang at the hospital,” Hazard said.

Somers gave a wave of acknowledgment without looking back.

As the ambulance pulled out of the lot, Hazard went first to the U-Haul. He knew he needed to pull down the gate and lock it, but instead, he stood there, studying the jumble that Darnell had already loaded. Then he left the truck and climbed the steps to Darnell’s doublewide.

Inside, the trailer had been almost completely emptied: the living room had a Beanie Baby unicorn on a shelf and a bundle of cords on the floor; those looked like they went with the TV. The kitchen had a bucket, a sponge, and a bottle of Pine Sol; Darnell had probably planned on scrubbing the place down over the next day or two. A couple of extra trash bags hung over the lip of the sink. The refrigerator, when Hazard checked it, was empty except for a box of baking soda—expired November 2009—and the freezer had a gel ice pack, the kind you might use in a lunch box.

Hazard trekked to the other end of the trailer, checking the rest of the rooms: the bathroom had a vinyl shower curtain printed with rubber ducks and a disposable bottle of hand soap; the first bedroom had a rolling rack with clothes on hangers, a lot of heavy jackets and flannel shirts; and the second bedroom had an office chair, the good kind with lumbar support, and a wireless router and a very expensive-looking laptop on the floor. Hazard could still see the impressions where a desk had stood on the carpet; he figured maybe Darnell had needed to catch up on some last-minute work.

Dropping into the chair, he examined the laptop on the outside first and noticed the sticker on the back. A barcode was printed above a serial number, and then DARNELL KIRBY printed in large letters. In Hazard’s opinion, that was a good sign that the laptop was company property; the sticker was peeling at one corner, the adhesive tacky and matted with grime. Hard to fake that kind of wear and tear. Not impossible, but not easy either.

Hazard opened the device, pressed the power button, and was greeted with a lock screen. The words Astrolabe/Welkin showed in a clear, sans serif font, and some sort of sketch—he assumed it was a very loose rendering of an astrolabe—took up the rest of the screen. When he tapped a key, a prompt came up, asking for the password for user kirbydarnell.

If this were all a fake, it was an elaborate one.

Hazard powered down the laptop, set it on the floor, and got out his phone. He searched flights between Albany and St. Louis; he found a single United flight that got in weekdays at 9:22 PM. Then he searched for Astrolabe/Welkin; news articles went back for almost five years. They did something with GPS and satellites, but the descriptions got vague after that. Still, the quantity of articles and the length of time they went back were further indicators that Darnell might have been telling the truth.