He looks up. I’m not sure, but I think he rolls his eyes. It’s the standard Here she is again offensive, his usual disinterested, condescending approach to me. Well, this time Blumenthal picked the wrong woman to condescend to.

Shouting, I say, “I am outraged.”

Yes, I know. That’s not what I’d planned on saying. It’s a far cry from “I am sick and tired of this bullshit.” But that is what came out of my mouth.

“Yes, I can see that you’re outraged,” Blumenthal says with a dry, sarcastic tone.

“When are we going to see some action from you and your people on this horrendous situation?” It seems like everyone else in the room has stopped to look at us. An uncomfortable silence allows our verbal exchange to really ring out.

“When? When? When? What do you think we’re working on? Don’t try to bully me, Ms. Ryuan.”

“I’m not the bullying type,” I say loudly but more controlled now.

For the first time he displays a bit of emotion. “Are you crazy?” Then he throws his head back and guffaws.

“Listen,” I say. “Since you and your team don’t seem to be taking any action, I’m doing something.”

This time I’m sure Blumenthal is really rolling his eyes. As curious as his group might be, they’re slowly getting back to work.

I reach into the pocket of my slacks and pull out three photographs—screenshots from the surveillance recordings Troy and I had been watching.

Blumenthal takes the pictures and does nothing more than glance at them. He then shuffles them and looks at them briefly again. Then he lays them out side by side on his desktop.

“Okay,” he says. “These seem to be an unidentifiable nurse with a fairly large butt walking down a hallway, most likely a hallway in this hospital.”

I’d like to slug him in the mouth. I want to say, “Congratulations, Sherlock,” but instead I decide to seize the moment and use it. I explain the intrigue of the pictures. “These screenshots were taken from a security video in this hospital on the day Katra Kovac was attacked and mutilated, the day she had her forced C-section. Plus—”

Blumenthal interrupts. “Plus,” he says, “the nurse is wearing very high high-heeled shoes, a very unusual choice of shoe for a nurse.”

“Go to the head of the class,” I say.

Then a tiny bit of a smile from Blumenthal: “I can’t believe anybody uses that expression anymore: ‘Go to the head of the class.’”

A pause. He gathers up the photos. “Where’d you get these?” he asks.

“I told you: from an internal security surveillance video.”

“How’d you get the video?” he asks.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“You are certainly an encyclopedia of antique sayings.” He tries to hand the three photos back to me.