Outside the observation room, the station’s quiet. Truman’s office door is shut. Who knows whether that means he’s gone for lunch or is still in there making secret phone calls. Oliver’s chair is tucked neatly under his desk, his papers stacked and organized; even his wastebasket is empty. I make sure to give the table edge a good bump on my way past and watch his folders shift and pens roll out of place.

My computer glows serenely, giving no indication that it may hold the key to this whole mess. At the top of my inbox is Dara’s email, “faster than expected—you’re welcome” in the subject line and no note, just a very large attachment.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I say when I open it. And then turn to make sure Truman’s door really is shut. I hit Print and march over to the break-in-case-of-emergency coffee machine in the corner. There’s half a pot left, and it’s cold and overcooked, but I’m too twitchy with excitement to brew a new one. This is it, I think. Whatever they’re hiding. Tripp. Michael. Katie. It has to be here.

I think of Jay’s laptop and Michael’s bullshit “I found it” line and shake my head. If there was nothing to hide, why would they take Jay’s computer?

But now we have Jay’s phone records and the last three months’ worth of texts. As an entire tree prints off the old gray printer, I imagine a sprawling concrete building somewhere in the Nevada desert with a whole blue-lit server devoted to Jay’s cloud history. Whatever we need, let’s hope it happened recently and not last year. Otherwise this is going to be a very long day.

Coffee and pages of text history in hand, I return to my desk. We should have interns for this, but budget cuts mean we do the grunt work, too. I rub my eyes and grab a ruler to force myself to go through the messages methodically and not skim ahead.

Like Teddy said, there’s an uptick in texts beginning the middle of August, which must correspond to the start of classes.

Jay: Spring beach party was killer. Def do again.

Tripp: Def. Let’s talk at chap meeting. Mike being weird about $$.

Jay: big surprise.