It had been convenient, I reflected, as I crossed the lobby, for my own purposes, that the bartender was such a surly, silent type. And yet wasn’t it surprising, I thought, that in an establishment so characterized by its professionalism, such a person had found employment? I skirted the front desk, where I saw that the shards of vase had been swept neatly into a dustpan and looked now as though they were patiently waiting for someone to take them away.

The briefcase was empty. I switched the light on in the car, incredulous, but it was as empty as if I’d just purchased it from a shop. And not just this, but the lining was pristine, soft and dry. It could not be the same briefcase, I thought, as the one I’d discovered on my first visit to the Old Mission Hotel, beneath the desk in the guest lecturer’s hotel room, because not even the most virtuosic of dry cleaners could have removed that mysterious thick liquid from the delicate material without leaving a stain. (Of course, I told my former self irritably, that liquid could not have been blood—that had been very melodramatic of me.)

Two briefcases, I thought, switching off the light in the car. Two identical briefcases. It was undoubtedly all very strange. Why would the guest lecturer be so eager for me to have an empty briefcase? Why had she called herself my representative and waited for me at the hotel bar, but then disappeared before we’d had a chance to exchange even a single word? And of all the things one could leave at a hotel, a briefcase seemed to fall into the category of vital things, things one would be unlikely to forget.

I shut the briefcase, closed the buckles, and laid it gently on its side in the passenger seat, as if I were putting it to bed. I had in mind a moment of relaxation; I let a breath escape me. It had been a very long day—it was hard to believe that only that morning I’d been interrupted by Alex Foss in the break room. It seemed much longer ago.

I looked out at the sky, where dusk was edging into night. And that was when I saw that something was stuck under my windshield wiper, obscuring the view. I’d been in such a hurry to open the briefcase that I hadn’t noticed.