“Hardly. It’s a standard form. I just scribbled in a few of the boxes.”

“That’s not entirely legal, is it?”

He smiled. “Another bridge burned.”

“They’re going down fast.”

She took a last look back at State. She would never be allowed inside this building again. She was unemployed, she was free, and she was so frightened she felt like laughing out loud.

*   *   *

They headed toward the motel where Ariel Mather was staying. Orrin slept in the backseat, his body lax against the seat belt, his hospital gown spindled around his thighs. “We’ll need to get him some fresh clothes,” Sandra said.

“I believe Ariel brought him some clothes from Raleigh, just in case.”

A car passed by, speeding in the opposite direction—Sandra thought it might be Congreve’s car, though she couldn’t be sure. She spent a few moments relishing the thought of Congreve getting the news from Jack Geddes or Nurse Meredith.

“I brought his notebooks, too,” Bose said. “Orrin’ll be glad to have them back.”

“I read what you sent me. But there’s more, right?”

“A little more.”

“You still want my opinion of it?”

He gave her a curious look. “Anything you have to say, I’m interested.”

“At one point you thought the document constituted some kind of evidence.”

“Yeah. You may not have read the relevant parts yet.”

“But that’s not the real question, is it? The real question is, how much of it is true?”

He laughed, but she saw his grip tighten on the steering wheel. “Come on, Sandra. True?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You really think Orrin’s channeling spirits from the year twelve thousand?”

“I willing to bet you’ve given it some thought. There are corroborative details in there, stuff you could have tracked down. Stuff even I could track down. Allison Pearl, for instance. Born and grew up in Champlain, New York. A truly incurious man might not wonder whether such a person really exists. But you’re not an incurious man.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“As it happens, there’s no Allison Pearl in the Champlain directory.”

He wasn’t smiling anymore. “You checked?”

“Only a handful of Pearls altogether. No Allison, but there’s a couple with a daughter by that name.”

“You called them?”

“Yes.”

“Did they tell you I called them too?”

“Yes, but thank you for mentioning it.”

“Because Orrin, or whoever wrote that document, might not have picked those names out of the air—Turk Findley, Allison Pearl. I asked Mrs. Pearl whether she knows Orrin or Ariel Mather or anyone fitting their description.”

A question that hadn’t occurred to Sandra. “Does she?”