The woman who hired her at the clinic is the woman who wrote her an antidepressant prescription eighteen months ago and then got her out.
Dr. Mehta is not a coincidence.
I make a second note in the margin.Protect her. Whatever she needs.I'll make a donation to whatever clinic charity she runs under a name she won't be able to trace. Dr. Mehta is on my list now. Dr. Mehta stays safe.
I turn the page.
Current residence: 847 Lincoln Ave, Unit 4C. Lease, twelve months, $1,150/month. Deposit posted from personal checking, account balance at signing $2,847.
Two thousand eight hundred and forty-seven dollars. That's what she had in the world when she drove away from Jason Michael Harrow.
I close the folder.
I sit back in the chair and I look at the ceiling. Every night for ten nights I’ve thought about her hands. The way she pressed the pad into my bicep with exactly the pressure it needed and not one ounce more. The way she wrote numbers on my wrist with diligence and care.
I think about the moment I held her by the jaw.
She didn't flinch. Sadie Elizabeth Jenkins, five-foot-four, ninety pounds of kindness and courage, looked at me with my blood on her hands and my fingers on her throat and told me her name in the voice you use with a frightened child. She was the calmest thing in that wreckage.
I want to know more.
I want to know everything about her.
I pick up my phone. Dmitri answers on the first ring.
"The elevator," I say.
"Done. Certified. The super's been paid for the next six months to keep an eye on things."
"Cameras?"
"Two in the lobby. One on her floor. Feed to my phone and yours."
"Groceries."
"Delivered today, like you asked. She took the bag inside and hasn’t left her apartment since."
It was her first shift at her new job today. "The clinic?" I ask.
"She's walking it. Fourteen blocks each way. Routes consistent. Leaves at seven-fifteen, home by six-forty."
She walked there and back. It’s a reasonable expectation that she would be tired after a ten-hour shift.
I close the folder on my desk and slide it into the drawer before standing up and walking to the window. I look out at the east lawn, and think about a blond woman fourteen miles from here.
I think about the blueberries.
I close my eyes.
"Dmitri, get me an appointment in that clinic tomorrow. A real one. Something Dr. Mehta wouldn't turn away, but could be handled by an MA."
Dmitri is very quiet while he considers what I’ve just said and whether he’s allowed to say what he’s thinking. He's been with me long enough to know the answer is almost always no.
"I'll set it up," he says with a tightness that tells me he doesn’t like where this is going.
I hang up.
