She turned to that first entry.Two lines.‘Patient in bay six.No records.Asked Janet.Told to leave it.’
She turned to the last entry.Three weeks ago.The girl in bay four.The one who had squeezed her hand twice.The four numbers.The entry that had started everything — the threatening text, the bakery, Graham, the corridor, the forty-seven photographs now sitting on a federal server.
She closed the notebook and held it against her chest.
Graham came through the screen door and sat in the other chair.He didn’t speak.He’d learned — somewhere in the past three weeks — that Maren processed things by holding them, the way she was holding the notebook now, the way she’d held the water glass on the floor yesterday and the burner phone every night.Objects grounded her.He waited.
“I’m going to give it to Caleb,” she said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to.I want to.The photographs are the evidence.This —” She looked down at the notebook.“This is what I did with eighteen months of not being able to sleep.It belongs to the case now.”
“Caleb will take care of it.”
“I know he will.”She ran her thumb along the spiral binding.“But I want it back.When the trial is over and the evidence is processed and every page has been scanned into whatever federal database they use.I want the original back.”
“I’ll make sure of it.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
She set the notebook on the arm of the chair.The Bird of Paradise stood in its pot near the railing, lighter now without the weight it had been carrying.
* * *
Caleb called at eleven-forty.
Graham was in the bathroom replacing the cracked shower-curtain rings, three of which had been cracked since she’d moved in and which he’d apparently added to the mental list of things in her house that needed fixing.She heard him answer, heard the shift in his voice, and walked to the doorway.
He looked at her.“Creighton was arrested twenty minutes ago.At her home.Federal agents.No incident.”
Maren leaned against the doorframe.She’d imagined this moment a hundred times since the first sealed transfer — the moment when someone with authority would walk up to Janet Creighton and tell her it was over.In her imagination, it had felt like triumph.
It didn’t.It felt like the morning after surgery — the part where the procedure is done and the sutures are holding, but the recovery hasn’t started yet.
“How do you feel?”Graham asked.
“I thought I’d feel more.”
“You will.It takes time.”
“Is that from experience?”
“That’s from Khost.When the extraction finally happened — when we got the people out — I didn’t feel anything for two days.The relief came later.It always comes later.”
“Sattler?”she asked.
“Same time as Creighton.Warrants served at his development office on Second Street.”
“The three nurses?”
“Two are in custody.Ani Prescott wasn’t home.”
“She called in sick twice last week.”
“Caleb’s people are looking.”
