Page 40 of Soft Erasure

“Your name.”

“Mateo.”

“Who do you work for.”

“Lawn and Stem Landscaping. The contract’s with Crownhill. Crownhill pays the company. The company pays me. Two layers.” He didn’t look up. “It matters.”

“Why.”

“Because the family doesn’t sign my checks. The company does. There’s a name on my checks that isn’t on theirs.”

For the first time he looked at the door’s edge. Not at my face. At my wrist.

“Three’s good for now,” he said. “Third floor, two over from yours. The window with the small ficus. Don’t go to it. Don’t look up at it from the courtyard. Just know it’s there. I.C. will tell you when.”

“You mean Dr. Callow.”

“I do.”

“Are you part of —”

“I’m a man who waters orchids. The rest is between you and her.”

He turned and went down the hall, past the elevator, to the service stairs. The door closed without a sound.

I closed my door, locked the deadbolt, checked the chain.

The packet was warm from my hand. I set it on the counter and opened it.

Inside, a single piece of folded paper, the size of a business card. The folds were precise. The paper was cream. The handwriting was the same as the card from the discharge room.

T minus 9.

Caldren was at Valley Suites, Room 1426, nine days before the lake. The folio is yours by Friday.

I.C.

Nine days. I already knew the shape of it. The pouch had told me he had been at the lake before the lake, that the ring had been cleaned in some room before he came down the gravel. The note only added the number on the door and the day the folio came due.

And the note itself. Folded down a watering can. Set on the counter on the morning I would need it. The receipt, the slip, the clip, the note, each one dropped where my hand would fall. Too clean to be leavings.

The morning before, I hadn’t let myself call it planted. I had more than a video and a song now. I called it.

I sat. The band had not moved. Steady, same reading as yesterday, on a scale with no column for what was actually running under it. I knew the difference now, even if the band never would. I should have wanted him gone. I wanted him at the door. I didn’t let the second thing move my hands.

I didn’t remember the midwife who’d said the sentence to me once, only the sentence itself, surfacing again same as yesterday. I was starting to think I knew the room too.

Two soft taps. The second knock this morning.

The door opened on its own. The deadbolt slid back. The chain caught. The lock had been turned by a key the building had never asked me to hand over.

Through the gap, two officers, not the ones from before. Behind them, Matthew. A white shirt. The cuff. The green dot on the cuff. He had been wearing the shirt. It had come back from the press.

He held up a hanger. The shirt on it had a claim ticket pinned to the cuff. The ticket was from Valley Suites.

VALLEY SUITES, CUSTOM PRESS, Rm 1426

A green smear sat at the corner of the ticket, where his thumb had been.