The lock had been replaced, but the room was still musty with my suspicions. It wouldn’t have surprised me if Kate Vare had broken in. But, no, that wasn’t her style. So who? The tattooed man? Dana Earley, perhaps? She certainly knew where my office was located. So much had happened since the break-in that it seemed like ancient history. Aside from the low growl of traffic outside, the room was still. My Hollinger boxes and folders of research for the book looked foreign and unkempt. Somewhere, real historians were working. Just a few years ago, one found a trove of letters written by St. Augustine, launching a hundred academic conferences and a shelf of new books. Me? In my desk, I had a fake letter confessing to a murder that never happened. Washington’s Crossing was still on the desk top. I started reading it for distraction, but my mind heard the ghosts of the old jail on the top floor. I put on my headphones, put a Sinatra CD in the player, and put my feet on the desk. I imagined Lindsey as a teenage mother, Robin succumbing to drugs and the street, and their lives of chaos.
