I just found your message.” “I need to talk to you,” Virgil said. “Are you at home?” “Right now, I am. I need to get cleaned up and head into work by eight,” Sullivan said. “I’ll be there in half an hour,” Virgil said. He got cleaned up in a rush, stood for an extra minute in a hot shower, storing up some warmth, dressed, and headed out. The predawn was bitterly cold, the dry air like a knife against his face; and dark, as the season rolled downhill to the winter solstice, and the days were hardly long enough to remember. Sullivan had given him simple directions, and Virgil was at the curb outside his house twenty-nine minutes after he’d gotten out of bed, street-lights twinkling down the way. Sullivan lived on the second floor of a stately white-and-teal Victorian on Landward Avenue. When Virgil arrived, the reporter was in the driveway, chipping frost off the windshield of a three-year-old Jeep Cherokee. “When did you get in?” Virgil asked, as they headed up the walk to his apartment.
