“Case 4238B,” I said.

There were three seconds of flat silence on the line.

“Meet me by my car behind the library in twenty minutes,” Daniel said.

“Bring every sheet in that envelope.”

I left Knox in the warm kitchen and drove the three miles into downtown Portsmouth.

The damp salt breeze off the Elizabeth River carried the smell of creosote and river mud across High Street.

Daniel was leaning against the rear bumper of his dark blue sedan in the municipal lot.