“Ask it.”

“Did she say anything? In the kitchen.”

Claire Ashford put her hand over her mouth for a second. Then she took it away.

“She said numbers,” she said. “I thought she was concussed. I thought it was — I don’t know what I thought.
“She said ten twenty-seven. She said it four or five times. Ten twenty-seven, ten twenty-seven.” Claire looked up at me, and her eyes had gone red at the edges. “And then she said *pocket.* And then she stopped talking.”

Beside me, Alan Mercer, who has held a human heart in his hands, put his face down toward the floor.

Because I knew what was in that pocket. I had seen it in a clear plastic belongings bag at 11:31 on the worst night of my life.