Chloe looked straight into my eyes without blinking.

“We’re going to find out, but first we need the expunged civil filings from the county basement.”

By one o’clock, I was standing in the damp basement of the county records building, pulling heavy canvas binders off the bottom metal shelf.

Detective Frank Miller leaned against the gray steel cabinet, turning the pages of a dusty docket index with his thumb while the fluorescent tubes hummed in the dark corridor.

“Here it is,” Miller said, his gravelly voice echoing off the exposed water pipes.