“Straight to nowhere.”

Daniel shifted his weight onto his back heel once more.

“Who signed off on putting secondary phone line hardware inside the Maplewood house?”

“That’s what the utility paperwork at town hall ought to tell us,” Ray said.

By half past one, Claire was sitting at the long oak table in the dispatch records room on Jefferson Street.

Investigator Ruth Cole dropped a fat gray folder of printouts onto the table, sloshing cold water from a paper cup across the corner of the blotter.

Claire mopped up the water with the sleeve of her sweater.