And underneath it, in a box headed WITNESS, printed and signed:

Oscar A.

Ramirez.

And clipped to the inside of the folder with a bulldog clip was a card.

It is an appointment card from a title service in Peoria.

Monday the sixteenth of September, two fifteen in the afternoon.

My daughter was discharged at two o’clock on the Saturday.

Patricia had booked that appointment on the third of September, nine days before anybody fell over, for a date she had calculated I would still be in Albuquerque.