Four-seventeen in the afternoon.

He sealed it.

Then he picked up the phone and called for an ambulance.

Chapter 5 — You Came for Help

He gave the dispatcher the girls’ ages, described the stomach pain and the drowsiness, and asked for urgent medical evaluation — and he was careful, on the phone, not to name a cause he did not yet know, because a good officer does not guess out loud and a guess on a recorded line can come apart in court.

He asked for the ambulance fast, and he asked, low, for another unit at the station, and he hung up.