It contains, for each of thirty-one years: the opening balance, every receipt, every disbursement with a date and a payee, the closing balance, and the investment positions.

And what an accounting does — this is why it is the only weapon in this whole story — is that it makes a pattern visible by putting it on consecutive lines.

Two thousand four hundred dollars on the first of January 2007.

Two thousand four hundred dollars on the first of February 2007.

Two thousand four hundred dollars on the first of March 2007.

Page after page after page, for two hundred and twenty-two months, in a column, in the same four coded words.