Page 102 of Wrong Mail

“We’ve spoken to the person at the front desk. The clerk remembers her, but not the name she asked for. We’re still waiting to speak with someone from records.”

I watch Julia take the slip of paper from the clerk and move out of frame.

“Then here.” Rodriguez taps forward. The picture jumps to another corridor, another high corner. Julia appears again, unhurried, reading the slip in her hand. “This is the last camera that catches her inside the hospital. She goes into the older wing after this. Records is down there.”

He freezes the image on her face, turned half toward a camera she doesn't know is there.

“She left the hospital later that afternoon. We know that. What we don't know yet is what she found while she was there.”

The room tips very slowly around me. I put my hand on the cold stone to keep it still.

“Why would she be looking at an old patient?”

“That's what I came to ask you.” Rodriguez turns the tablet face down. “You were close to her. Did she ever mention looking into somebody who'd been treated there?”

And then I know.

“Eleanor Langford.”

Rodriguez’s expression changes, just slightly.

“The woman who owns the house Henry Westburn was staying in.”

I remind him of what Diane told us. Eleanor had a stroke in March. She was taken to the hospital and eventually transferred to a care home. Diane said someone called her because they were suspicious about a man living in her mother's house.

I feel the pieces coming together even as I say them.

“Julia didn't trust Henry. Not after the Ericksons. She kept telling me there was something wrong with him. If she found out Eleanor had been hospitalized, she might have gone there trying to find out what happened to her.”

Rodriguez is quiet for a moment.

“You think Julia was the woman who called Diane Langford?”

“I do.”

“Did Julia ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“Did she ever mention Eleanor?”

“Not directly.” I stop. “But the day before she disappeared, she sent me a video. She wanted me to come over the next morning. She said she had something she needed to tell me.”

Rodriguez watches me.

“And you think this was it.”

“I think it could have been. Or that Chris had hurt her again.”

He nods once, but it isn't agreement. He's filing it away.

“That helps. It gives us somewhere else to look.”

“So you think this is about Henry?” I ask.

“I didn't say that.”

“But if she was looking into Eleanor because of him⁠—”