Page 19 of Wrong Mail

"Then we're both in trouble," he says. "Henry Westburn."

"Mallory Grant."

"I know."

He says it lightly and moves straight past it. I don't know why it catches on me, but it does. It goes in and lies down somewhere and waits.

"Do I detect an accent?" I say.

"New York." He glances back over his shoulder into the house. "My brother's out here. He's been building a business for years and he finally wore me down about coming in on it, so." He shrugs. "New coast. New everything."

"What's the business?"

"Security." He waves the envelope vaguely at the house, at the world. "HomeShield Security. We install cameras, alarm systems, access control, smart-home automation, the whole miserable business of making people feel safe." He smiles without much humor in it. "You can see the appeal, after what happened.”

"I can."

"And you?" he asks.

I hesitate, which is stupid, because it's the easiest question at any party in America.

"I was a journalist," I say. “Crime. Freelance."

Henry goes still.

He doesn't do anything theatrical. He just stops moving, and for a second the whole street seems to lean in, and then he laughs, once, quietly, and rubs the back of his neck.

"You're joking."

"I'm not."

"I've been chewing over these unsolved murders for years, and then I move here and find out there’s a crime journalist living just down the road." He shakes his head at the sky. "Do you have any idea what that sounds like?"

"It sounds like a coincidence."

"It sounds like the first lucky thing that's happened to me in a long while."

And then, because I can't help myself, I say, "If you've been at this for years, why are you still ordering archives?"

He looks almost pleased, and it's gone before I can be sure I saw it.

"Because half those county papers never went online," he says. "If you want what they printed in 2014, you have to write to the paper, or write to the library, and then wait. Months, sometimes. I've got requests out all over Oregon and I stopped keeping track of them a long time ago. Things turn up when I've forgotten I ever asked." He lifts the envelope an inch.

He straightens off the frame and hooks a thumb behind him. "Do you want to come in? I've just made coffee. I'll show you what I've got and you can tell me it's nothing, and honestly, that would be a relief. I'd love for a professional to tell me I'm a crank."

He steps aside, and I can see straight down the hall.

It's dim and cool in there, and it smells of other people's furniture. Moving boxes are stacked along one wall, taped shut, none of them labeled. Two framed paintings lean against the skirting board, waiting to go up in the pale rectangles where somebody else's pictures used to hang. Past all of it is a room I've never stood in. A long window looks out on the water and the low green line of Yarrow Point. In front of that is a table with paper spread across it.

And I want to go in.

Julia's voice is right there in my head, but I want to go in anyway.

Fortunately, I don't have to.

"Mallory."

I glance over my shoulder.