“Is Rose Parker the person who said I might be coming to see you?”

He did not respond.

“Do you know where she is now?”

“Mr. Bonner, I’ve asked you to leave, several times. Now I’m going to phone the police. Then you, too, can have a criminal complaint filed against you here in Clarke County.”

Jake sighed. He got to his feet. “Well, I’m sure you know what you’re doing. I’m just worried that when they come talk to you about the Vermont crimes, all that old stuff about you is going to come out. But I guess you’ve made your peace with that.”

“I know nothing about any Vermont crimes. I have never set foot in Vermont. I have never been north of the Mason-Dixon Line.”

He said this with such pride he actually sneered. What a pathetic loser.

“Well”—Jake shrugged—“that’s fine, though when those Yankee investigators arrive I don’t think you’ll get rid of them just by asking them to leave. My guess is you’ll need to hire representation of your own. Maybe one of those excellent attorneys you were about to refer me to. Maybe whoever handled your DUIs or that business with the teenager. And I’ll probably be naming you in my own lawsuit. You know, when I sue your client for damages. So maybe, if they represent you for that, too, they’ll give you a break on the price.”

Mr. Arthur Pickens looked as if he might blow apart.

“You want to waste your money on a frivolous lawsuit, you go right ahead. As I said, attorney-client privilege prevents me from providing any information about my client. Please leave.”

“Oh, you’ve provided plenty of information,” Jake said. “You confirmed that you’re still in communication with your client, Rose Parker. I had no way of knowing that when I walked in a few minutes ago, so I appreciate it.”

“If you don’t leave immediately I will call the police.”

“Fine,” said Jake, languidly getting to his feet. “If it doesn’t cross an ethical line, I hope you’ll tell your client that if she doesn’t knock it off with the emails and the letters and the posts I’m going to the Vermont cops with everything I’ve learned. And that includes a couple of things that have been bothering me about Evan Parker’s death.”

“I have no idea who that is,” said Pickens, barely keeping it together.

“Naturally. But if your client murdered him, and if you were involved, I can promise you’re going north of the Mason-Dixon Line, because that’s where they keep the Yankee courthouses. And the Yankee prisons.”

Arthur Pickens, Esquire, looked as if he had lost the power of speech.

“Well, bye then. It’s been a pleasure.”

Jake left, rage and adrenaline coursing through him. Of the astonishing things he’d just said to a complete stranger in his place of business, approximately 100 percent had been unplanned, though he’d certainly had all the relevant facts at his disposal for days. Pickens’s moral failings, along with those of his fraternity brothers, had been delineated in no fewer than four articles in the Duke student paper, complete with the names and classes of all involved. The sticky situation with his client’s nineteen-year-old daughter (legal, but gross) had played out over Facebook, courtesy of the girl and her mother, and the DUIs had come right up in a basic internet search. (They really ought to have been expunged, somehow, Jake thought. Maybe he wasn’t all that good an attorney.)

He hadn’t planned to speak of Evan Parker’s death at all, let alone as anything but an accidentally self-administered overdose, and as for the legal jeopardy Pickens might face as a result of crimes his client had theoretically committed in Vermont, he knew he was on shaky ground. Personally, Jake had no idea what would happen if he walked into the local Rutland police station with his concerns about a five-year-old drug overdose, but he had to assume that it wouldn’t be taken all that seriously, and it was highly unlikely that the state of Vermont would send investigators to West Rutland, let alone to Athens, Georgia. He strongly suspected, moreover, that Arthur Pickens had little to fear from an official investigation, and his client not much more, but it had been satisfying beyond belief to utter the words “Yankee prison” in that office, and the fury he’d felt back there only seemed to be coalescing with every step he took.

He was actually stunned by what had just happened between himself and Pickens, and sort of grateful that he hadn’t had the chance to consider and temper his response before he’d reacted. It wasn’t as if he’d been especially optimistic when he’d entered the lawyer’s office, but he hadn’t expected to be blocked before he could even get his first question out. He thought he’d feel the guy out, maybe suggest that he was interested in hiring an attorney, and when asked for details about his complaint he would describe TalentedTom’s activities and work his way around to revealing the name Rose Parker. Then, if Pickens declined to give him a means of contacting his client, he would leave, perhaps with some form of the message he’d managed to deliver, albeit not at quite so high a pitch. For months, he now realized, ever since that day in the car to the Seattle airport where he’d read the first of those terrifying dispatches, he’d been in a defensive posture, bracing for the next communication while hoping, against all logic, that it would never come. That had taken a lot out of him and now, for the first time, he was feeling the sheer rage he’d managed to accrue over that same period, the deep resentment against this person who felt it her business and her right to harry and persecute him, just because he’d found a story and crafted it into a fine and compelling narrative, precisely as writers had always done! There had been something about that guy, though, with his red face and his dyed hair and his shelf of law books and his preemptive stonewall. Something that grabbed Jake by the throat and made him speak in a language he might have learned from TalentedTom herself. No, these people were not going to fuck with him any longer. Or if they did, he was going to fuck with them right back.

By now he had turned onto West Hancock Street and was drawing closer to the address he’d first discovered at the Rutland Free Library. Only a little over a week had passed since he’d naturally dismissed that Rose Parker of Athens, Georgia, as irrelevant to the unfolding saga of Evan Parker and his avenging angel. Now the address, an apartment complex called Athena Gardens on Dearing Street, was his best remaining hope of finding a connection to wherever she was now, not that he was na?ve enough to expect a forwarding address or any connection at all to a current resident. In a university town like Athens, the passage of six years meant a complete turnover of the undergraduates in the town’s many apartment complexes, but he supposed it might still be possible to find someone who recalled this particular person: a description, a memory, anything that might bring him closer to finding her.

Athena Gardens was a bare-bones version of the luxe options he’d already seen around town, housing complexes fronted by country club pavilions and showing glimpses of pools and tennis courts through their iron gates. This one, on the other hand, looked like a redbrick rehabilitation facility, or a small office complex occupied by gently failing businesses. There was a sign out front advertising Athena Gardens’s amenities (pest control and garbage removal included in the monthly rent, cleaning for a nominal fee) and layouts for the one-, two-, and three-bedroom options. Jake had little doubt which type of apartment Rose Parker might have chosen in the fall of 2012 after going out of her way to avoid having an on-campus roommate. She’d have lived alone here at Athena Gardens. She’d have kept to herself as her old life detatched and fell away.

There was a management office just inside the main entrance, and he found a woman behind a desk, working at her computer. She had a stiff pageboy haircut that only served to accentuate her very full face, and a default expression that said: I don’t like you, but I’m being paid to pretend I do. She gave Jake a thoroughly disingenuous smile when he entered. Still, it was a far warmer greeting than the one he’d had from Arthur Pickens, Esquire.

“Hi. Hope I’m not interrupting.”

She looked to be about Jake’s own age. Possibly older. “Not at all,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“Just looking at a few options for my daughter. She’s going to be a sophomore in the fall. Can’t wait to get out of the dorms.”

The woman laughed. “I hear that a lot.” She stood up. “I’m Bailey,” she said, reaching out her hand.

“Hi. Jacob.” They shook. “I said I’d take a look at a few places while she was in class. I’ll need to bring her back if I see anything that gets dad approval. I asked my cousin for some advice. His daughter lived here a few years back.”

“Here at Athena Gardens?”