Her phone buzzed on the table.
It was a text from a number she didn't know.
This is Lin Tran from Walt's shop. He wanted me to tell you a police officer just came by. The same one. Not in uniform. He wants to talk to Walt. Walt says you should come if you can. He says bring your list. (He didn't know you had a list, he just said you'd have one by now.)
* * *
Walt lived above the shop, as his father had, in four rooms that smelled of coffee and clock oil. But at eleven o'clock that night the lights were on downstairs, and when Nadia came up the Avenue from where she'd parked, past the dark bakery and the dark hardware store, she saw them through the window: the old man in a cardigan at the end of the counter, Lin Tran on the stairs, and a big man in a gray Ravens hoodie standing in the middle of the floor with his hands in his pockets, looking at the wall of clocks as though they had asked him a question.
Without the uniform Ray Dombrowski looked less like a wall and more like somebody's uncle. He turned when the bell rang. He didn't smile. He looked, Nadia thought, like a man who hadn't slept since the last time he'd been here, which was eleven hours ago.
"Ms. Brandt," he said.
"Officer."
"Ray's fine. I'm not on duty." He glanced at Walt. "I'm not really supposed to be here, either. So let's say I came in to get my watch looked at."
"You're not wearing a watch," Walt said.
"I'll buy one."
Walt considered him for a moment and then reached under the counter, took out one of the twenty-dollar Timexes from the tray, and set it on the glass. "Twenty dollars. It's a terrible watch. It'll outlive you."
Ray paid him in cash. Walt wrote out a receipt on the carbon pad. Nobody laughed, but something in the room eased by a few degrees.
Then Ray took a folded sheet out of the pocket of his hoodie and laid it on the counter. It was a better print than the morning's, on good paper. The photograph from the complainant's file.
"Look at the top," he said.