Ruiz picked up the sealed envelope. She held it up to the camera so it could see the signatures on the flap, then slit it with a letter opener and drew out a single sheet of Szabo & Son notepaper, and read it aloud, slowly, stumbling only a little.
"'Around the edge of the main plate, dial side: W. SZABO, dash, BALTIMORE, dash, No. 1, dash, 1979. In the center, in Hungarian: Évának, aki megvárt.'" She looked up. "What does it mean, Mr. Szabo?"
Walt didn't answer right away. He was looking at the brass, not at any of them.
"It means For Eva, who waited," he said. "She waited twenty-two months while I made it. She waited every night on the stairs. That was the one thing I knew I would put inside before I knew anything else about how to make it."
The room was very quiet. Teo had lowered his clipboard.
Ruiz laid the sheet of notepaper on the table between the open movement and Carrow's pad. Swiss hallmarks / serial number / Geneva. Then she opened her file folder and took out the photocopy from the Enoch Pratt Free Library, with its seal on the back, and laid that down too, the photograph of the watch on gray velvet face-up, the date at the top of the page: Saturday, February 9, 1980.
"Mr. Carrow," she said, "your report says your father bought this watch in Geneva in 1968. Eleven years before it was made. In Baltimore. By the man sitting at the end of this table."
Carrow's face had gone a color Ray had seen on men in interview rooms many times. Not red. Gray, as though something underneath had quietly been unplugged.
"There must be some kind of mistake," he said. "Two watches. My father must have—there must be two."
"It says No. 1," Lin said, before anyone could stop her. "There isn't a No. 2. He never made another one. I've been asking him for ten years."
Carrow stood up. He picked up his leather portfolio and held it against his chest.
"I'd like to speak to a lawyer," he said. "I'm not going to say anything else. I think I'd like to go."
"You're free to go," Ruiz said. "You're not under arrest. Yet. Officer Dombrowski will see you out."
* * *
Ray walked him down the stairs. Carrow walked fast, his left foot turning out, his portfolio clutched to his chest, not looking at anyone. At the bottom of the stairs was the front lobby: a row of plastic chairs, a bulletin board, a vending machine with a hand-lettered sign that said OUT OF ORDER SINCE BUSH.