Across the lobby, Sandoval had stood up behind his desk.
"Sergeant." Sandoval said it in a pleasant voice, not loud. "Everything all right over there?"
"It's fine," Neal said, without turning.
"It's fine, Mr. Sandoval," the woman said. "The Sergeant's just making sure."
"Uh huh," said Sandoval, and stayed standing.
She had not answered about the envelope. Neal was about to ask again, and he felt the question rising in him the way it always rose, flat and certain, and he could feel his weight shift forward onto the balls of his feet the way it always shifted, and that was when the inner door opened.
A young man came out. He was perhaps twenty-five, very thin, in a blue oxford shirt and a lanyard with a state ID on it, carrying a clipboard against his hip, and he had the earnest, harried face of every junior clerk in every government building in America. He looked from Neal to the woman in the chair and back again, and if he understood what he was looking at he made no sign of it.
"Good morning," he said. "Ms. Reddick? Hi, I'm Taft, I'm coordinating this morning. We spoke on the phone." He shook her hand; she had to take it off the envelope to do it. "Thank you so much for coming in. I just wanted to confirm the order with you. The board will hear from Mr. Dwyer first and do their questioning, that's usually an hour, could be more. Then supporters. You're listed as a supporter, presenting on behalf of the Hospice Companions program at Norfolk. You'll go second, after Mrs. Dwyer, the mother, and before Sergeant Dwyer, the father." He glanced at the clipboard, then up. "Then opposition. Then Attorney Raman will close." He looked at Neal, then, for the first time really looked at him, and his face did a polite small thing as he put it together. "Oh. Sergeant Dwyer? You're on my list too. Good, good. You're third." He looked back and forth between them again, and seemed to decide this was a happy coincidence. "I didn't know if you'd met."
The license was still in Neal's hand. He felt it there, the hard laminated edge of it against the pad of his thumb.
"Hospice," he said.