I SAT IN SILENCE FOR A LONG TIME. I WAS WORRIED. I FELT like somebody in a kid’s book who falls down a hole. Finds himself in a strange world where everything is different and weird. Like Alice in Wonderland. Did she fall down a hole? Or did she get off a Greyhound in the wrong place?
“I mean it, Roscoe,” I said. “Stick with me and you’ll be OK.”
THE NUMBER FINLAY HAD HANDED ME REACHED MOLLY Beth Gordon’s private line. She answered on the first ring. I gave her my name. It made her cry.
Then I began to understand that, too.
“I’d put it at about ten minutes,” he said. “Ten minutes, beginning to end. So the woman was being held. The man was being nailed to the wall. I’d guess both were naked by then. They were in nightwear before the attack, right?”
Finlay wrote it all down. Then there was a long silence. I knew for sure what the next question was going to be.