My phone buzzed. I took two steps toward the hall before I answered.
“He’s intact,” Farrow said. “Color’s coming back. He drank water, and he stopped shaking. He’s focused on Patterson.”
“Focused how?”
“He’s asked four times what Patterson said in recovery.”
“Tell him.”
“I told him. The first two times it was like it didn’t get through. He asked again.”
“And where’s Eamon?”
“Still here. Working the chain of custody for the briefcase with Cambridge PD. He’ll call you in ten.”
“And what about you?”
He took a breath. He wasn’t likely to give me a genuine answer in front of Wiley.
“I’m operational,” he said.
Farrow hung up.
Two minutes later, the phone buzzed again. It was Eamon.
“Sit down.”
I didn’t. I crossed to the inside corner of the parlor and put my back to the wall.
“Go,” I said.
“Cambridge PD has the briefcase. It’s theirs, and they won’t give it up. A detective named Reilly is running point. He’s clean. I’ve worked with him twice.”
“Understood.”
“He gave me details. It was off the record and a professional courtesy. He would never testify to it. Treat it as accurate but unusable information.”
“Go,” I said.
“Inside the briefcase, there is a sealed envelope, addressed to Patterson himself. It’s his handwriting on the front.”
“He was carrying his own letter?”
“He was carrying something he couldn’t trust to any channel he didn’t physically control. It would be too easy to intercept email, traditional mail, or a call. He was keeping the information on him until he could hand it across the table.
“Do you know the contents?”
“Four printed pages of internalGlobecommunications. Email threads. Patterson was on one side, and on the other was someone identified only as H.”
I didn’t answer. He kept going.
“The threads run back roughly six months. They’re short and direct. There’s also a vendor contract with a Harcourt-linked foundation.”
“The vendor?”
“It’s one of Wiley’s.”
My breath caught. “The Onyx Bay connection.”