She scrolled through the numbers, pausing on Amanda Wagner’s name, then scrolling back up to Will Trent. His phone rang twice before he picked up.

“Trent.”

Sara was inexplicably tongue-tied by the sound of his voice. In the silence, she could hear wind blowing, the sound of children playing.

He said, “Hello?”

“Hi, Will—sorry.” She cleared her throat. “I was calling because I talked to someone at the ME’s office. Like you asked.” She felt her face turning red. “Like Amanda asked.”

He mumbled something, probably to Amanda. “What’d you find out?”

“The Texicanos victim, Ricardo. No last name as of yet, but he was probably Puerto Rican.” She waited while he relayed this information to Amanda. She asked the same question Sara had. Sara answered, “He had a tattoo on his hand for a gang, the Neta, which is in Puerto Rico. The man I talked with said Ricardo probably switched affiliations when he came to Atlanta.” Again, she waited for him to tell Amanda. “He also had a belly full of heroin.”

“Heroin?” His voice went up in surprise. “How much?”

“I’m not sure. The man I spoke with said the powder was packed in balloons. When Faith shot him, the heroin was released. That alone would’ve killed him.”

Will told Amanda as much, then came back on the line. “Amanda says thank you for checking into this.”

“I’m sorry there’s not more.”

“That’s great what you came up with.” He clarified, “I mean, thank you, Dr. Linton. This is all very useful information to have.”

She knew he couldn’t talk in front of Amanda, but she didn’t want to let him go. “How’s it going on your end?”

“The prison was a bust. We’re standing outside Hironobu Kwon’s house right now. He lived with his mother in Grant Park.” He was less than fifteen minutes away from Grady. “The neighbor says his mother should be home soon. I guess she’s probably making arrangements. She lives across the street from the zoo. We had to park about a mile away. Or, I did. Amanda made me drop her off.” He finally paused for breath. “How are you doing?”

Sara smiled. He seemed to want to stay on the phone as much as she did. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Not much. How about you?”

She tried to think of something flirty to say, but settled on, “Not much.”

Amanda’s voice was too muffled to understand, but Sara got the tone. Will said, “So, I’ll talk to you later. Thank you again, Dr. Linton.”

Sara felt foolish as she ended the call. Maybe she should go back up to the lounge and gossip with Nan.

Or maybe she should talk to Dale Dugan and nip this in the bud before they both got any more embarrassed. Sara took out her hospital BlackBerry and looked up Dale’s email address, then started to enter it into her iPhone. She would ask him to meet her in the cafeteria so they could talk this through. Or maybe she should suggest the parking lot. She didn’t want to cause more gossip than was already circulating.

Up ahead, the elevator bell dinged and she caught sight of Dale. He was laughing with one of the nurses. Junior must’ve told him she was down here. Sara chickened out. She opened the first door she came to, which happened to be the records department. Two older women with matching, tightly groomed perms sat behind desks piled with charts. They were typing furiously on their computer keyboards and barely looked up at Sara.

One of them asked, “Help you?” turning the page on the chart opened beside her.

Sara stood there, momentarily unsure of herself. She realized that somewhere in the back of her mind, she had been thinking about the records office since she got on the elevator. She dropped her iPhone back into her coat pocket.

“What is it, darlin’?” the woman asked. They were both staring at Sara now.

She held up her hospital ID. “I need an old chart from nineteen …” She did the math quickly in her head. “Seventy-six, maybe?”

The woman handed her a pad and paper. “Give me the name. That’ll make it easier.”

Sara knew even as she wrote down Will’s name that what she was doing was wrong, and not just because she was breaking federal privacy laws and risking immediate termination. Will had been at the Atlanta Children’s Home from infancy. There wouldn’t have been a family physician managing his care. All of his medical needs would have been handled through Grady. His entire childhood was stored here, and Sara was using her hospital ID to gain access to it.

“No middle name?” the woman asked.

Sara shook her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

“Gimme a minute. These won’t be in the computer yet or you’d be able to pull them up on your tablet. We’ve barely dipped our toe into 1970.” She was out of her chair and through the door marked “File Room” before Sara could tell her to stop.

The other woman went back to her typing, her long red fingernails making a sound like a cat running across a tile floor. Sara looked down at her shoes, which were stained with God knows what from this morning’s cases. In her mind, she went over the possible culprits, but as hard as she tried, she could not shake the feeling that what she was doing was absolutely and without a doubt the most unethical thing she had ever done in her life. What’s more, it was a complete betrayal of Will’s trust.

And she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it.

This wasn’t the way Sara operated. She was normally a forthright person. If she wanted to know about Will’s suicide attempt, or any details about his childhood, then she should ask him, not sneak around his back and look at his medical chart.

The woman was back. “No William, but I found a Wilbur.” She had a file tucked under her arm. “Nineteen seventy-five.”

Sara had used paper charts the majority of her career. Most healthy kids had a chart with twenty or so pages by the time they reached eighteen years of age. An unhealthy kid’s file could run around fifty. Will’s chart was over an inch thick. A decaying rubber band held together faded sheets of yellow and white paper.

“No middle name,” the woman said. “I’m sure he had one at some point, but a lot of these kids fell through the cracks back then.”

Her partner supplied, “Ellis Island and Tuskegee rolled up into one.”

Sara reached for the file, then stopped herself. Her hand hovered in the air.

“You all right, darlin’?” The woman glanced back at her office mate, then to Sara. “You need to sit down?”

Sara dropped her hand. “I don’t think I need that after all. I’m sorry to waste your time.”

“Are you sure?”

Sara nodded. She could not remember the last time she had felt this awful. Even her run-in with Angie Trent hadn’t produced this amount of guilt. “I’m so sorry.”

“No need to apologize. Felt good to get up.” She started to tuck the file under her arm but the rubber band broke, sending papers flying onto the floor.

Automatically, Sara bent down to help. She gathered the pages together, willing herself not to read the words. There were lab reports printed in dot matrix, reams of chart notations, and what looked like an ancient Atlanta police report. She blurred her vision, praying she wouldn’t pick up a word or a sentence.