Chapter 14: Mr. Winslow's Ledger

Mr. Winslow was waiting in the lot behind the old maternity wing of Brookfield General.

The building had been shut for eleven years, and the windows were boarded up with plywood.

He sat on the tailgate of his own car with a banker's box beside him.

He wore the rumpled overcoat from the farmhouse door, and he looked as if he had not slept since Monday.

The firefighter and the boxer sat in a pickup at the end of the lot with the engine running.

Tiernan had stayed with them, and he had not argued about it.

"Thank you for coming," Mr. Winslow said.

"You said alone."

"I know what I said."

I stopped six feet from him.

I did not sit.

"What's in the box?"

"My wife's cabinet," he said.

"The oak one in my study, with the brass lock.

She has told me for twenty-four years that it holds the Fund's old tax papers."

He took a breath.

"On Monday night I stood in a hospital corridor and heard nothing through a door.

I watched your face when you came out.

I went home, I called a locksmith at midnight, and I opened it."

He lifted the lid.

Inside lay a bound ledger with a green cloth cover, and a spiral of faded pink tags tied together with string.

"The night register of the maternity wing," he said.

"The foundation wing, the year you were born.

She was on the board then.

She signed it out for an audit, and I suppose it never went back."

He opened it to a page marked with a strip of paper.

His hand shook so much that I took the book from him.

The columns were ruled in blue.

At the top of the page, a printed date, and the night staff's initials in a neat round hand.

Halfway down, in a different ink, I saw a line in handwriting I would have known on any birthday card in the world.

4:10 a.m. Crib 2 to crib 4. Crib 4 to crib 2. Tags exchanged. L.W.

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