Her name was Clara…
Yes.
That’s correct.”
A pause.
Harlow’s pen stopped moving.
“You remember her,” Harlow said.
It wasn’t a question.
Another pause, longer this time.
“I see.” Harlow looked at me across the table.
“Would you be willing to meet in person?”
She drove up to see him the following day.
She came back with four pages of handwritten notes and sat down across from me without taking off her coat.
“He remembered Clara immediately,” she said.
“He told me she came in alone, very calm on the surface but clearly frightened underneath.
She told him her sister had threatened her and that she wanted to make sure there was a legal record of the threat before anything happened.”
“She went to a lawyer,” I said.
“She documented it.”
“She did more than that.” Harlow turned to the second page of her notes.
“She gave Aldrich a sealed envelope and told him to hold it.
She said if she ever contacted him again, he should return it to her.
If she never contacted him — if he heard that something had happened to her — he was to send it to you.”
The air went out of the room.
“He never heard from her again,” Harlow said.
“He waited.
