The observer knew the family without uncovering a name.
She read the draft once, put her finger beside the upper ash stair, then moved it to the date and the red fishing float. Her expression changed so abruptly that Eli looked toward the covered register to see whether a page had slipped.
Nothing had slipped. The draft was the problem.
“I can identify them from this,” she said.
Juno put down her pencil. Tessa drew the public sheet back into the review area before the messenger waiting at the door could mistake it for a cleared report.
“The combination?” Tessa asked.
“The route was used by very few people in that interval. On that date, with that request, there isn’t another family it could be.”
Eli looked at the line he had thought protected. No personal name appeared. No household location. The three fields lay neatly within the comparison method, each serving an evidentiary purpose. Together they pointed as plainly as a finger through somebody’s doorway.
