I finally found the archives office and stepped inside. Except for the clerk, I was the only one there.
“I’m looking for the records for these two addresses,” I said, sliding a piece of paper with the Linwood Street addresses on it. “I need the pre-1960 records, and they aren’t online.”
The clerk behind the counter, a fortyish woman with bobbed hair, slid on her reading glasses and scanned it. “That’s over forty years ago. Anything over forty years is kept in a different room. That takes longer.”
That would be my third room in a row. “You can’t get them now?”
She glanced at the clock, not bothering to hide it. “Submit a request form, and someone will contact you in the next few days.”
She was trying to be firm, but I sensed an opening. “We can do this in the next ten minutes,” I said. “I’ll go with you, read the files, and you’ll still go home on time. I promise.”
“Ten minutes?” She looked at the clock again, then looked at me, this time curiously. “Why do you need this so urgently, anyway?”
“I’m a writer.” When she looked at my scrub top, I added, “In the evenings. I’m writing a book.”
Her eyes went wide. “Oh. A mystery?”
“Yes, a mystery.”
“I love Lee Child.”
“So do I,” I said, which was actually true. “I’m writing something a little like that, and I have a great story idea. I just want to have a quick look at the file to settle a research point.” To juice the story up, I added, “I think one of these buildings might have been a private psychiatric hospital.”
“An old psychiatric hospital, huh? That’s a pretty good setting.” Her expression softened. There was no one in line behind me, no one else in the room. “Okay, put the ‘Closed’ sign on the door behind you and we’ll go quick. I want to be out of here at five minutes to five.”
Thank you, Lee Child, I thought as she let me behind the counter and admitted me to the file room.
It was a dim, dry place, windowless and claustrophobic, lit with fluorescent light and lined with file boxes. The clerk, who now told me her name was Carole, pulled two boxes and opened them. “There won’t be much,” she warned, “for buildings that old.”
I flipped through the file for the first address, scanning as fast as I could. Normally I would have taken Carole’s advice, filled out the form, and taken my time researching what I needed, but my gut told me I was running low on time. Either there was something here, or there wasn’t. I needed to know.
I didn’t find anything interesting in the first building’s history, and with five minutes to go, I went to the second box. While Carole gave me an impatient sigh in warning, I flipped back in time for the building at 120 Linwood.
And there it was: The original building was built in 1940, and ownership was transferred to something called the Elizabeth Trevor House for Women in 1949. I had never heard of the Elizabeth Trevor House for Women, but I sensed that it could be a lead. I pulled out my phone and took a photo of the records page, then another of a property tax report. There was a record of sale back to a private family in 1956, and I photographed that, too.
“Hey,” Carole said. “No photos allowed.”
“Just one more minute.” I tried to text the photos to Michael, but there was no signal inside the records room. I tried pulling up my phone’s browser to search the Elizabeth Trevor House for Women, but nothing would load.
“Okay, I have to go home,” Carole said. She was exasperated with me. I didn’t blame her. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“I don’t know.” I looked for anything else in the file that would give me a clue; there was nothing. I put the file back in the box and helped Carole put the boxes back, feeling foolish. I’d barged in and derailed the last fifteen minutes of her day like I was doing something important, but it was probably a dead end. I bet this never happened to Lee Child.