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Karl didn’t answer with words, but his eyes sparked with understanding and a bit of sadness. I felt a lump in my throat as I turned and walked out the front door.

Chapter

Nine

By noon the next day, I was back in the office. I commandeered the small library across from Dad’s office and laid out what I had on the Geneva Bell case.

Dad had a large, freestanding whiteboard. I began to write out some of the major questions in the case in separate columns.

EVIDENCE SIDNEY ACTED SOLO

EVIDENCE SIDNEY HAD AN ACCOMPLICE

At the center of the board, I wrote the phrase Geneva swore she heard whispered that night.

ATRŌ TE BENEDICTO

I circled it in red marker and drew spokes away from it, making it the hub.

I became so ensconced with my questions, I didn’t at first hear my dad walk in.

“Are you going to tell me what Holland had to say?”

His booming voice startled me. I capped the marker I held and gestured for Dad to have a seat at the table.

My head was already starting to pound; I laid out for him what happened with Detective Holland. Dad didn’t react. For almost a full minute, he sat there, his expression stony and unreadable.

Finally, he lifted his chin and met my eyes. “What if he’s right?”

I sank into a chair across from him. “I’m not ruling it out. I just don’t understand why.”

“Why she would kill her friends? Or let someone like Sidney kill them?”

“Both. But why then would she even come to me at all? What would be the point? If she was involved, Sidney’s dead. I mean, objectively dead. So the only other person who truly knows what happened in that cabin is Geneva. Why ask me to start turning stones over again?”

“Maybe she’s afraid someone else might figure it out. Maybe she’s using you to ferret that out. So she can control it.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She’d have to be mentally ill.”

“Wouldn’t she also have to be pretty disturbed to lure a serial killer to the house where she’s staying? Offering him a veritable buffet of victims fitting his MO?”

“You should have seen him,” I said. “Holland. He became a different man when he realized it’s Geneva I’m helping. It was pure contempt on his face and in his tone. He threw me out of his house. I need to know what he knows.”

“Then you need to file a FOIA request to see his official file. Sure, he’s probably got plenty of off-book notes or what he thinks is proof in his own murder book. But you’ll still be able to learn a lot from the work he did document in his official capacity,” Dad said.

He was fired up. His eyes lit with excitement. This is what he was good at. Looking at cases from different angles. Finding the hidden proof that eluded most other people. Over the course of his long career as a defense attorney, he’d gotten acquittals in cases no one else would touch. They’d even made a movie about one of his cases.

I realized something else. I would need him if I were ever going to solve this case. He wasn’t done teaching me.

“What would you do next?” I asked.

“I would bring Geneva back in,” he answered. “I wouldn’t let on what Dan Holland told you. You don’t have to lie to her. Just tell her you’re still following a few leads. You come at her with unfounded accusations, she’ll just fire you and disappear.”

“If she fires me,” I said, “then, technically, none of this is my problem anymore.”

Dad’s face split into a sly smile. “Technically.”

“I want to know what happened,” I said. “One way or another, I believe in my gut that we don’t know the full story of what happened out there. Whether it’s Geneva or not, what if someone got away with either murder or being an accomplice to murder?”