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“Are you saying she was mistaken or lying?” Dad said. I saw a flash in his eyes I’d experienced a thousand times. Whatever this witness would say next would spring a trap she hadn’t known he had set.

“Neither,” Mrs. Milo said. “Or both. I don’t know. I only know what I saw through that window. He had Paulette in his arms and raised a knife above her head. Then he plunged it right into her chest. I’ll never get that vision out of my head for as long as I live.”

“Her chest?” Dad said. “Just above her breasts?”

“Yes!”

“Not her back,” Dad said.

“Yes!”

“So it’s your testimony the first wound your husband inflicted on Paulette Malle was straight into her chest.”

I heard a strangled cry. I knew how this would turn out. Everyone did. This was the one moment in my father’s career that paved the way for everything that came after.

Paulette Malle was first stabbed in the back, not the front. And Dad had found four witnesses Dr. Anton Milo’s original defense lawyer and the police missed. Paulette’s front blinds were drawn that night.

Helen Milo, the doctor’s wife, was lying. He was innocent. It was Helen who had murdered her husband’s mistress and their unborn child. Dr. Milo had served five years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. So scandalous and salacious was the trial that it was made into a novel. Then the Academy Award–winning movie. And it made E. Thomas Gale a household name.

“I didn’t know that existed,” I said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“It wasn’t made public,” he said. “I miss him, Mercy. I don’t know what happened to that man.”

“Dad,” I said. “Nothing happened to him. He’s still right here.”

“I was only thirty-two or thirty-three years old. Not much older than you are now. It seems like a hundred years ago. I don’t know who I am anymore half the time.”

I took his hand. “You’re still you.”

“I’m not taking that test. Not today. You can reschedule. I’ll do it in a month. I promise.”

My heart squeezed. “Okay,” I said.

“I won’t drive until then. Okay?” That clear, booming voice from the video had softened to little more than a whisper edged with fear. I felt like my chest had just caved in. I blinked back tears.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “I promise.”

He sank wearily into his office chair. His face went blank. For a moment, I worried he was about to have one of the episodes I told Dr. Ricci had subsided. He looked through me, not at me. The last time he’d done that, he was convinced I was my mother.

But whatever churned behind his eyes, he brought them back into focus. He began rummaging through papers on his desk.

“I got you this,” he said. “This is who I was talking to on the phone earlier. I’ve still got connections in places that might surprise you.”

The Milo case had taken place in Ohio. The doctor had done time in the very prison where Derrek Sidney was incarcerated, just thirty-five years apart.

Dad handed me a photocopy of a handwritten ledger. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. Then I realized it was a visitor’s log. Dad had highlighted several of the entries in neon pink. Derrek Sidney Jr. wrote with a steady, clear hand.

“Your Dr. Glassman was telling the truth,” Dad said. “Derrek Junior ... or Boone ... whatever he likes to be called, visited his father four times in the six months leading up to the Deadwater Lake murders. Then he visited him nine times in the year preceding Sidney’s execution. It’s proof that he lied to you. I figured you might want that when you meet him again. Don’t let him get away with another lie, Mercy. And don’t go out to that storage unit alone with him again.”

“I won’t,” I said. “We’re meeting at his office in downtown Chelsea. The lobby has a huge window facing the sidewalk.”

“Good,” Dad said. “I don’t know what this means. I have to believe the feds looked hard at that kid in the aftermath of his father’s escape. But he’s hiding something. You’re good at this, Mercy. I know you’ll get to the truth.”

Chapter

Twenty-Six

“Why are you here again exactly?”