Her smile flickered to a frown, then reappeared. She nodded. “Well, okay then. If you need anything else, you just let me know.”
Apart from bringing the check, she didn’t come back. I paid with my debit card so I’d have a reason to leave a piece of paper for her. I tucked both receipts into the little leatherette folder she’d brought: the signed copy for the restaurant and the copy I was supposed to keep. On that one, I wrote my cell number and the words, “Don’t worry.”
That night after dinner, Terri called, sounding more excited than I’d ever heard her. She was talking so fast I couldn’t understand at first.
“Just a minute,” she said, and I heard her take a couple of deep breaths. “Okay. Are you sitting down?”
“I am.”
“Okay. Then let me—I’ll just start from the start. I tried so many different things. All kinds of different searches. I was up almost all night. I swear, Buster was worried about me. I conked out in bed with my laptop and woke up with him sleeping next to me. He had his head right on the other pillow.”
“What was going on? Did you track down that black truck?”
“Better than that. Or, I mean, not better—sorry, that came out wrong. I don’t mean a threat on your life is less important.”
I laughed and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you in such a tizzy. What’s going on?”
Another deep breath. “I got photographic evidence of Karl’s time of death.”
“Oh my God. How—wait, when? What time?”
“He has to have died before 11:29 p.m.”
I gave a low whistle of appreciation. If Jackson would admit to the arson, a time of death that early would mean it was almost impossible for him to have killed Karl. “I don’t know how you did that,” I said, “but it’s a big help to the case.”
“I know.”
“But how’d you do it, though? What’ve you got?”
“I’ll email the photo,” she said, “so it’s full-res.” I heard her keyboard clicking as she explained what she’d done. She’d scoured every social media site for photos taken in Basking Rock and posted on the night of the murder or within two weeks after. Then she collected shots taken near the marina, and every photo where you could see even a bit of the bay or the nearby ocean. Tourists on boat rides or the beach, folks boarding yacht charters, everything.
I fired up my laptop. “Why’d you go on social media, though? I thought you said Facebook and those folks stripped out that data you need to see where and when it’s from.”
“Yeah,” she said. “The EXIF data was step two. First I wanted to find people who’d posted photos they took from the beach or the marina or out on the water. Then I looked for their other shots from the same trip. The ones that didn’t turn out good enough to post. People dump those on photo-hosting sites to free up space on their phones. That first one is from Instagram.”
On my screen, two smiling fortysomething women were leaning against the railing of a boat, raising glasses of champagne.
“The second one—well, just look. That’s from what she dumped on a hosting site, and it’s still got the data. She took it out on the bay, at the right coordinates for what we’re looking at. And the time stamp says June 6, 11:29 p.m.”
It was one of those accidental shots, like it had been taken while one of the women in the first photo was putting her phone away. I could see part of the boat railing and someone’s hand, both blurry. The background was in focus, though. And across the water, run aground on the sand, was Karl’s empty boat.
29
Tuesday, November 5, Morning
Trial was starting in less than six weeks. En route to the jail for a talk with Jackson, I waited at a stoplight and fantasized about how many paralegals I would hire if I won the lottery. The houses, cars, and other purchases that most people daydreamed about seemed beside the point. All I wanted was someone other than myself to deal with the physical logistics of preparing for a trial. Someone else to make and print out lists of exhibits, put together binders with tabbed copies of all the exhibits in order, and organize all the photographs, the maps, the timelines and forensic reports. Binders with detailed tables of contents so I could find the police report, witness statement, expert bio, case law, or statute that I needed on the fly, in front of the jury, to catch a witness in a lie or dispute some legal point with Ruiz.
I was picturing where in Roy’s office each paralegal could sit when the car behind me honked to let me know the light had changed.
In the jail, I asked for a private room and waited for Jackson. When he came in, he looked about one-third cocky teenage boy and two-thirds exhausted. For what was left of the teenage boy in him, I wanted to fight.
He slumped in his chair, looked through his bangs at me, and tried a wisecrack: “So, you proved me innocent yet?”
“Actually,” I said, “Terri found something. It’s not a home run, okay, but we really got something this time. And we tracked down the person we need. She’s a wedding planner up in Charleston. She’s a little reticent, so we might need to subpoena her, but at least we know who she is.”
I told him about the photo this woman had taken, but since the jailhouse guard had divested me of my cell phone, I couldn’t show it to him. A good paralegal, of course, would’ve anticipated that and printed out a nice big color copy for me to bring.
He looked at me blankly. “I mean, cool,” he said, “but so what?”
“Well, it comes down
