“Why didn’t the defense find this before?” I asked.
Daniel lowered his eyes. “We challenged the evidence, but the first examiner didn’t test every possible method of access. We should have pushed harder.”
I could have blamed him. I wanted to blame everyone. Instead, I said, “Then push now.”
He nodded. “We are.”
The lesson was painful: even a convincing story can be assembled from real objects arranged in the wrong order. My fingerprints were real. My laptop was real. My phone number was real. None of those facts established the conclusion Nolan wanted the jury to reach.
- The Missing Hours
Walter’s last evening had become a battlefield of competing memories. Nolan said he had seen me deliver medication at eight. Celeste claimed she had witnessed the same thing from the hallway. Their stories sounded mutually reinforcing until Ortiz placed the building’s security footage beside the statements.
