He settled back.
"Um, okay ... It's a minor deviation, sure, but hardly grounds for an appeal."
"I said the same thing. If you asked Pamela, she would be shocked--appalled even--that you didn't immediately see the problem. Why did the prosecution believe the others were committed on Fridays?"
"Because it was their date night. Their daughter--" I stopped. Cleared my throat. "Me, I mean. Obviously."
Obviously.
Except it hadn't been so obvious. While I knew I was the child in the file, I'd disconnected from that.
The adorable toddler the police met when they first questioned the Larsens? That was me. The child who'd stayed overnight at her grandmother's while Mommy and Daddy butchered eight people? That was me. The girl described during the arrest, screaming for her mother, biting the social worker, howling and sobbing uncontrollably for hours?
That was me.
"I was at their--I mean, my grandmother's that night." I paused. "Is she--?" I shook my head. "Never mind."
"Your grandmother passed away years ago."
"Right. Okay." I wanted to ask about other family, but Gabriel wasn't the person to answer that.
"Take a moment."
As at the prison, he said it with a veneer of empathy, yet he couldn't mask a note of impatience.
"I'm fine," I said. "So where was Eden--I mean, where was I on the night of the last murders?"
"No one knows. That is the crux of Pamela's argument."
A shadow passed overhead. I looked up. Just a sparrow.
"I don't understand," I said.
"Your grandmother was the only person your parents entrusted with your care, and she was out of town. Therefore, your parents could not have killed anyone that night."
"No, they just left me in bed. Or in the back of the car."
Sleeping in the car. While they murdered two people.
I continued, "At that point, the Larsens had already been questioned about the murders. It makes logical sense to shake things up."
"Yes, but as Pamela points out, they weren't actually questioned as suspects. The police spoke to them under the pretext of investigating a neighborhood break-in. Pamela's argument is that they would never have left you alone, either in the house or in the car. And they certainly wouldn't take you along to a murder. That would be irresponsible parenting."
I sputtered a laugh, then looked at his expression. "You're serious?"
"She is. To her, the fact you were not with a sitter proves they couldn't have committed the murders. Oddly, she has trouble finding a judge--or a lawyer--to agree with her."
"And it's not grounds for appeal anyway. So you based yours on prejudice against Wiccans?"
"No, I attempted to base it on this." He took folded papers from his breast pocket. "Your mother refused. We settled on my backup--the Wiccan business. Which I expected to use in conjunction with this." He waved the folded sheets. "On its own, the Wiccan defense was, as you say, flimsy."
"So what's that?" I pointed at the sheets.
He unfolded them. The papers were part of a police report. Withheld until he could present it with the proper degree of drama.
I read the sheets. Then I put them into the folder and set it on my other side--away from Gabriel.
"The answer is no," I said.