"Thank you, Gabriel."
"You're very welcome."
Hot damn, he was good. I had wondered how he was going to pull this off. He might make Anna Gunderson's heart--and other body parts--flutter, but he was still the guy who'd tried to get her sister's killer acquitted. Pretending he needed the truth to defend Christian's memory, though? While framing the new appeal as a rumor that could never be proven either way? Genius really.
"I'm not sure how much help I can be," Anna said. "I'll try. I know it's important and I'm the only one who can help. Dad isn't in any shape for this."
"I'm not going to bring him in. In fact, it would be best if we kept this from him until there's a reason to broach the subject."
She nodded. "I'm not going to tell anyone right now."
Gabriel agreed that was wise.
Anna continued, "The problem is that Jan
and Christian were so much older than me. Jan was--" She paused, eyes filling with tears.
He leaned forward, voice lowered. "Take a moment."
A wan smile. "Thanks. I was just thinking that Jan was only five years older and how little that would mean now. But when we were young, it was a huge gap. We got along, Jan and I, but I was always the little sister. I didn't know her as well as I would have liked."
She got along well with Jan. No mention of her brother.
"They were close," she continued. "Jan and Christian. Only fifteen months apart. Inseparable."
Gabriel flicked through his notes. I doubted he was actually reading them, just looking as if he had to refer back. He pulled one page to the front.
"According to this, they weren't that close when she died. Friends said they spent very little time together."
"Oh, that's just Jan's friends. Mom said they liked talking to the police officers, because some of them were young and cute. They exaggerated things to get attention. Jan and Chris were close."
Gabriel shuffled the papers, his gaze down. He looked troubled. After a moment, he gripped the file and looked up, jaw set, as if determined to speak, however much he'd rather not.
"Anna..."
A nervous flutter of her hands as she quailed under that intense stare. "Yes?"
"Do you want me to defend your brother's memory?"
"Y-yes. I really appreciate--"
"Then you need to be honest with me. It says here that multiple acquaintances reported that Jan and Christian were not close at the time of her death. Even your mother said they'd..." He consulted the file for effect. "Grown apart."
"Yes. Right. I'd ... forgotten that. They were so close when they were young. I remember how much I envied that. As they got older, they drifted apart a bit. That's natural."
"Did it seem mutual?"
Anna shifted. Sipped her coffee. Even nibbled on a cookie before blurting, "You're right. I should be honest, and this is just the kind of thing a lawyer could use against Christian, so we need to be prepared. It was Jan who drifted. She was the popular one. Christian was ... not popular. Her friends decided he wasn't cool enough for them. Jan was young. She made mistakes."
Jan had been a year younger than me when she died. From Anna's perspective, that now seemed very young, but from mine, it was past the age where you could blame peer pressure for making you avoid your geeky brother.
"And how did Christian feel about the estrangement?" Gabriel asked.
"It hurt him. A lot. For years he tried to get their old relationship back. I always thought that's why he killed himself. Because he'd lost her for good."
Gabriel nodded and gave her time to relax before he said, "You know I need to ask about the fight."
Anna didn't flinch. Instead, she let out an audible sigh of relief and relaxed back into her seat. "I never understood why Mom and Dad made such a fuss about that. By refusing to tell the police what happened, they made it sound important, and it wasn't."