Camila smiled. “We’re law students at the University of Virginia, and we volunteer for the Innocence Project. We were wondering if you’d be wil ing to talk to us about your relationship with Neil Prosper, and in particular, anything you might know about Neil’s movements on the night of the Fitzhugh murder.”
Angie seemed speechless for a long moment. But she didn’t walk away, didn’t close the door in their faces. She held on to the doorjamb and put one hand to her chest.
“I haven’t thought about or talked about Neil for years.”
“We understand if you’d prefer not to talk to us,” Hannah said.
She was conscious of Camila giving her a look, but she kept her eyes on Angie.
“Wel , I didn’t say that,” Angie said. She hesitated. “Look, why don’t you come in? Let’s have a sweet tea, and maybe we can talk a bit.” She led the way into the house, then stopped again. “I was going to bring you to the sitting room, but it feels a bit formal. Why don’t you join me in the kitchen?”
They fol owed her through a formal hal and sitting room furnished with antiques and overstuffed chairs to the kitchen, which was a much brighter, more inviting space. There was a generous kitchen table and a bright modern kitchen and large windows with sunlight streaming in. Angie gestured toward the table.
“Take a seat,” she said. “I’ve just been baking for the afternoon tea. I’l be with you in a minute.” She bustled about, making tea, and cutting slices of cake. She asked them questions while she worked, smal talk about the university and their drive to Yorktown and whether or not they’d always wanted to study law. She didn’t appear to be nervous about what they were going to ask her.
“Cake?” she offered, as she joined them.
“Yes, please,” Hannah said, and Camila nodded. It was honey cake, perfectly constructed in tiny layers with the thinnest scraping of icing between each layer. It was stil a little bit warm and it tasted like perfection. “Oh my God,” Camila said, between mouthfuls. “This is amazing.”
Angie laughed. “These days everyone expects something a little bit special. Apple pie just doesn’t quite cut it. You need something your guests can put on their Instagram.”
“Wel , this definitely fits the bil ,” Camila said. She sipped her tea.
“And thanks so much for taking the time to sit down with us. I’m sure it must have been a bit surprising when we showed up at your door.”
“A bit,” said Angie. “I suppose I wasn’t entirely truthful when I said I haven’t thought about Neil in years. I’ve read about the case, of course, and I know that there’s some chance that Michael wil be set free, al these years later.”
“Yes,” Camila said. “We hope so. His conviction has actual y been vacated, but he hasn’t been released from prison because the Commonwealth is stil pressing charges. There’s going to be a new trial.”
“They’re going to try him again?” Angie said. She seemed genuinely shocked, and Camila and Hannah exchanged glances.
“I . . . uh, I hope you don’t mind me just asking straight out. But do you think Michael is guilty? Do you think he murdered Sarah Fitzhugh?” Hannah asked.
Angie let out a sigh. “I don’t know,” she said. “Look, you know, every time . . . or almost every time, some high-profile man gets cal ed out publicly about sexual assault, or whatever, it feels like he has three or four female friends lined up to say what a great guy he’s always been to them. I don’t want to be that fool, you know? I mean, I knew Michael. We hung out a few times, with Neil too of course. If you’d asked me then if Mike was capable of raping and murdering anyone I would have laughed in your face. But could he have done it? Sure. I mean, I wasn’t there. And how wel did I know him, real y?”
Hannah wanted to cheer—final y someone with some goddamn sense—but Camila didn’t hide her disappointment. Her face fel , and she put down her fork. She opened her mouth as if she were about to ask a question, then subsided.
“Do you know anything about Michael’s movements that night that would lead you to think that he could have gone to the Fitzhugh house?” Hannah asked.
Camila shot a dagger look at her.
“God no,” Angie said. “I’m not saying that. I just mean that I can’t know, can I? I didn’t know Mike that wel . He never struck me as the violent type and he could be very charming. But there’s no way to know, is there, what he was like with other people? He might have been very good at hiding his true personality.”
Hannah nodded.
“Angie, could I ask you to go back a bit?” Camila said. “Can you tel us a little bit about your relationship with Neil Prosper? How did you meet? And anything you can tel us about Michael’s friendship with Neil could be helpful too. Do you know if they were close? If they’d been friends for long?”
“Oh God,” Angie rol ed her eyes. “Me and Neil. It real y wasn’t any great romance. We were in high school together, but Neil was four years ahead. He was good-looking, real y confident. You know, he wasn’t a jock and he wasn’t any kind of academic star, but he stil had al the girls chasing him. He was in a band for a while, and I guess he was a charmer too, in his own way. He never noticed me in school. It was years later when we got together. I was in col ege, but I was home for Thanksgiving, I think, and we connected one night at a bar. Needless to say, my parents were thril ed.” She laughed a little. “I don’t real y know much of anything about his friendship with Mike. They knew each other awhile, for sure. Mike was a lot older than Neil—I guess Neil would have been about twenty-six whereas Mike was in his thirties—but they sure liked each other’s company.
We never got into the history of their friendship, or anything. They talked about sailing sometimes. Maybe that was how they met?” She paused, then seemed to feel like she might have disappointed them.
“Honestly, Neil was a bit of a slacker and he smoked too much weed, but he was pretty harmless.”
“The papers said he was using heroin that night, the night of the murder,” Hannah put in. There had been pro-prosecution coverage in the media that focused on the fact that Dandridge’s story had been that he spent the night of the murder hanging out with Neil Prosper and using drugs, and that he had fal en asleep on Prosper’s couch.
The articles focused strongly on the drug use, saying that Prosper was Dandridge’s drug dealer and that Dandridge’s only defense was that he had been shooting up and was so strung out he couldn’t have committed the murder. The tone of the articles was consistently skeptical, and had not been the defense used at Dandridge’s trial.
Hannah had supposed that his attorney had realized that heroin use was not the most sympathetic of excuses.
Angie made a face. “No way,” she said. “I never saw Neil touch anything harder than an E tab. Besides, I was there that night.”
Hannah caught her breath. Camila sat up straighter in her chair.
“You were with Neil and Michael on the night of the murder?”
Hannah asked.
“Yes,” Angie said, simply. “Wel , I was with them from about seven P.M. until just after ten. Then I went home.”