“What evidence?” I demanded. “All they had was that birthday card and my notebook and some witnesses who said they saw Stubs talking to Payton. How could they keep him in jail for that?”
Donny leaned over to grab a box of tissues, and he brought it to the table. I was having a tough time. “Here,” he said, offering me the box. Ma got up and went to the cabinet to get a glass, which she filled with water and brought it back for me. She stroked my hair while Donny told me the rest.
“The search warrant at the Schroder house produced some circumstantial evidence that the jury found compelling. In Stubby’s nightstand they found a hunting knife with a blade sharp enough to inflict the wounds found on Payton Wyly’s body. The knife also had dried blood on it with the same blood type as the victim.”
I gasped, shocked to my core that Stubby had something like that in his nightstand.
Donny held up his hand. “Stubs told me the knife was a present from his dad and the dried blood is his. He’d accidentally cut himself with it, and his blood type is O positive, the same as Payton’s. The feds should’ve run a simple test to determine if the blood is male or female, but they claim that they haven’t gotten to that yet, and running a DNA test will take months because the labs are so backed up.”
A memory floated up from years ago, and I said, “Donny, Stubs is telling the truth! His dad walked out a week after Stubby’s twelfth birthday. That knife was the last present he ever gave him. That summer Stubs got it into his head that he wanted to make himself a walking staff like the one Gandalf used in Lord of the Rings, and while he was working on it, the knife slipped and he cut his hand really bad. If you look at his left palm you’ll see the scar.”
Donny nodded and put up his hand again. “I saw the scar, kiddo and I’m going to subpoena his medical records to show he got stitches for it, but still, this is all evidence the DA is presenting simply to move the case to trial. They didn’t have to prove that the knife was the murder weapon today. They only had to prove that it could be the murder weapon.”
I wiped at my cheeks with the tissue. I hated what was happening to Stubs.
“There was more evidence that was a little harder to explain, though,” Donny went on.
“Like what?” Ma asked.
“They found some hiking boots in Mrs. Schroder’s closet with a tread pattern similar to the footprints found at the murder scene. I saw the boots and they’re two sizes too big for Stubs. His mom says they were her ex-husband’s, and she’s kept them all these years because they were like new and she was waiting to see if Stubby would grow into them before she gave them away to Goodwill.”
I shook my head, feeling bitter. “They’ll try to make anything fit, won’t they?”
Donny pressed his lips together. “Some stuff they didn’t have to work too hard at.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“On the day of Payton’s murder, Stubby was seen by the Wyly’s neighbor, skateboarding up and down her street. The neighbor is a retired cop who happened to be working at his computer, which faces the road. He had a good view of Stubby and picked Stubby’s photo out of a six pack—a set of photos of random people including the suspect, similar to a police lineup,” he explained. “He says that Stubs cruised up and down her street for a good half hour between three and three thirty P.M. That not only puts him at her home but within a half mile of her abandoned car.”
“Why was he at her house?” I asked, wondering why Stubby would do something so dumb.
“He says he was worried about her and wanted to keep an eye out from a distance. He’d been hoping that she’d stay in on her birthday and take the new car out the next day, so he was waiting and watching for any sign of that. He swears he thought that’s exactly what’d happened, because other than a brief interruption to take a whiz in the woods, Stubby watched her house until about four and never saw her leave. We now know she left while he was in the woods.”
“But if he was in front of her house during that time, then he couldn’t have abducted her!” I pointed out.
“That’s the thing, Maddie,” Donny said. “No one knows exactly what time Payton was abducted. She was due at her friend’s house at three forty-five. Her car was found half a mile away from her home, and she left her house sometime between three and three thirty. The timeline is tricky and no one saw her leave, not her parents and not even the retired cop, because after watching Stubby head toward the woods down the street, he got a phone call and claims he was distracted for the next hour.”
“Is there any good news?” Ma asked.
Donny shook his head. “Not really. In fact, it gets worse.”
“How much worse?” I whispered. I didn’t know how much more bad news I could take.
Donny sighed again. “As you know, Stubs had run a search on his phone of the Tibbolt’s address and phone number the night you called Mrs. Tibbolt. For whatever reason, he bookmarked the search. The feds presented a screenshot of the search on Stubby’s phone in court, along with several other screenshots of other searches he’d done in the days after Tevon went missing but hadn’t yet been found murdered. All those searches were the same. Stubby had Googled the words Tevon Tibbolt death. The second those searches went up on the screen, the court collectively gasped. It was incredibly powerful.”
“Donny,” I said, knowing the way Stubby’s mind worked almost as well as my own. “Stubs was upset about the fact that Tevon was missing, and he believed me when I told him that Tevon was dead. He was only trying to do a search to see if Tevon’s body had been found. He had no idea he’d been murdered!”