“Please,” she said.
“Since you and your mother refused to talk to the police about it,” he said, “I don’t see why I should talk with you. The door’s behind you, use it. Good day.”
“I would like to hire you,” she said. She had gotten better at lying when she’d lived on the streets. No, I’m not homeless. No, I wasn’t sleeping behind that Dumpster, I was just looking for shade. I have a razor in my sock and if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll cut you.
He blinked, and then he smiled. “Hire me for what, Ms. Norton?”
“Someone has been harassing me online. Claiming they know what I don’t remember, and that I’m going to ‘pay.’ I would like to hire you to find out who it is.”
“You’re hiring me, or your mother?” He remembered Laurel. Well, Jane thought, Mom is hard to forget.
“Does it matter who is paying?” She had no idea where she would get the money, but maybe, if he thought there was a job in it, he would talk to her. Tell her something useful. “You’d be paid.”
His mouth narrowed. “Have your memories returned?”
And then she decided to lie. What good had being the amnesiac done her? She was “the girl who doesn’t remember.” And she was so tired of it.
“Yes.” Not a lie; she had remembered talking Romeo and Juliet with David, and that was new, and the more she thought about it, maybe that was not a touch of confabulation. It was real. It had to be. “More has started to come back. Yes. I think there was much more to that night than people realize. And I’m starting to remember it. So. Rates? How does this work?” She would figure out the money later. There would probably be a retainer fee.
“I’m not going to work for you, Jane,” he said. “You wrote that note, you killed that boy trying to kill yourself.”
“No one ever thought I was suicidal,” she said.
“Your father…”
“An accident.” She made the words sharper than she intended.
“Your family has more than its fair share of accidents, then,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She wouldn’t give up. “David passed me a note in class. That was in your report.”
He blinked, as if recalling the detail.
“I found that note. David wrote in it that he was in trouble. He was in danger. Real trouble. Maybe someone wanted to hurt him. Does that put a different spin on the case?”
He seemed to study her face for evidence she was lying. “Where is this other note?”
“Someplace safe, and if you work for me, I’ll tell you. I’m just thinking maybe you have some professional pride and you don’t want to be played. And you got played. That suicide note was a fake.”
He shook his head with a slight smile. “It wasn’t. We got a sample of your handwriting, had it analyzed and compared. You wrote the suicide note.”
Her heart jolted in her chest. “Analyzed? Why wasn’t that in my lawyer’s report?”
“Because Cal Hall dropped the lawsuit and settled for the insurance proceeds before we went to document exchange. So his lawyer didn’t have to tell you about the analysis of the note. And the police weren’t eager to tell you anything after you and your mother wouldn’t cooperate. Once the note was destroyed during the testing and they decided not to charge you, well, it didn’t matter to the cops. And the Halls had settled. End of story.”
Her hand clutched at her stomach as if she’d taken a punch. “But it makes no sense,” she said.
“You were in love with David Hall and he wasn’t in love with you. Simple.”
“He had had a girlfriend for two years. She and I had been best friends for most of our lives. If I was so eaten up with jealousy, why then? Why that night? What happened to make me crack?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” But he glanced away from her.
“You didn’t buy it. The suicide note. I mean, it’s awfully convenient.”
He sighed as if in pain, and kept explaining. “A note like that is only evidence if it is contemporaneous with the writer’s mental condition. You have to write it and then act immediately afterward for it to be a factor. The note wasn’t written immediately prior.”
“How do you know that?”
“Ask the Halls.”
“But the Halls let everyone think that I’d written it that night.” A storm of emotions surged through her. “Which is crazy. Who writes a note while driving? Or did I write it and convince him to get in the car and look for the nearest remote spot to kill us both?”
“People have actually done such things, Jane. You could have written the note, gotten him in the car, and then looked for the nearest place where the fall would kill you both.”
“Why did you tell me this?”
“The note analysis isn’t privileged information. Now, go get whatever help you need and put your life on track.”
Jane sank into the chair, and Franklin surprised her by getting her a glass of water. She drank it down. “Please. I have to know. This analysis. What did it say?”
“Your handwriting. The paper came from a Japanese notebook, a manufacturer called Tayami, known for very high-quality paper. And the ink was at least two years old.”
“You mean I wrote it long before, or the ink was old?”
“It was written at least two years before the crash.”
“How can they tell?”
“Some pen companies put chemical markers in the ink, so the forensic analysis can show how old the ink is if needed. But then Mr. Hall dropped the lawsuit.”
“If they had told people the note was that old, no one would have believed it.”
“That was about the time David Hall and Kamala Grayson started dating. You might have been on a slow, angry burn that whole time. Written the note then and only acted later.” He said this like it was a suggested theory.
“Let me guess. That’s what Perri Hall thought.”
He said nothing.
“A two-year-old note? I kept it on my person? In my schoolbag?” Someone left it, she thought. I wrote it long before the crash, I didn’t destroy it, someone else got hold of it and then they planted it at the scene. That’s one possible explanation. Stop dancing around whether you wrote it or not.
Franklin said, “It was your handwriting. The analysis doesn’t try to guess the motivations of an angry teenage girl.”
Someone framed you for this. Someone you trusted. Someone who could have known about that note, maybe written for another reason or out of context, and they decided to crucify you the morning after the crash.
Why? Why would you need to frame me? Why blame me?
Because it was murder.
The thought bolted through her brain.
“Thanks.” She got up and without further words she left. She walked past the counselors’ offices, and she hardly blinked at them, but then she saw one with a series of names and the unusual arrangement of letters jumped out at her: Dora Principe/Kevin Ngota/Michael Todd.