“That is very expensive.

Doubting one grieving mother is free.”

The other eighty-seven, for the record, were extraordinary.

Emily’s firm paid for the private forensic consultant the prosecution used on the loan documents, quietly, through a partner’s personal account, and Margaret only found out about it two years later by accident.

The funeral director — a man named Aurelio Santos, whose administrative hold on the disposition was, in Michael Turner’s assessment, worth more than any single piece of physical evidence in the case — refunded every dollar Nathan had paid and then sent the file to the district attorney’s office without being asked.

He testified for a day and a half.