A confrontation would have accomplished nothing but to warn him, to give him time to run, or to lawyer up, or to refine his story.

The truth, to matter, had to arrive through the proper channels, gathered the proper way, so that it would stand up when it counted and could not be dismissed as the raving of a grieving woman.

I had spent three years being told, gently, that my instincts about Santiago were symptoms.

I was not going to hand anyone the chance to say it again.

I would wait, and I would let the law build the case that my certainty alone could never be, however much the waiting cost me.