On the ninth night he sent ok? and I did not answer for four minutes because I was in the shower, and when I came out there were eleven messages and a missed call and he had called the school’s night duty staff.

I have never once told him off for that.

Part Fourteen: The Nineteenth Day

The Meridian Group’s spring investor evening was on the nineteenth day, at a hotel on Public Square, and there were about two hundred and forty people at it.

Christopher had been talking about it for weeks.

It was the firm’s annual thing — investors, two banks, a couple of trade journalists, the entire client roster.

Four days before, Detective Ruiz and an assistant prosecuting attorney named Deirdre Halloran sat me down and told me two things.