And in the boot of his car, in a black nylon bag, they found what a police property receipt describes as: one LED handheld torch; one pair nitrile gloves (unused); one knit cap; four sealed alcohol prep pads; one 10ml syringe with 25g needle, sealed; and one glass vial, 5ml, partially used, bearing a pharmacy label in the name of a patient who had died in 2023 in a long-term care facility in Parma where a woman named Lorraine Voss — Christopher’s aunt — had been an administrator until 2024.

That is where he got it.

From a dead woman’s leftover medication, in a nursing home, through a family member, eleven months before he used any of it.

He had been assembling the bag for the better part of a year.

Part Sixteen: Fourteen Months

It took fourteen months to get to trial and I will not pretend I remember all of it.

What I remember is corridors, and a great deal of waiting, and the specific exhaustion of having your own life read back to you slowly by people in suits.