Corwin had chosen the story with a villain in it over the arithmetic with the answer in it, because the story felt like investigating and the arithmetic felt like paperwork.

And that preference had nearly cost Espe everything.

He promised himself, laying those matched columns side by side, that he would never again trust the story his suspicion told him over the numbers he could check.

Suspicion had given him a thief who was innocent.

The paperwork, when he finally did it, gave him the one who was guilty.

He had simply preferred, for two long months, the version that let him feel like he was doing something to the version that would have actually told him the truth.