“That desk is in my study, in my house,” I said.

“But you needn’t worry.

I am not going to touch it, or the folder, or anything else.

I am not going to give you or anyone a single reason to say the evidence was tampered with.

We are going to leave all of it exactly where it is, and we are going to let the police find it themselves, in its proper place, the right way.” It was the harder choice, and the slower one, and every instinct in me wanted to pull that folder out and hold the proof in my hand.

But I had learned long ago that the surest way to lose a righteous case is to handle it wrongly, and I was not going to hand Vanessa that gift.