Instead, my expertise, and the profession’s plain truth that numbers do not lie the way people do, laid those crimes bare.

Christopher could sit in a hospital bed and construct any story he liked about being an unwilling bystander, a good man trapped, a reluctant participant keeping things under control.

His bank records could not construct anything.

They could only report what had happened, dispassionately, line by line, the way ledgers do: money in, on this date, in this amount, for this reason, again and again, for two years.

You cannot cross-examine a bank statement.