What he heard from Elena was the opposite of scattered.

It was focused.

It was specific.

It named particular people to call and particular things they would find, with the strange steadiness of someone reading from a map rather than guessing at a maze.

Guilty people grasping for time tend to make their claims vague, because vagueness cannot be checked and disproven; the vaguer the better, the more it can be stretched to fill the hours.

Elena was doing the opposite.