Ethan’s team turned up more. Garrick had bought a handgun through a private, undocumented seller despite a prior felony conviction under a different alias.

He’d forged my mother’s signature on a home-equity loan and moved nearly eighty thousand dollars into a shell company controlled by his cousin.

Still, he strutted through town as if the divorce were a temporary nuisance, even posting smiling photos of himself online, calling himself the victim of a bitter, ungrateful wife.

At a preliminary hearing, he leaned across the hallway. “When this is over, she’ll come crawling back. Women like your mother need someone stronger.”

“You confuse strength with cruelty,” I said.

“And you confuse paperwork with power.”