“I know, Charley, but we can’t just ignore the evidence.”

“What about the one in California. She disappeared two months ago.”

“Weeks after Reyes was released.”

I scoffed and walked to Uncle Bob’s window. It overlooked… another window. “You know what this will do to him,” I said without turning around. But when I did turn around, I pinned all my anger on him. “You know how incredibly unfair this is.”

“I do.” He raked a hand through his hair, not about to argue with me on that point.

I turned away, unable to look at either of them. “What about Anna’s phone records from work? What about the woman who called her out of the blue, wanting to meet?”

“We’re still going over the records,” the captain said. “We don’t even know when she received the call. So far, nothing out of the ordinary has popped up.”

“Anything unusual about this new case? Did the guy mention anything to anyone?”

When I turned back, Ubie had lowered his head. “He told his mother he wanted to talk to Reyes. He told her he found out he’d bought a bar and was going to go by there and talk to him. That was last week.”

“So, what? He goes down there and Reyes convinces him to write a suicide note so he can abduct him? I’ve never heard Reyes use the word glorious once, by the way. You know, in case you’re keeping track.”

I swept past them. They clearly weren’t going to let me see Reyes, and I needed to be on the phone with a lawyer instead of wasting my time here. Uncle Bob followed me out to a surge of questions from the reporter.

“Detective! Detective! Are you once again trying to accuse Reyes Farrow of a crime he didn’t commit?”

I stopped and spotted Sylvia Starr in the crowd of reporters. Wonderful.

“Is this about the lawsuit?” she asked.

I rolled my eyes. Though I would not have condoned a lawsuit, Reyes had every right to pursue one, and I was beginning to think it might not be a bad idea. Maybe if the city lost a few million to him, they’d think twice about dragging him in here on a whim.

Ubie followed me all the way to Misery, where he grabbed my arm and turned me toward him. “I don’t think he’s guilty,” he said under his breath. “But, pumpkin, you cannot expect me to ignore the evidence when it’s staring me in the face.”

“Of course not,” I said, pulling free. “But the last time you knew he wasn’t guilty, he spent ten years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.”

I climbed back into Misery and slammed the door.

“If it makes you feel better,” Ubie said through my window, “you were right about that corpse stolen out of the cemetery. We went right to the head groundskeeper’s house and found the body of a young woman who’d died recently in the closet of the guest room.”

“It really doesn’t,” I said as Osh backed away.

I called Cookie. “I need to know exactly who was on that jury.”

By the time I got back to the office, Cookie not only had a list of jurors, but she’d pulled up recent DMV photos of almost all of them as well.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” she said, pulling me into a hug the minute I walked in.

“Thanks, Cook. Anything?”

“I’m still working on the current photos, but I did find this.”

She pulled up an article about the trial we’d never seen before. It was dated over a year after Reyes was convicted.

She pointed to a passage. “See here? One of the jurors said she was bullied by the other jurors, coerced into changing her vote to guilty, even though she believed him to be innocent. She goes on to say… here.” She pointed to another passage. “She said they badgered her, and one juror called her a lovesick fool. She also received threatening letters during deliberation, and another one told her to just let them all go home. Said even his idiot kid could see Reyes was guilty. She changed her verdict and sealed the fate of Reyes Farrow despite her gut instincts.” Cookie stood back to let me peruse. “She sounds more than a little miffed. Apparently, there was an investigation at her insistence, but I can’t imagine anything ever came of it.”

“And who was this again?”

Cookie looked through her list. “Sandra Rhammar. But you haven’t seen the best part.”

I turned to her, almost afraid to hope she’d found anything that would convince the cops Reyes was innocent. She slid a picture over of Sandra Rhammar from the trial. “Look familiar?”

I snapped it off the desk. “Oh, my god, Cookie. You are amazing.”

“I am. I really am.”

I jumped up and hugged her neck, realizing I’d forgotten about Osh. He stood over me, looking at what Cookie had found. “Isn’t that chick on TV?”

I grinned. “Yes, she is.”

“She changed her name,” I said into the phone, trying to convince the captain to listen to me. “She was a juror.” I’d tried Ubie about a hundred times – to no avail. I guess he was done with me for the day. Or he was giving a press conference. Either way.

“And who is this again?” the captain asked. The background noise was deafening, and he was having a hard time hearing me.

“It was Sandra Rhammar.”

“Sandra Rhammar,” he said to someone else. Hopefully that person was doing a background now.

“She changed her name to Sylvia Starr. She’s right there in front of the station.”