Chapter 28

When she left, she sat in the car and called her mother in Tucson, whom she talked to twice a month and who knew nothing about any of this."You sound different," her mother said seven minutes into the call."Different? How?""Less... I don't know. Less like you're reading from something." A pause. "Did something happen?""Some things are happening," Savannah said. "I'll tell you about them when they're finished.""Are you okay?"She thought about the question the same way she'd thought about it when Quinn asked it: honestly, without the automatic reflex to say yes before she checked. "Getting there," she said.She drove home. She made dinner. She reviewed her testimony one more time—not because she needed to change anything, but because the act of reading it in her own words did something important: it reminded her that what she'd written was exactly what had happened, and that exactness was the thing she'd hold on to when the hearing room was full of people whose job was to cast doubt on it.She was washing dishes when her phone buzzed on the counter. She picked it up, expecting Quinn or Sandoval.It was an email. The sender was a name she didn't recognize: a personal Gmail address, no surname, the display name just Lena. The subject line: I was there before you.She stood at the kitchen sink with water still running over her hands and opened it:

I was a member at Irongate three years ago. I saw your name in the Tribune story. I didn't come forward because I didn't think it would change anything. I'm still not sure, but I need you to know there are more of us than you think, and what you're doing matters. I have records from my time at the gym: texts, a photo of a bruise with a date stamp, a voicemail I saved because I didn't know why at the time. I never showed them to anyone. If it helps, they're yours.

Savannah turned off the faucet. She stood at the kitchen sink in the quiet and read the email twice more. Then she picked up her phone and called Sandoval directly—not by text, because this was not a text situation.He answered on the second ring."There's a fifth witness," she said.A long pause. "Tell me," he said.She told him. When she finished, there was another pause, longer this time. She heard him set something down on a desk; she heard the faint sound of a chair adjusting."A photo with a date stamp," he said. "How long ago?""Three years, according to the email. She said she has texts and a voicemail.""Does she have a lawyer?""She said she found me through the Tribune story. I don't know anything else about her."Sandoval was quiet for another moment. When he spoke, his voice had the quality of someone doing rapid structural calculations. "If the photograph is timestamped three years ago, it predates the earliest incident in our current file by 18 months. It potentially establishes a longer pattern than we've documented." He paused. "Ms. Cole, this changes the scope.""I know," she said."I need to speak to her before the hearing. I need to verify the records. If they're what she describes..." He stopped himself. "Forward me the email tonight."

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