"Not your mother in Florida." She looked at me. "Ms. Mavrides, I know what you want. You want to walk up to that brick house on the corner and bang on the door. I understand. If you do it, you'll give her time to think, and she'll call him, and they'll get their stories straight, and some lawyer will spend a year saying the footage was edited. Let me get the phone records. Let me get a warrant. Give me a week."
"The hearing's in a week."
Detective Okonjo looked at Ruthanne. Ruthanne looked at Detective Okonjo. Something passed between them that I wasn't part of.
"The hearing," said the detective, "should go ahead as scheduled."
That was the hardest week of my life, and I've had some hard weeks.
I went back to work Friday night because the mortgage doesn't care. I came home Saturday at eight in the morning and found Izzy at the kitchen table, fully dressed, eating cereal out of the box, with the district's evidence packet spread out in front of him, the one Ruthanne had emailed me and I'd printed and stupidly left on the counter.
He looked up when I came in. He had a page in his hand.
"Mrs. Tillotson wrote a statement," he said.
I put my bag down. "I know."
"She says she saw me at the mailbox kiosk. At night. Twice. Handing things to kids in cars." His voice was very level. "She says she's seen me out there after eleven. I've never been out there after eleven. I don't even know our mailbox number."
"I know, honey."
"Why would she say that?" He put the page down. "Why would she do that? She doesn't even know me. She's never even talked to me. She brought you a lasagna."