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  67. 3:46 a.m.

I look at the journal pages thumbtacked to the walls of the kitchen. They are in stacks — three pages, two pages, four pages — arranged by entry. There looks to be around forty.

“How many entries?”

“Around eighty, but these are the only ones that detail the people she was blackmailing.”

“And the strings?”

“I connected the entries to any other entry she mentions. So for instance, in the third entry, she calls a guy ‘4th and Lex,’ and she mentions him again in the seventh entry, that he paid.”

“And let me guess, that’s what the red and blue sticky notes are for.”

“Red is paid, blue is unpaid, yellow is unknown.”

“And green?”

“Green has a list of each entry’s highlights and any points of reference as to the timeline.”

“Wow, I’m impressed. I’ve never seen you do anything so—”

“Organized. I know. I’m quite proud of myself.”

“Slow down, hotshot, you have a long way to go.” I add, “Okay, so how many of the guys paid?”

“Twenty-seven paid, four called her bluff, and nine are unknown.”

“Did she ever blackmail any women?”

“Not at first, but eventually she blackmailed a few. Jennifer wrote that she couldn’t deal with all the crying. The guys, they just paid. The women, they felt guilty and they wanted to explain to her why they did it. And Jennifer — she didn’t much care.”

“And, of course, there could be several more entries that are missing, that aren’t even up there.”

“Correct.”

“Okay, I feel pretty up to speed. So, the order you have them in is different than the order they were put in by the detectives?”

“Not a whole lot different, but yes. I marked each page with how the detectives ordered them, but I don’t think they were putting too much emphasis on the journal — there were quite a few little details they missed.”

“And using the movies Megan and her boyfriend went to, you were able to put them in the correct order.”

“It wasn’t just the movies, though they were a big help. It was Megan and Derrick’s anniversaries, Jennifer and James’ relationship, and of course—” his face flushes in embarrassment, “— the size of her boobs.”

I laugh at my dad’s prudishness.

“Wait,” I say. “Who is James?”

“Jennifer’s boyfriend.”

I smile. This makes me happy.

“I didn’t read about him. And Megan doesn’t mention him when the detectives interview her.”

“He was Derrick’s cousin. They only dated for a couple months, then James and his family moved to South Africa.”

“So, Jennifer and Megan are cousins and they were dating Derrick and James who are also cousins.”

“Right.”

“And this James was never a suspect?”

“He was in South Africa.”

“Right.”