Why didn‘t you tell Truax at once?

I was gathering evidence, Haynes said. She liked the sound of that so much she said it again. I was gathering evidence. I was going to show it to Vern when I got enough of it, when I was sure what he was doing.

Kate could feel Jim‘s eyes on the back of her head but she didn‘t turn around. What changed your mind? Why didn‘t you show it to him?

Haynes didn‘t answer this time.

Did he break off your affair?

Haynes looked up, startled.

Was that why you didn‘t tell him about Allen? Revenge? Stick it to him for going back to his wife?

He wouldn‘t divorce her, Haynes said.

And you weren‘t that happy about the mine anyway, Kate said. I‘m just not sure the world needs another gold mine,‘ you told me. So you decided to sabotage it by selling proprietary information to Gaea, an environmental organization with the Suulutaq on its hit list.

I didn‘t sell it, Hayes said. I never sold it.

You gave it away? How Kate kept the contempt from her face she would never know.

I mailed it to Gaea anonymously. They never knew who it came from. I never would have sold it for money. Haynes looked shocked at the very suggestion. Evidently murder was an acceptable vice compared to corporate espionage. You continued to, uh, steal it and give it away for free after Allen disappeared, is that correct? When did you send off your first data sample?

I don‘t know, I can‘t remember.

Was it April? Kate said, thinking of the first date on Lyda‘s document. Before? I don‘t know. I can‘t remember exactly.

It was before, Kate thought. You were probably copying Allen‘s actions from the first night you saw him. That‘s why the dates were different, you were doing your thing a day or a week behind Allen, at least until he disappeared. When did you find out Lyda Blue knew what you were doing?

Haynes‘s eyes wandered around the cell, pausing briefly on the camera. Something she said made me wonder. She started to come into the office earlier every morning. She watched me send in the rig reports. But then she didn‘t do anything, and I figured . . . And then you told me she was Dewayne Gammons‘s girlfriend. I knew he and Allen were friends. I panicked, I guess. She looked at Kate, again with the big cow eyes. I never meant to kill her, I just wanted to get her out of the way for a little while so I could think.

And clean up any evidence you might have left in case Lyda told Truax, Kate thought. And so you doctored the cookies and delivered them to her door. They‘d found no empty peanut oil bottles in Haynes‘s room or in her office upstairs in the admin building. They‘d found no hard evidence of any kind, in fact, other than the dates and numbers in Lyda Blue‘s hidden file. Again, Haynes was determined to explain, clarify, give painstaking details of her anxiety, her agony of mind. I told her I wanted to talk to her about some stuff in the office, stick picker rotation, you know, busy work. It was just an excuse. I told her the cookies were from Jules. She didn‘t suspect anything.