“Probably more bad news,” Thomas said, and then rather than opening it, he tossed it onto the coffee table. “This case is so close and yet so far. It’s swimming all around us and yet I can’t grab hold of any part and reel it in. Why is this one so slippery? What are we missing?” He took a large sip from his glass. “Damn it! How in the hell did we not win that battle with Blythe?”

“Are we overlooking another possible suspect? Are we being too narrow-minded?” Jack asked. “Who besides Blythe had motive?”

Thomas just gave him an uninterested look. “It’s not just motive. This crime also has ability with it. Someone has to have had the ability to pull it off. Blythe is top of the list for ability. He’s a doctor for Christ’s sake. And he definitely has motive. Losing Lauren to Colin, Julia reviewing his cases. These are big reasons. Who else has motive and ability? No one.”

Jack was silent and Thomas knew he was right. There was no one else. Jack finally said, “So, you never told me what was in the envelope?”

“Julia DeHaviland’s financial records.”

“That finally came?” Jack sat up and eagerly reached for it. “God, we asked for that when we first arrived, almost three weeks ago. Detective Gavin’s been holding onto it for so long that I thought he would never give it to us.”

“Yes, it was about time Gavin handed them over. Funny that he didn’t say anything about this when we were with him earlier,” Thomas said without any emotion. If Gavin had finally given these records to him, with no discussion about them, it was because they had no real impact on this case. Colin was still very guilty.

Jack opened the seal and slid out the documents. He looked through them for a while and then exhaled slowly before setting them aside. “Julia DeHaviland gets the last laugh.”

“How so?” Thomas’s eyes were fixed on Jack, waiting for the answer.

“First, there’s no trail in her bank records indicating movements of large amounts of cash in or out. Nothing to show that she was hiding anything. According to this, she made very little money. She was basically broke all along.”

“That can’t be right,” Thomas said, stunned. “How could a plastic surgeon not have any money?”

“Oh, the account was opened with a fairly large sum. It covered the down payment on the house and also the expenses for a few months. But there are no deposits until Julia was hired at the medical examiner’s office. The only deposits were her paychecks from there. And what she earned wasn’t enough to cover the bills each month by this time. Some bills were paid, others weren’t. Then she just stopped paying everything altogether. The collection notices started quite a while ago and have just been multiplying.”