“I know what it looks like but that had nothing to do with what happened. Absolutely nothing, I was eager for more experience. This is an intense place, being new, I felt I needed to catch up.”

“You traded with Dan but never collected on your half of the bargain.”

“What do you mean?”

“You never asked him to cover for you in return.”

“Guess I didn’t… I forgot he owed me anything, like I told you, Lieutenant, I’ve got memory issues.”

“I guess that could also explain forgetting you traded with Dan in the first place.”

“Sometimes I forget where I put my shoes.”

“That I can tell you, Lara. They were right where you said, near the box of guns.”

“I… I was speaking rhetorically. But … sure.”

“So you traded with Dan to get experience.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay … looks like you’ve explained away each of the question marks I had when I came in. The problem is, each one makes sense but when you put them all together, John Nguyen doesn’t like what he sees. I know because he told me. John’s basically a good guy, but he’s also a highly suspicious guy. I had a case I didn’t want to file because I felt the evidence didn’t justify it but John bulldozed ahead anyway. And got a conviction. He’s aggressive, smart, and really good at convincing juries.”

Silence.

“Lara?”

“So what do we do, Lieutenant?”

“What we do is maybe you can explain something away as more than coincidence or memory lapse. Anything that breaks up this … big database of coincidence.”

“I already admitted I knew Carlo back in high school. I just didn’t know you meant Knew with a capital K.”

“Understood. But I can tell you for a fact that John is not going to buy the part about switching with Dan Paillard as self-education. He’s convinced you were part of the murder and were aiming to control the situation. That means premeditation and that’s like a big martini for a guy like John.”

“But—”

“Hear me out, Lara—you okay? Here’s another tissue. It’s important that you see it from a prosecutor’s perspective: What you’re asking John to believe is that you had no idea what Monte was up to when he left the house, that he came home and told you he’d murdered someone, that you stashed the murder weapon for him and didn’t report anything because you were scared. John’s seen plenty of women in domestic situations, that much he can probably buy. But then you want him to believe that you just happened to work the scene for self-education. John is not going to accept that. And, to be honest, in my opinion neither is a jury. They watch too much TV, want everything to make sense by the third commercial. Combine that with your prints on the murder weapon and you can—”