“He said in court it wasn’t his knife. That he never carried a weapon. But the prosecutor maintained that he could be lying, since it was a dangerous part of town. It would have made sense to carry a weapon.”

“But a bowie knife?”

“I agree, it’s illogical. A bowie is meant to gut or kill and it’s big, cumbersome.”

Sara shook her head. “He wouldn’t have carried that unless he had intended to murder her. And I don’t think he would have drunk himself into a stupor or stuck around after the fact if he had intended to kill her. If it was a spontaneous crime, you would think he would pick up the nearest weapon—the absinthe bottle, a glass, the absinthe spoon, or even his bare hands—and kill her. Hell, he could have strangled her with her hair ribbons or smothered her with the bedsheets or beaten her to death with his fists. Do you think the knife could have belonged to her?”

“It’s possible.” Actually, Gabriel was almost certain it hadn’t been Anne’s, but damn it, he couldn’t share what he truly knew with Sara. He couldn’t tell her that he knew the knife didn’t belong to John Thiroux, knew Anne wasn’t street-wise or hard enough to carry a weapon of that power. That it would have scared her. “What about in your mother’s case? Who would have had access to that type of knife?”

“I don’t know,” she said, biting her lip and leaning back against his desk. “Rafe isn’t the outdoors type. And he wasn’t carrying a knife in his shorts and golf shirt when I saw him at dinner.” She gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “God, the idea of Rafe with a knife like that is just insane. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“We should see if we can find out who sent those pictures to you. There’s got to be a tracking number or something.” That bothered him. There didn’t seem to be a logical reason for those pictures to be sent to her, especially without any explanation or instructions. And it had taken effort to locate her temporary address in Louisiana.

Sara shuddered. “I know. But I’m almost afraid to find out who sent them. Or to find out we can’t find out who sent them, you know what I mean?”

“I know.”

She threw her hands up in the air. “Arrgh. I just want to solve all of this. I want it to go away. I want murder to go away. I’m so goddamn afraid and I hate it, I hate this.”