The subject header was “Questions Remain In Michaels Case,” and the sender was not an address she recognized.

A chill ran over her arms and she clicked to open the e-mail reluctantly. It was a link to the Naples Daily News online articles. She scanned it quickly.

The murder of Jessie Michaels is not a closed case, according to the Naples police. Despite the fact that Dr. Rafe Marino was acquitted of the July 2007 murder of his girlfriend just last week, prosecutor Daniel Smithton has indicated there is a new lead in the year-old murder. Despite accusations in the media that the indictment of Dr. Marino was botched, the prosecutor maintains the case against him was strong. The drawn-out and highly publicized trial has been devastating to Smithton’s reputation and former conviction rate of 100 percent for homicide cases.

Smithton theorized during the trial that Marino and the victim’s daughter, Sara Michaels, had been engaged in an affair, and together plotted the murder of mother and girlfriend. Given that Dr. Marino cannot be tried for the same crime twice, Smithton’s dogged pursuit of a closure to this case would suggest that attention may be turned to securing a conviction of Sara Michaels for complicity to commit murder.

Shit. Taking deep breaths, Sara willed herself not to be sick, not to read the rest of the article, which was just a recap of everything she already knew. Arresting her was all just speculation, the media trying to draw out a trial that had garnered them a great deal of attention. There was no evidence to prosecute her. Rafe’s attorney had assured her of that over and over again. There was no evidence at all of a relationship between her and Rafe, and the evidence against him presented in court had been purely circumstantial. It had hurt him that he hadn’t had an alibi, but she herself had been at work that night. But despite a lack of alibi, no one had seen him at her mother’s that night either. No one had seen anyone entering the house, or seen his car parked in the driveway, or on the street.

The basis of their prosecution had been the hair and clothing fibers, and a single fingerprint on the window in her mother’s bedroom that matched Rafe’s left index finger. But he and her mother had spent virtually all non-working hours together, mostly at her house, so that meant nothing as far as Sara was concerned. In the end, the jury had agreed. It hadn’t been enough to convict him.