Yes, it was Dr. Janine Snow.

Howard backed onto the street and drove. He headed east out of his Piedmont Heights neighborhood and soon found himself on Skyline Parkway, with the green fairways of the golf course on his left and the steep pitch of the hillside on his right. The Enger Tower loomed above him. He turned at Hank Jensen Drive and made his way up to the parking lot at the base of the monument. There were other cars there, from people enjoying the summer evening. In a Ford Taurus, two teenagers groped each other, kissing, their clothes askew. When the girl saw Howard watching them, she extended her middle finger. He looked away.

Everything made him think of the trial.

A teenage boy had driven here with his girlfriend on January 28, just like the boy and girl in the Taurus. They passed a Rav4 on the way to the tower but couldn’t say exactly when or where.

Howard left the parking lot and kept driving. It was as if he were on autopilot, not setting a course. He was back on Skyline Parkway, and moments later, his LeBaron drifted to a stop at a spur road that climbed sharply up the cliffside to his left. At the summit of the road was the mansion belonging to Janine Snow. He knew he shouldn’t be here, but he turned the wheel and drove slowly to the top of the hill.

There was Janine’s house. He recognized it from the television reports and from the photographs at the trial. What an amazing place, like a palace built on the roof of the world. Lights were on. She was home, the defendant out on bail. There were no cars around. He wondered if she was alone. Just her, sitting amid the ruins of her perfect life. And Howard only a few feet away.

Judge Edblad had told them: You are not investigators.

Even so, he couldn’t restrain his imagination. He sat in the car with the engine running, and he realized that this was the very place where everything had happened. On January 28, inside that door, behind the glass windows, Jay Ferris had been murdered. If Howard had been here then, he would have heard the shot.

What would he have seen? A stranger running away?

Or Janine Snow pulling out of the garage in her husband’s Hummer to hide a gun?

Howard realized that what he wanted more than anything was to hear the story from Janine’s own mouth. He wished he could talk to her, look into her eyes, and listen to her answer every question. The frustrating thing was that he knew he never would. She wouldn’t take the stand. Defendants hardly ever testified. She was the one person who really knew the truth, and he would never hear her say what it was.

Somehow, his car engine turned off, and his door opened.