“For what he brings to the case, I think he’ll be fine. He corroborates Mandy’s story up to him leaving to take the ATV out before sundown. When he returned, he’ll say that he found her in the house, hugging her knees by the fireplace. When she saw him, she begged him to leave, and her eyes were red as if she’d been crying.”

“How will he hold up on cross?”

Gloria sighed. “He’ll admit he had been drinking, and so had Mandy. He obviously didn’t see the rape, and Mandy never mentioned it to him, despite him asking her all the way home what was bothering her.”

Helen rubbed the back of her neck, thinking about Mandy’s reputation at Giles County High. She knew that Lou was right about one thing. Pulaski was a small town, and Mandy’s exploits would precede her into court regardless of whether the jury was shown any evidence of it. “What does Lightfoot say about the blow job in the locker room mess?”

Gloria peered up at the ceiling. “He’s never heard anything about that.”

“And you think he’s lying.”

Gloria met her gaze. “I know he is.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because half the students I’ve talked to had heard that rumor. Mandy supposedly gave head to one of the Fitzgerald twins before the first home JV basketball game.”

“The rumor started with the Sartain kid?”

Gloria nodded. “Joey Sartain. He’s a freshman guard on the team who’d arrived early to the game to get some extra shooting in and saw Mandy blowing Doug Fitzgerald in the locker room. He took a picture on his phone and sent it to several of his friends on Snapchat.”

“He didn’t see any money exchange hands, though, right?”

“Correct. We’re still not sure where that part of the story originated. Probably an embellishment as no one I’ve spoken to corroborates that detail.”

“The Snapchat photograph disappeared after his friends opened it, right?”

“Yes, that’s the way it works and why the kids like Snapchat so much.”

Helen again worked the facts through in her mind. She was aware of all of this type of information already and knew that none of it would come into evidence. “You’ve seen the picture, right?”

Gloria nodded. “The school investigated the incident after a parent of one of Sartain’s friends reported it. The school’s IT person captured the photograph.”

“All the image shows is Doug Fitzgerald’s pleasure-soaked face and the back of the girl’s head,” Helen said.

“True.”

“There’s no way you can definitively identify Mandy from it.”

“True again.”

“But you think it’s her.”

Gloria cocked her head at Helen. “Don’t you?”

Helen didn’t answer the question, instead firing off another of her own. “The JV basketball game was about a month after the rape.”