“As Robby got more involved, he started taking over. He wasn’t helping me with my project anymore—it became our project, and then he started acting like it was his project. After we’d meet with one of the families, he’d give them his card with his contact information, tell them they could get in touch with him anytime. In fact, that’s when this ridiculous Montague thing started, when he had those cards printed up: ‘Robert Montague, Documentary Productions and Creative Consultancy.’ ”

Gurney looked skeptical. “He was trying to elbow you out, steal the project?”

“It was sicker than that. Robby Meese looks like a god, but he came from a screwed-up home where bad things happened, and he spent most of his childhood in equally messed-up foster homes. Deep down he’s the most pathetically insecure person you’ll ever meet. Some of the families we were talking to, trying to sign up for official interviews—Robby was desperate to impress them. I think he’d have done anything for their approval, anything to be accepted by them. To make them like him. It was kind of disgusting.”

“What did you do about it?”

“Initially I didn’t know what to do. Then it came to a head when I discovered he’d been having discussions on his own with one of the key family members, a guy I really wanted to get to. When I confronted Robby about it, the whole thing blew up into a screaming match. That’s when I threw him out of our apartment—my apartment. And I got Connie’s lawyer to draft a nice threatening letter to keep him away from the project—my project.”

“How did he take it?”

“At first he got very nice, slimy-nice. I told him to fuck off. Then he started telling me that messing around with old murder cases could be risky and I should be careful—that maybe I didn’t know what I was getting into. He’d call me late at night, leave messages on my phone about how he could protect me and how a lot of the people I was dealing with—including my thesis adviser—weren’t what they seemed to be.”

Gurney sat up a bit straighter in his chair. “What next?”

“Next? I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, I’d get a restraining order and have him arrested as a stalker.”

“That have any effect?”

“Depends what you mean. The calls stopped. But then the weird stuff started happening.”

Madeleine stopped what she was doing at the sink and came to the table. “Sounds like this is getting intense. Mind if I join you?”