Frimpong: Less than a year before we married. Obviously we rushed a bit into things. The romance of it all. But she got pregnant with Ned and my parents are very old-fashioned and I didn’t like to let them down. So we got married, and I went into it very optimistically but it didn’t work out. No regrets though, as we stayed good friends—I would like to stress that we were always good friends—and we got Ned.

Garcia: So she returned to the United States?

Frimpong: She had kept working in the US. The travel was a strain on our marriage. But her clients were in the US and mine were all in London or Ghana. Working in Austin was never an option for me. And our work was so important to us both.

Garcia: Had you been in touch with them recently?

Frimpong: I’d gotten an email from her the week before, just updating me, expressing some concern about Ned and his lack of focus in school. He was running around with some kids who’d gotten kicked out of Lakehaven for drinking and drugs and ended up in private school. We emailed more than we talked. I sent checks for Ned’s support; I invited them often to London, or to visit my parents in Ghana, but they usually said no. I got to see him about once a year, either in the summer or at Christmastime. I know Ned resented me. I wasn’t around, and when I wanted him around was when he wanted his holidays with his friends. I couldn’t win with him. I should have done more, but one gets so busy with life. He wanted his own life so he can’t resent me for having mine. Clearly if I had been there, he would have stayed on a more productive path than the one he was on. Danielle let him down. She was too permissive.

Garcia: So what do you think happened?

Frimpong: A murderer stalking this neighborhood park seems unlikely to me. I don’t think she ran afoul of someone who was just out hunting a victim, like a serial killer. I think she made an enemy.

Garcia: Who? Or what sort of enemy, rather?

Frimpong: (pauses) She told me once that she saw people at their greatest and at their worst. Their greatest when they got the child she’d helped them adopt. I can imagine those were golden moments for her.

Garcia: And the worst?

Frimpong: That, she didn’t explain. But she told me in an email that a former client and neighbor had her worried. I assume she meant Kyle and Iris Pollitt. I’d met them before on a visit to Austin; their children were friends with Ned.

Garcia: Define “worried.”

Frimpong: I feel that perhaps, at some level, she thought she’d made a mistake in getting them a child. Even though it had been years.