“I’m not sure if it’s about his testimony as much as about him, to be honest. But something doesn’t sit right with me. He went on and on about how much he loves Dana, even after he learned of the affair. It came off . . . I don’t know, kind of obsessive.”

“Maybe he was just compensating too much for the jury.”

“I thought about that too. But I’ve seen men like him on the witness stand. It’s just a hunch, but he wasn’t putting us on. He really feels that way about her. The kind of love that he thinks is all-consuming, but it’s really suffocating. And it made me start to think. What would he do if he did see the text messages that his beloved Dana had been sending to her boss?”

“What are you saying?”

“That maybe we’re prosecuting the wrong Goodwin.”

Gabriel looks at me as if the thought’s not been too far from his mind either. I wonder if he had suspicions about Stuart Goodwin before today. I know he’s on record as doubting Dana’s guilt, but he hasn’t said a word to suggest I might be prosecuting an innocent person since the day of her arrest. That’s more likely because he wants to be supportive rather than due to any change of heart, however.

“We never gave him a serious look,” Gabriel says. “As soon as we learned of the affair, we made the arrest.”

That made perfect sense. The last thing the cops want to do is send the message that they may not have gotten the right person. Actually, that’s the second-to-last thing they want. Even worse is finding evidence to point to someone else without conclusively making the case.

“A lot of the case fits against him too,” I say. “If he knew about the affair, he has motive. If he thought his wife was going to leave him for Lauren, maybe he decided to eliminate that option. And Stuart testified that she didn’t passcode-protect her phone. I have a hard time believing that he never took the opportunity to see what was causing his wife to work all those late hours.”

Gabriel nods in agreement. “So where does that leave it, then?”

It has never been my job to prove someone other than Dana Goodwin killed Lauren Wright. Which is why I know many prosecutors who would have let the conversation end there, secure with the thought that convicting the person on trial was the only task at hand. But I’ve never been that kind of prosecutor. There are things more important than winning. We need to be right.

I smile at Gabriel to let him know that I haven’t gone totally over to the dark side. He smiles back, telling me that my message has been received and he concurs.