“Bodies in water aren’t always found,” I reply. “People lost at sea, people who go overboard from ships or get pulled under or swept away by strong currents, for example. Depending on whether the body gets hung up on something—”

“Eventually there would be absolutely nothing left?”

“Whatever is left has to be found, and it isn’t always.”

“But if my wife fell into the ocean, perhaps stumbled over rocks or fell off our dock, wouldn’t you expect her to show up?” He persists bravely and not easily.

His eyes are bright with sorrow that seems real.

“In a case like that, generally, yes,” I answer.

“Al, if you would?” Lott says, without looking at him.

Al Galbraith opens his briefcase and withdraws a manila envelope he pushes across the table to me, and I don’t open it. I don’t touch it. I won’t until I know exactly what it is and whether it is something I should see.

“A copy of the security camera recording,” Lott explains. “The same thing the Gloucester detectives, the FBI, the lawyers have. What the jury saw. Twenty-six seconds. Not much but it’s the last images of her, the last thing Millie did before she vanished in thin air. She’s opening a back door of our house at exactly thirteen minutes before midnight on that Sunday, March eleventh. She’s dressed for bed, and there’s no damn reason for her to go out into the backyard at that hour. Certainly she wasn’t letting Jasmine out. Jasmine was still missing. It was cold, quite overcast and windy, and Millie walked out of the house not at all dressed for the weather and seemed to be a bit panicked.”

At this point, he turns to look at his colleagues.

“It’s still not the right choice of words. A word I’ve struggled with, trying to precisely describe the look on her face, her body language.” He seems sincerely at a loss and genuinely pained. “How would you describe it?” he asks his chief executives. “Urgent, distressed, alarmed?”

“I don’t get that when I watch it,” Galbraith says, as if he’s said it before.

It sounds flat. It sounds rehearsed.

“Only that she appears to have a purpose,” Lott’s chief of operations says. “She emerges from the house as if she has a reason, is directed. I wouldn’t think of the word panic when I look at the video, but it’s very quick and not all that clear, except she’s saying something to someone.”

“I’d describe the look as urgent, yes.” Shelly Duke nods. “But not upset and definitely not panicked.” She directs this to Lott. “I don’t think she looks frightened the way someone might if they’re worried a bad person is lurking around or trying to break in.”