Odessa met the first pair of responding FBI agents in the girl’s bedroom and took them through the story. She had dealt with eyewitnesses herself and spoke as clearly and succinctly as she could. But when she got to the end, she couldn’t make them understand that it was she, not Peters, who had  shot Leppo. At first, they thought she misspoke; then that she had been traumatized and didn’t know what she was saying; then they told her a supervisory agent was on the way.

Odessa told it again to the supervisory agent. Again, her account was met with disbelief. This time she heard herself describing the part in the hallway, when she found Peters and Leppo struggling, but Peters was unarmed and Leppo held the knife. And then after she shot Peters, Leppo walked with the knife into the girl’s room without a word. She understood that what she was saying did not make a lot of sense. She said that Walt must have lost his mind. But the supervisory agent was looking at Odessa as though she had lost hers.

The agents watched Leppo’s body as it was being photographed. His gun was in his holster. They looked down at their fallen comrade, killed in the line of duty. Then they looked back at Odessa.

Odessa found a bottle of water someone had offered her earlier and drank all of it at once. She felt more than self-doubt. She actively questioned her own sanity in that moment. She felt shaken to her core.

After conferring with the first two agents, the supervisory agent returned with some follow-up questions for her.

Where were you standing when Walt tried to stab the girl?

Where do you think he got the knife from?

Had Walt been acting strangely at the restaurant before the shooting?

Odessa realized they thought she was inventing part of the story to cover up a bad shoot. That maybe she had accidentally shot Leppo, mistaking him for a second assailant in the dark bedroom. Odessa didn’t address or refute it. But she knew what was happening.

The girl would vouch for Odessa’s story. She was the only living witness. The wound on her shoulder, from the blade of Leppo’s knife, was clear evidence of justifiable force.

They draped a sheet over Walt Leppo’s body. The sheet dropped over his unblinking eyes.

Walt, what happened?

Odessa was led out of the bedroom.

Odessa rode back to Claremont in the responding agents’ car. Nobody spoke.

The Newark field office was among the FBI’s largest, with more than 350 agents and including resident agencies stretching from Atlantic City to Peterson. They had jurisdiction over most of the state of New Jersey, with the Philadelphia field office responsible for a corner of South Jersey.