Richards had not included any pictures with his notes. There was also no autopsy report. He had them but chose not to share. He either was being kind or still didn’t trust me. Either way, I gave him props.

He included his own hand-drawn sketches of the crime scene, a general description of the body, and how it had been found. It. I had already segregated Clare into two versions of herself: the living girl and the inanimate object. Easier to read, think about all this, if I thought of the body as a thing, not a person. Not Clare.

There were the witness statements from me, Brit, Dad, the jogger who had found Clare (Seth Morgan—I didn’t recognize his name), the kids at Jo-Jo’s party, including Kurt and even Jack. But he’d not been to the party.

Richards must have logged a hundred hours on the initial investigation. The extensive notes explained the dark circles under the detective’s eyes when he attended my sister’s funeral a week later. Richards had kept to himself, standing to the side of the packed memorial hall.

As the family filed out, I’d walked out behind Brit and Dad, so numb I could’ve sworn my feet didn’t touch the ground but floated a few inches above the polished wood floors. As my morning pill wore off, my thoughts zeroed in on Richards, and I snapped out of my funk. It was so much easier to be angry than sad, so I tore through the last of the numbness and allowed oxygen to fan the flames of my anger.

It took another half hour for me to get free of the funeral receiving line. I’d stayed as long as I had only because Brit held my hand as Richards prowled around the edges of the crowded room, moving between the groups, comfortable handing out his card and asking questions.

Finally, when I saw him duck out a side door, I couldn’t let him escape. He deserved to be punished for intruding on our family’s grief.

I pulled my hand from Brit’s, said something about needing a bathroom, and left the receiving line. People watched me pass, many doing a double take as if they’d seen the dead come back to life.

I pushed out the side door and jogged toward Richards, who now stood by a tree, smoking a cigarette. I moved up to him, folding my arms to protect myself against the cold and so much more.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked.

He inhaled and blew the smoke out slowly. He sniffed, regarded me through the trailing haze. “Paying respects.”

“How can you pay respect? You didn’t know her.”

The end of the cigarette glowed red as he inhaled again. “I might’ve known her better than anyone in that room right now.”

“How could you?”