I moved back to Athens. I knew that if I stayed, I would have seen him everywhere: on the street corner where he chose his brothers over me, in the dining hall where we threw fries at each other, in my dorm room where he sometimes fell asleep. I didn’t have a plan, didn’t have anything except a dark pit that lurked somewhere deep in my stomach. It would be prettier to say I chose to return because I knew I would have the opportunity to work these kinds of cases. The cases with young people who should have grown old, the cases ruled accidents. The cases where peer pressure and reckless behavior and lack of impulse control create dangerous cocktails that obscure lines between guilt and responsibility. But the truth is I didn’t know where I would end up. And to dismantle one institution, I joined another. And I hate myself even more for being naïve enough to think I could make any difference.

“Did you tell Truman?” I hiss. “Teddy?”

Oliver shakes his head.

“Good,” I say, and sit back. “Craig has nothing to do with this.”

I cross my arms and will Oliver with all his sympathetic glances to disappear.

When Teddy returns, Oliver and I aren’t speaking.

“That was Truman,” Teddy says.

They exchange a look, and I feel a stab of panic. I can’t be left out of the loop, not now. And I can’t have them chasing every lead but the right one.

“There was something else in the locker,” I say.

Oliver’s eyebrows lift.

“A folder. With a bunch of pieces of paper.” I grab a handful of napkins and lay them across the table before I take the folder out of my bag.

I open the folder and flick through a few of the notes with the back of my pen.

“Traitor,” I say slowly.

Another flick.

“Traitor.”

“Judas.”

“Shit,” Oliver swears. “That’s not good.”

I give him a meaningful look. “It’s clear Jay had enemies.”

“And he kept the notes,” Teddy says.

We take a second to process what that means. Jay didn’t toss the notes or even shove them in a desk drawer. He collected them, one by one, put them in a folder, and then hid them in the locker along with his secret phone. People who feel safe don’t do that. They get pissed, crumple the offending pages in their hands or tear them to pieces. These are flat, pristine. I would bet they’re preserved just as he found them. I think of what the witness—Morgan something—said: that when Jay was hit, he was looking at his phone and laughing. She assumed he was laughing because that matched her image of him—good-natured, the life of the party. But what if he wasn’t laughing, I wonder numbly, what if he was shaking—from fear, anxiety, tears?