They would want to know where he was last night. A forensic check of his phone would reveal that it never left his house, but a neighbor may have seen him leave or return in the Bronco. No need to get caught in a lie. So he would say nothing.

Would they do a lineup? Of course they would. But the question was whether it would be an in-person lineup or a photo. Should he agree to an in-person lineup if they asked? His first inclination was to refuse. Why make it easy for them. But on further study, he changed his mind.

If he refused the in-person lineup, they would show Sadie his driver’s license photo mixed with a group of similar-looking guys. She would likely have no problem picking him out of the bunch. The jury would then hear about how easily Sadie had identified Gavin.

The case against him would stand or fall on that identification; it would be the prosecutor’s sharpest weapon. Gavin needed to take it away from them—turn it into his own weapon. Sadie had to fail to pick him out of that lineup, or at the very least, struggle.

Gavin went to his bathroom and looked in the mirror. He didn’t have time to grow a beard or lose weight, but he could shave his head. Would she recognize him if he were bald? Would that be enough to trip her up?

In the back of a closet, he found the beard trimmer he’d purchased at a time in his life when he thought that growing a beard might make him more appealing to women. It hadn’t worked. No amount of cosmetic realignment could hide a lisp.

He laid a towel on the floor of the garage, knelt over it, and began shaving. When he finished with the trimmer, he went to the bathroom and used a razor to shave his head clean. Gavin’s pasty white skin gleamed, marking where his hair had been, but Gavin would eliminate that as well. He washed the stubble down the sink, swept the garage, and shoved his towel full of hair into a garbage bag to be thrown away when he stopped for gas later. Then he put the clippers back in the closet and fired up the Lexus.

He drove fifteen minutes to Bloomington and found a tanning salon. There were stores closer to home, but investigators would surely check those out once they understood that he had changed his appearance. The salesperson, a girl in her teens whose own skin was the color of a coconut shell, droned on about discounts and packages.

Being careful not to expose his speech impediment, Gavin interrupted the girl by pointing to the option in the brochure for a single spray-tan session, saying, “I want that.”

The girl shrugged and led Gavin to a stand-up booth, where she explained the procedure, showing him the wipes he would need to keep his hands from looking blotchy. After she left, Gavin stripped down to nothing, stepped inside, and pressed the start button. As the nozzles coated his body with a fine spray of chemicals, he tipped his head to get a little extra color on his crown.