“Okay,” Walt said. “Just a warning. The crime scene photos are disturbing.”

Avery nodded. She’d seen many crime scenes in the last few years. “I’m good.”

Walt reached into the box and pulled out a folder of photos. Avery imagined her camera guys and production team laying out the contents of this box and taking stills of the documents, highlighting in yellow the areas of transcript interviews and police reports that pertained to the story she wanted to tell. She imagined startling images of crime scene photos flashing onto television screens across America as Victoria Ford’s story unfolded.

“Here’s the body, the balcony, and the master bedroom of the Youngs’ Catskills home,” Walt said. “This is what I found when I arrived on the scene.”

Avery pulled the photo of Cameron Young hanging from the balcony so that it was in front of her. It was, indeed, disturbing. The lifeless body was suspended in broad daylight as morning fog drifted from the grass beneath him. His head torqued by the rope into a grotesque angle. As she paged through the other photos, they took her from the back lawn of the Catskills mansion, through the house, up the stairs, and into the master bedroom. She saw the rope stretched tight and running taut through the room, from the open balcony doors to the walk-in closet. She paged through the photos until she found the ones taken inside the closet, where the end of the rope was tethered to the leg of a sturdy-looking safe.

“Take me through your findings in the bedroom,” she said.

Walt leaned closer, so that he could point at each of the pictures. She noticed the scent of aftershave.

“The rope used to hang Cameron Young was determined to be from an original bundle that was seventy-five feet long when purchased. It had been cut a number of times with a serrated blade.” Walt pointed to the photo where an ominous-looking kitchen knife lay on the carpeting next to the safe. A yellow evidence placard stood next to it. “The knife came from a butcher’s block in the kitchen and had Victoria Ford’s fingerprints on it. Her blood was discovered on the carpet.”

Avery felt him lean a bit closer to shuffle through the pictures and find the image of the bloodied carpet next to the safe.

“The blood here was matched to Victoria Ford through DNA. The theory was that in her rush to set up the scene as a suicide, she cut herself while using the knife to sever the rope.”

“So this blood,” Avery said. “It was the main evidence that put Victoria at the scene?”

“The blood, and urine found in the toilet. Both matched Victoria’s DNA.”

Avery remembered Victoria Ford’s voice from the answering machine recording.

They said they found my blood and urine at the scene. But that can’t be true. None of it can be true. Please believe me.