Combined with the other problems he and Avery had uncovered about the case, the revelations they made about the video were enough to make him believe he’d gotten his first homicide investigation terribly wrong. Was it worse that the accused was dead rather than in prison? If convicted and incarcerated, at the very least there was hope that some sliver of justice could still be served by bringing the new evidence forward and attempting to overturn the conviction. In this case, though, there was no way to provide Victoria Ford with justice. Posthumous exonerations were as valuable as a winning lottery ticket one day past its expiration date.

Walt pulled the thumb drive out of the computer and dropped it back into the evidence bag. Then he suddenly realized that with Avery in the bathroom, two hours after he’d arrived at the Lowell, he was alone in her hotel room. He still sat on the small sofa with Avery’s laptop open on the coffee table in front of him. He looked around the room. He examined the bed where the stacks of Avery’s research rested in separate piles. He noticed a paperback novel on the top of each pile of paper. On the desk near the window was another heap of papers. Next to the laptop on the coffee table were pages containing the details of the Victoria Ford identification.

Walt reached for his breast pocket. This time he did not just feel for the small, thin box that was there, he removed it and held it in his hand. His heart rate picked up. Simply holding the listening devices caused a visceral reaction inside him. The past three years of his life had been tormented by deceit. By the ravages of loving a woman who had kept secrets from him and betrayed him in a way that was nearly unforgiveable. As he stared at the listening devices, he wondered if he were any better than Meghan Cobb. His gaze roamed the room, moving from the nightstand that held the telephone and alarm clock, to the closed bathroom door, and back to the coffee table in front of him. As the analytical part of his mind calculated the most strategic places to secure the listening devices—one under the lip of the nightstand, one under the coffee table, and one in the bathroom in case Avery used her cell phone there—some other part of his mind screamed for him not to do it.