Liam had a whole library of JB footage. I’m talking dozens of VHS tapes. (He had to explain to me what VHS was. I’d never heard of it before. The eighties were so weird.) Most of them were those cheesy true-crime network TV shows that only run on Saturday night. We watched all of them. Both of us were in between albums and tours, so we didn’t have much else to do. And for Liam it was research. He was planning to write an epic concept album based on JB which he would release on December 25, 2021—the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death. He saw the album as his magnum opus, the work that would define his career and cement his artistic legacy. He wasn’t going to announce it. He would drop it that night and surprise his fans. “Just like JonBenét had been surprised by her killer,” he told me, swearing me to secrecy. Oops.

The more we watched, the more I was convinced—knew, the family was somehow involved. So obvious. Liam raged against my theories; he thought it was an outsider. Hours and hours we’d argue, each of us getting firmer in our conviction.

“What about the autopsy report?”

“Forget the autopsy report. The key is the 9-1-1 call.”

“Okay, well, what about the ransom note?”

“What about it? Faked obviously.”

“The boot print.”

“Three words: Burke Fucking Ramsey.”

Back and forth we’d go. Neither of us could let it go. I don’t know why. It was literally so stupid. We’d start raising our voices in exasperation and then the two pits would start barking, which would cause Pip to start yipping her head off until one of us picked her up and stormed out of the room. This happened often.

Then one night I got a text.

Zara, I’m afraid this isn’t going to work. I’ve enjoyed our time together but I can’t be with someone who sees the JB case the way you do. Pip should stay with you. It’s only right.

You believe that? Dude can strip naked in front of a crowd of thirty thousand people and make himself bleed onstage but doesn’t have the balls to break up with me in person. I won’t lie. I was devastated. I stopped showering, just threw on sweatpants and put my hair in a gross, greasy bun whenever I had to leave the bungalow I rented in Santa Monica, which I tried to do as little as possible. I stayed inside bingeing on other true-crime documentaries. It was like a cleansing. I wanted to get the image of JB out of my head and figured the best way to do that was to fill it with images of other horrendous crimes. It sounds weird, I know. But, like I said, I was pretty wrecked. Not much from that time makes sense.