Page 141 of Only Fate

She looks relieved at my starting the conversation. “I’d like to hire you for representation.”

“For what?”

“I’m, uh …” She glances back at the door, as if she doesn’t want anyone to overhear her words. “I don’t exactly know how tolegallysay this, but I need an attorney because I know someone committed a crime, and I never turned them in.”

Technically, depending on the crime, it might not even be a serious offense.

I motion for her to sit, and she tiptoes into my office, carefully sitting as if expecting someone to pull it out from beneath her.

“What was the crime?” I ask, grabbing my pen and notebook.

She waits.

“Jenna, we’d have attorney-client privilege. You came to me for help, and you can’t be that vague. If I don’t know everything, I don’t know how to help you.”

She folds her hands in her lap and stares at them. “I never told anyone I know who really killed Ethan Leonard.” She raises her chin, halfway looking at me. “And it’s not the man in prison for it.”

43

“Hey, man,” River says, tossing his bag onto a corner pub table at Down Home Pub. “I hacked into as much shit as I could, studied Earl’s bank statements, and even managed to get into his emails sent while he was in prison.”

The server comes to our table to take our drink orders.

Both of us opt for a water, wanting a clear mind to discuss every Earl detail. I need to know as much as I can before meeting with Essie tonight.

River waits until she returns with our waters before opening his bag and drawing out a folder. “First off, I want to comment that Earl had a Tumblr account where he reposted puppies, positivity quotes, and meditation tips. He also wrote in it like a diary.”

“Any posts made from the night of the accident?”

“Yeah, it was about how he was trying to give up drinking.”

“That didn’t happen.”

“The time stamp wasafterhe left the bar, and there were so many grammatical errors in it that there’s no way a man typing that badly could drive.” Shaking his head, he pulls out a sheet of paper and dramatically slaps it onto the table as if starring in a damnCSIepisode. “Look at this police report. I found it in anemail in the police force’s inbox. It was never turned over to prosecutors or his defense attorney.”

I pick up the paper and read over the email thread between two officers. They interviewed a man who said they saw Earl’s truck at a gas station, but he wasn’t the man behind the wheel. He said there were multiple people, but he couldn’t make out their faces. Another officer added that they’d messed up by not taking fingerprints from the vehicle, but it was too late now.

“Not one witness who saw him after he left the bar,” I comment, reading over them again, wanting every detail to burrow itself in my brain so I don’t forget it.

“They only sawhis truck.” He scrubs his palm over his forehead. “The gas station didn’t have cameras, and unfortunately, the clerk working that night is no longer alive. But he did tell police Earl never came in to buy gas or anything else. Why would his truck be at the gas station if he wasn’t buying anything?”

“Prosecutors could say it was to clean up after the crime.”

“The truck didn’t have damage on it then.”

“He was preparing for the crime, then,” I fire back.

“Whose side are you on here? First, you were on Earl’s, but now, you’re arguing against him.”

“I’m an attorney. It’s my job to look ateveryside and take in every angle that another attorney could argue.”

“If we circle back to the Tumblr posts,” River says in annoyance, “a week before the accident, he wrote that Blue Beech no longer felt like home to him. He was considering convincing his grandmother to sell the house and move. People here made him feel like an outsider. He’d started a custodian job at the local movie theater and wrote that people treated him terrible there. One post said that a teenager threw a slushy on him, and the friends took pictures to post on their socials.”

“Was the teen Ethan by chance?”

“No idea, but I knew Ethan. He wasn’t like that.”

“You were friends with him?”

---