Dangerous Girls

“Yes, that’s right.” Dekker is looking worried now. His eyes dart to the back of the courtroom, like he’s seeking someone out. “The time of death gives him an alibi, but not her.”

“And by her, you mean the defendant.”

“Yes, of course,” Dekker snaps. He’s riled, I realize, watching carefully. He knows what this is about—what’s coming. Lee’s grip on my shoulder tightens in matching anticipation.

“Where did you get this tape?”

“From a source,” Dekker replies. “An outside investigator hired by the Dempsey family.”

“But this isn’t the full tape, is it?”

There’s a beat. Silence. Dekker opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

The judge leans over. “Detective?”

“I . . . I’m not sure what you mean.” Dekker’s sweating, his forehead shiny and red. He looks guilty, although of what crime, we don’t know yet. The courtroom is totally still, all of us waiting for the next words.

“Then let me show you.” Gates beams. “This is the video you submitted as evidence.” He starts the video again and the frames run through on the screen, grainy and black-and-white. Elise enters the store, browses the aisles. She grabs a bag of chips and a soda, pays, and leaves. The video cuts.

“But that wasn’t the only footage given to you, was it?” Gates says loudly. Dekker is silent. “There was footage from a second camera, outside the store.”

This is news to me—and everyone else. Fevered whispers fill the courtroom.

Gates hits play and another video starts, this one angled from the doorway, with a view out into the busy street. We see Elise stroll toward the store and enter, but there’s another figure in the frame, several steps behind.

Juan.

I inhale in a rush. Even in the grainy recording, it’s him: dreadlocks and a loose linen shirt. He follows Elise down the street, then drops back as she enters the store. He stops, waiting on the other side of the road.

Gates pauses on him lurking there, watching the grocery store. “Is this the man known to you as Juan?” he asks.

“Yes,” Dekker replies quietly.

“The man named as a suspect by the defense, whom the defendant says argued with the victim and followed them back on their first day.”

Dekker is silent, but then offers a grudging “Yes.”

“And in this footage, does he appear to be following the victim, again? Stalking her?”

Dekker doesn’t say a word.

“Let’s take a look for ourselves.” Gates hits play again.

The video continues: Juan loiters opposite the grocery store. Elise emerges, just a blond head in the frame. As she exits to the right of the camera shot, Juan crosses the street, moving closer toward us—and Elise. Gates freezes the video just before he disappears from the frame: the large figure heading determinedly after Elise.

There’s a long silence.

I can’t believe it—that the video existed, all this time. Dekker saw this and tried to bury it. I knew he hated me, but I didn’t realize he would tamper with evidence just to see me go down.

Lee’s hand slips from my shoulder, but I reach to grab it, holding tight. We share a breathless, hopeful smile as Gates circles for the kill.

“When did you decide to edit this video?” Gates demands.

“I . . . it wasn’t a decision, as such,” Dekker fumbles. “There were many leads—”

“But this offers clear proof that Juan was the last person to see the victim alive.”

“We don’t know—”

Gates talks over him. “So not only did you ignore a crucial suspect but you deliberately withheld evidence that would help clear my client!”

“I—”

“Why did you ignore this evidence?” Gates demands. “Why pursue this unjustified and deeply flawed prosecution against my client when you knew full well there were better suspects more likely to have committed this crime?”

“We tried to locate Juan,” Dekker argues weakly, “But we couldn’t find him.”

“And you needed a suspect,” Gates mocks him. “Someone to put on trial, to prove to the world you weren’t a bungling, incompetent detective. So you picked my client—a young woman with no criminal record, no motive, no history of violence—”

“She does, she could have—”

“You picked her to be the scapegoat for this farce of a trial!” Gates finishes with a roar.

Silence. Dekker is slumped in his seat, sweaty and broken. He knows he f**ked up, and now we all know it too.

“No further questions,” Gates finishes. “The defense rests.”

THE TRIAL

After Dekker is humiliated on the stand, my dad presses Gates to file for a mistrial. “We can argue incompetence, withheld evidence,” he argues, but Gates stands firm.

“A mistrial isn’t the end,” he explains. “Another prosecutor could launch another case, and then we’d wind up back here, a year, two years from now. They might not even let her go home before a new trial.”

“Seeing this through is the only way,” Lee agrees. “An ‘innocent’ verdict finishes this for good.”

But what if I’m not found innocent after all? I want to ask, but they’re all so upbeat and optimistic, I can’t bring myself to be the lone voice of warning. “The video changes everything,” they say over again, with a breathless enthusiasm that tells me just how dire my situation was before. “Now we have proof” of Juan’s stalking and Dekker’s vendetta against me, the chorus goes. “The judge will have to question everything, and see Dekker for the corrupt man he really is.”

I try to stay calm, but their hope is infectious, like sunlight warming me in my dark cell, and I sleep straight through the night for the first time in months. When I’m taken to meet Dad in the conference room of the courthouse the next morning, he greets me with a box of fresh-baked pastries and a clutch of brown manila envelopes.

“What are those?” I ask, sinking my teeth into a soft pillow of flaky donut.

“College letters,” he replies with a smile. “They came for you months ago, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up, before . . .”

My hand freezes, outstretched. “But won’t it jinx things?” I whisper. It feels way too soon to be thinking about the future, not with the trial still in progress and everything still ready to fall apart.