“Maybe.”
“Then charge him.”
“We might.”
“Good.”
Nora stepped closer.
“It was exactly where Evan said you told him to put it.”
Grant smiled.
“Detective, do you understand attorney-client privilege?”
“I understand murder exceptions.”
“You understand slogans.”
“I understand evidence.”
He tilted his head.
“You have a phone. You do not have context.”
“That’s what we’re getting next.”
Grant’s voice lowered.
“Be very careful.”
Nora nodded.
“I usually am.”
He leaned slightly forward.
“You lost this case. I understand that’s painful. But don’t let a professional embarrassment turn into misconduct.”
Nora thought of Mia’s mother sitting in the courthouse hallway. She thought of the phone behind the electrical panel. She thought of Grant on the steps saying the state failed, as if he had not helped create the failure.
“You built your life on sounding reasonable,” she said. “That doesn’t make you right.”
Grant’s face hardened.
“Am I under arrest?”
Nora did not answer immediately.
She wanted to say yes.
She did not yet have enough.
“Not yet,” she said.
Grant picked up his briefcase.
“Then I’m leaving.”
This time, nobody stopped him.
That was the hardest part for Nora. Letting him walk out. Watching him pass deputies, cameras, and reporters again, now without the victorious smile. His statement was short: “A desperate man made a desperate accusation after a lawful acquittal. I will respond through proper legal channels.”
It was good.
Too good.
By morning, it would not be enough.
The phone changed everything.
The digital team worked through the night. Mia’s phone had been powered down for over a year, but it was intact. The battery was dead. The screen was cracked slightly near one corner. The first extraction took hours. Some data required specialized work. Some files were corrupted. Some messages had already been backed up in partial form to the cloud, but the phone held things investigators had never seen.
Voice memos.
Photos of documents.
Encrypted notes.
Screenshots of emails from Grant Mercer’s old office server.
A video recorded in Mia’s car at 9:27 p.m. on the night she died.
In the video, Mia sat in the driver’s seat, illuminated by dashboard light. She looked scared, but determined. Her hair was pulled back. She wore the same green jacket found beside her body later that night.
“If anything happens to me,” she said, “I am not meeting Evan. I am meeting Grant Mercer. He said he would give me the original files and sign a statement if I gave him the backup drive. I don’t trust him. I’m leaving this here until I know I’m safe.”
Her eyes flicked toward the windshield.
Then the video ended.
Nora watched it once.
Then again.
Then she called James Keller.
He arrived twenty minutes later, unshaven, still wearing the same shirt from verdict day.
When he saw the video, he sat down slowly.
“Dear God,” he said.
Nora said, “There’s more.”
The phone contained audio from 9:51 p.m. It began with muffled movement, like the phone was in a pocket or bag. Then Mia’s voice.
“I’m not giving you the drive until you admit what you did.”
A man’s voice answered.
Calm.
Recognizable.
Grant Mercer.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“No. I made the mistake years ago when I stayed quiet.”
“You copied privileged files.”
“I copied evidence of crimes.”