Over the next few weeks, I teach my law school seminar and spend time at The Barrista and drink coffee. And I read. I learn that Gladys Towles Root, the lawyer who specialized in defending rapists, maintained that there were only two types of rape—the brutal and the invited. Absent a beating or a threat, the woman asked for it. Once, during a trial, Root held up a sheet of paper with a hole in it and defied a male juror to stick a pen in the hole while she moved the paper around. I can’t tell from the biography whether this was merely a trial tactic or whether she believed it. I hope she didn’t believe it. There are few things more dangerous than a lawyer who’s a true believer.

I think about Rich constantly, about how and why he died. And the more I think, the more convinced I am that he was murdered. Deanna and Manny don’t want to hear about it anymore. I consider calling his wife, Monica, but I know she won’t talk to me. I think about contacting his parents, but what would I say? Would they find comfort in hearing some stranger speculate that their son might have been murdered?

Today, while I’m working in my law school office—a windowless hole in the wall reserved for part-time faculty like me—the autopsy report shows up in my e-mail inbox. Because I was Rich’s lawyer at the time of his death, the medical examiner’s office agreed to send me a copy. I know what the report will say without looking at it, which doesn’t stop me from dropping what I’m doing and opening it immediately. I scroll down the computer screen, trying to decipher the pathologist’s hypertechnical language. The cause of death is listed as suicide, of course. Then the techno-language. Partial suspension; asphyxial death; presence of conjunctival and facial petechiae; hyoid fracture; thyroid cartilage fracture; no injuries of a defensive nature; absence of ligature furrow; signs of vital reaction around constriction area ambiguous.

I print the report, hoping that reading the hard copy will make things clearer. Before I can begin rereading, there’s a loud knock on the open door. Lovely Diamond stands in the doorway, backpack slung over her shoulder. She’s never spoken to me outside the classroom, much less come to my office.

“Got five minutes, Professor?”

Over the past weeks, we’ve managed to forge a barely peaceful coexistence. One of my strengths is figuring people out, digging beneath the exterior and understanding their motivations and fears and strength and weakness of character. Maybe that’s how I became a good actor and a successful trial lawyer. But I’m not close to figuring Lovely out. Around her, I feel as if I’m trying to decipher a frustrating but glorious avant-garde novel, dark and impenetrable and lyrical. She reveals herself in fragments.

She sits down and glances around the office. “I’ve never been in one of these adjunct professor offices before. Is this the best they can do for you?”

“This is about it.”

She crinkles her nose. “It smells like mildew or black mold. You adjuncts should go on strike or something. Or get masks.”

“The others never come up here. They all have jobs and offices of their own. It’s just me.”

“Poor you.” She reaches into her backpack and pulls out some sort of energy bar, unwraps it, and takes a small bite without asking if I have any objection to her eating in my office. I don’t, but I would have appreciated her asking.

I’m about to ask her what she wants when I remember that Lou Frantz handles a lot of medical malpractice cases. “Ms. Diamond, in your job do you review medical reports?”

“Yeah. A lot, unfortunately.”

“I just got the medical examiner’s report on Richard Baxter’s death. I was wondering if you could—”

“Yeah, I’ll take a look. I’ve read my share of pathology reports. Mostly accidents and botched surgeries, but . . .”

I hand her the report. She attacks it with a palpable intensity. She nibbles at her energy bar until it’s gone, leaving a crumb stuck to her upper lip. When she finishes, she looks up at me. “So what do you want to know?”

“You . . . you have some food on your lip.”

Without a hint of embarrassment, she circles her tongue over her lips, catching the crumb and pulling it into her mouth. “Gone?”

I nod. “What I want to know . . . can you see anything in the ME’s report that would lead you to question the conclusion that Rich committed suicide?”

“Possibly.”

It’s not the answer I expected to hear, and I have to fend off a morbid rush of excitement at the thought that Rich might have been murdered. “What makes you say that?”

“I’d rather hold off on giving an opinion. I need to do some more research.”

“Can’t you give at least me a hint?”

“No point.” She folds her hands in her lap and gets that stubborn look that I see so often in the classroom.

“But you came to see me,” I say. “How can I help you?”

She reaches into her backpack, takes out some paper, and hands it to me. “My client, Tyler, has been indicted.” Her voice, usually a steady alto, sounds off-key, like a guitar string wound too tightly by a fraction of a turn. “I guess I’m going to get to defend a real case.”

The document charges one Tyler Daniels with three counts of Transportation of Obscene Matters in violation of 18 U.S.C. §1462 of the United States Criminal Code: Whoever knowingly uses any interactive computer service for carriage in interstate commerce of any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, writing, print, or other matter of indecent character shall be fined and imprisoned for not more than five years for any first offense and ten years for each such offense thereafter.

I flip to the second page and read the specifics of count 1. It’s just one paragraph, seven lines, but by the time I finish my teeth are clenched so hard that I can hear a high-pitched whine in my ears.

“Oh, Lovely. Why in God’s name didn’t you tell me what this was?”