Good point. And that probably let out Mr. Perfect, too. But we’d try to find out who he was anyway. A married man could make a great decoy to throw at the jury. “Do you know of anyone else Paige might’ve confided in? Someone who’d know who Mr. Perfect was?”
Dale shook his head. “But I know what I’d do if I were running this case: I’d talk to the people she worked with, check her Facebook page for friends and hangouts, see what’s on her phone or her computer. And, of course, any family you can find.”
I knew this was coming. And I didn’t mind. Matter of fact, I’d have been a little worried if he didn’t try to give me some pointers. He was a detective; it’s what he did. But I had to get him thinking from the other side of things now-he wasn’t a cop anymore; he was a defendant.
“Here’s the thing, Dale. We have to be careful who we talk to and what questions we ask. From what you’re telling me, it’s entirely possible the cops don’t know about Mr. Perfect. So we can’t tip our hand. Because if they find out about him, they’ll do everything they can to prove he’s not a possible suspect. They’ll try to find an alibi for him, or witnesses who’ll say his wife knew about Paige and didn’t care or… whatever. We don’t want that. The more straw men we can point to, the better. We’re not looking for the truth or the real killer. We’re looking for reasonable doubt. Got it?”
He stared at me for a moment, his expression stricken. It was a tough adjustment being on the other side of the lawsuit. But after a few seconds, he nodded with a look that was respectful… admiring, even. It caught me off guard.
“I just remembered something,” Dale said. “Given what you told me, I don’t know what you want to do with this, but Chloe was on the phone with her sister, Kaitlyn, when I came over. They were pretty close. You might want to check her out.”
“We’ll wait and see what the cops get out of her first. I don’t want her telling them what we asked about. And we’ll check out Paige’s connects on the down low. Alex, the guy you saw when you came in, is a fabulous investigator.”
“You just hire him? Because I didn’t see him on your website.”
“Yeah, he’s new, but he’s a real score.” And when his guilty plea got into the system, he’d also be a real felon. But I saw no reason to overshare. “For now, just for the purpose of giving quotable quotes to the media, I’m going to say we’re looking into the burglar theory.” I didn’t see how that could hurt anything. Since they didn’t get any prints, they’d never catch the burglar.
