States of Grace by Mandy Miller (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

the Glock 19. A close-up of the serial number. Anton’s firearms registration. A grid of shadowy black-and-white images of fingerprints lifted from the gun accompanied by Simpson’s conclusion that the prints match Zoe’s. I plug earbuds into the headphone jack and click on a file labeled Zoe Slim/Video and hold my breath.

Zoe appears, dressed in her school uniform, a white polo shirt and pleated plaid skirt, seated at a table at the FLPD. Reilly reads her the Miranda warnings and sets a written waiver in front of her, telling her to sign. Zoe ignores him. He makes several more attempts to get her to talk and sign, his efforts ranging from the good cop line, “It’ll all be okay if you tell me what happened,” to the more heavy-handed version, “You better tell me what happened, why you killed Brandon Sinclair. I’m going to find out anyway.” Nothing worked, praise the Lord. She didn’t say one word in response to any question during the two-hour interrogation. Didn’t ask for her parents, to go home, for a lawyer. It was if she wasn’t there at all.

Getting nowhere, Reilly stands, but something she says turns him around. I back up the video and increase the volume.

“Is Mr. Sinclair going to be okay?” she asks. A ploy to suggest she had no idea Sinclair was dead? Or maybe she didn’t know he’d died at the scene? Or didn’t know if she had killed him. If she had shot him.

I suck down the rest of my drink and cue up the videos of Serena Price and Principal Bannister’s sworn statements. Serena was saying she came to Sinclair’s office for her weekly counseling appointment, scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on August 24. She says she was late “because my car got a flat tire on my way to school.”

Sorenson: “So, what time did you arrive?”

Bannister: “Around nine, maybe.”

Sorenson: “What happened next?”

“It was really dark when I opened the door. I thought maybe he’d left because he thought I wasn’t coming. I flipped on the light and—” her voice cracks. “That’s when I saw…saw…” Wailing. “There was blood everywhere. It was simply awful.”

Asked what she’d done when she found the body, Serena says, “I screamed and ran for the door, but Principal Bannister came in. She wouldn’t let me leave. I wanted out of there. I didn’t want to look at him.”

Bannister stating she’d been greeting students when screaming erupted from Sinclair’s office. “I burst in. Serena was screaming.”

Sorenson again. “What did you do next, Mrs. Bannister?”

“There were dozens of students outside, on the way to class. I didn’t want anyone else to…to see the body. I made Serena stay with me. I tried to get her to calm down, and I called 9-1-1.”

Not much more than hasn’t already been in the news, front and center for potential jurors to prejudge Zoe based on the gun. Other than Zoe’s question about Sinclair’s being okay, I have little on my side. Nothing at all to suggest Zoe’s innocent, or at least not guilty. Worst of all, nothing to create any doubt, not even an unreasonable one.

The next fifty pages are phone and text message records from Zoe’s cell phone for the six months preceding the murder. A couple of numbers repeated with great frequency identified as belonging to Gretchen and Anton. Numerous other calls to local numbers in Broward’s 954 area code, but none exceeding a minute or two in length. All short, to be expected given that kids prefer text messaging to actual talking. Manny’s niece, Rosa, once told me, “Tía Garcia, calling on the phone is so 2001.”

An onslaught of texts follows the call logs. Typical kid stuff. Meeting at the mall or the movies. Which boy is cute. Which girl is a slut. Pages and pages of teenage angst.

Jake dips his head in front of my face. “How’s it going in there?”

I rub my eyes, burning from staring at the screen. “I should ditch the shrink and the sleep meds and just read this stuff. It’s deadly.”

“So to speak.”

“Sorry, another bad choice of words. I’m just tired. Didn’t sleep at all last night.”

He leans towards me, elbows on the bar. “I was thinking maybe…”

I reread a text from Zoe’s number, (954) 555-1666 to (954) 555-1341. “its me he likes skank not u, stay away or else i warn u.” Delivered 10:45 p.m., August 22, 2009.

“Maybe you and I could—”

“Holy shit, that’s the night before Sinclair was murdered!”

Jake leaps back. “What are you—”

“That’s what Sonny was talking about when he told me to ask Zoe about the texts!”

Jake shrugs and goes back to wiping down the bar.

I run a finger down the screeds of texts on the screen until I get to the reply text from (954) 555-1341 at 10:47 p.m., August 22, 2009. “LMAO ur a real buzz kill. sexy serena is what he needs now baby”

“I’ve seen that number (954) 555-1341 somewhere.” I repeat the number out loud.

I scroll back to the witness list which includes the witnesses’ names, addresses, and phone numbers. I scan down to (954) 555-1341, beside which is the name, Serena Price.

“No way!”

“Miss, did you say something?” Moose back at my side, another cigarette behind his ear.

“Leave the lady alone,” Jake calls from the kitchen, which sends Moose back to punching buttons on the jukebox.

I toggle back to the texts.

Zoe to Serena: “he thinks ur an ugly twat leave him alone”

Serena to Zoe: “he aint got no sugar 4 u go 2 ur corner and b blue without him better die”

The oldest texts between the two girls date back to February 1, 2009, hundreds about clothes, shopping, boys, parents, going to the beach, mani-pedis. All things best friends would talk about. YouTube clips of cats.

“What is it with cats?”

Miranda emits a grumbly growl, even though she looks like she’s asleep.

So far, all standard adolescent nonsense. Then all communication ceases—nothing from August 17 until the night before the murder.

I use my phone to log onto St. Paul’s website and pull up