Here She Lies

with Zara the night of her death. Zara mentioned in an e-mail to a friend that she planned to see about a new cleaning job on Division Street before running an errand at a store that closed at eight o’clock. The e-mails were in Hungarian and had to be translated. No specifics about the appointment — no name or address — but the implication is there.”
    “I didn’t get to Julie’s house until eight, but she expected me sooner. I told her seven...”
    “Which would have placed you at the scene of the crime,” Elias said. “Or close enough.”
    “But why Zara? Why hurt this innocent person?”
    “I suspect, in Julie’s mind, that Zara’s resemblance to you both played into it somehow. Look-alikes are often stand-ins for the real target of enmity. But that’s just one guess.”
    Enmity. That word was a deep, cold, echoing well. And the way he’d said it — like a fact, not a riddle. I could not understand how Julie could feel enmity toward me.
    “Did I tell you,” he broke my silence, “that she voluntarily submitted to a psychiatric examination?”
    “No,” I said. “ I wasn’t asked.”
    “A sign, my dear, that her lawyer doesn’t think an examination of you would yield any benefit.”
    “Little does he know!”
    Elias smiled. “Most psychological diagnoses arerelative. Julie’s — sociopathic, narcissistic — could well be applied to half the people I know. But her so-called conditions are why she agreed to the exam at all. She was convinced her powers of deception were that good.”
    “But even that’s circumstantial, isn’t it? Psychology isn’t exactly a tangible science.”
    “No, it’s not. And you’re right: it’s circumstantial, at best. But the diagnosis still weakens your sister’s claim of innocence when it comes to Zara’s murder. If — let’s hope when — the FBI concludes that she tampered with your computer last March, well, that together with the frozen blood, the missing vial, the psychiatric diagnosis and Zara’s appointment on Division Street, and the spotlight shifts decisively from you to Julie.”
    “None of this makes sense to me,” I said. “None of it.”
    “No crime is truly logical, despite how well it’s planned. Criminals typically hurt themselves as much as they hurt anyone else, if not more.”
    “If they get caught,” I added.
    “Precisely.”
    “Julie’s going to get away with this,” I said, feeling it, believing it. She had gotten this far and I was the one sitting in jail.
    “No, dear, she’s not.” Elias’s slender, wrinkled fingers drummed the yellow pad as he spoke. “I’ve been down to Lexington and I’ve got a deposition from the technician who took your samples that day. She corroborates that she drew two vials of blood from both of you. She was embarrassed that she hadn’t noticed one of yours was missing when she delivered them for storagealong with the samples of five other donors. But the donation records show that only one was received. So that’s our first smoking gun.”
    “Is there another?”
    “Not yet,” he said, “but chances are there will be, sooner or later, when the murder weapon surfaces. If Julie left fingerprints on the knife, it will place her at the scene. So this, the frozen blood, will get you out of jail. And that, the knife, may just put her here in your place.”
    “But it’s still missing,” I said, “and they looked everywhere for it. It might never be found, Elias.”
    “Possibly not. But I hope it is. It will strengthen the case against her in court.”
    “Has she been charged?” I asked.
    “The police are weighing the evidence. The problem is, it’s all circumstantial. No one saw who took the blood sample from the Red Cross. No one saw who froze it. Or who sprinkled it at the scene. We have no murder weapon with fingerprints or fibers or any other telling evidence. We have no vial that held the blood sample. And of course the only witness to the crime was Mr. Soiffer, who can’t say exactly who he saw, and even if he could, frankly, the jury probably wouldn’t trust him enough to carry a case of this gravity. So there we are: if the police charge Julie with what we’ve got now, it wouldn’t hold up in court. Remember, Annie, the benchmarks the state has to meet for a first-degree-murder conviction are not taken lightly: premeditated malice and extreme cruelty.”
    Premeditated malice and extreme cruelty. Well. Regardless of whether or not she would ever face a