the night before. She said it looked like people moving back and forth on the north shore. But the beach is private and she thought she must have been mistaken. It was dark, and it had only been for a minute, but she was still uneasy so she asked him to check it out if he got the chance. She said she knew he sometimes worked late in the gardens to avoid the heat of the day and hoped it wouldn’t be an inconvenience for him.” She frowned. “That was really interesting. And I was waiting for him to answer her back, but if he did, it wasn’t by email.” She swallowed. “And then two days later I heard that he’d been killed and it scared me real bad. I didn’t know what to do. It scared Ms. Wessler, too. She emailed her ex-husband right away even though he was in Tokyo and told him that she was feeling guilty, that she should never have asked Mr. Kim to do something she could have done herself. She asked if there was any way he could come home and meet with her so that they could talk it all out before she went to the police. She said the day before Mr. Kim was killed, she thought she saw movement down on the shore again and she’d tried to take pictures. And the day that Mr. Kim was murdered she was sure she and her dog had been followed. That’s when her husband told her not to wait until he could fly home to be with her, but to take the pictures right to the police.” Ariel whispered, “But she didn’t do it. I think she really liked her husband and wanted to see him. She must have felt kind of alone. I waited and kept checking all night to see if she emailed the police or maybe Dr. Walker. But she didn’t do it.” She moistened her lips. “And then the next day she was dead, too.”
Kendra stared at her, stunned. It was a secondhand experience of horror, but that didn’t mitigate the terror and confusion this little girl must have felt. “I’m sorry, Ariel.”
“Was it my fault? Could I have done something to stop it?”
“It wasn’t your fault. You’re a child and it was the responsibility of the adults you were monitoring to take care of their own situation.” She reached out and grasped her arms. “You mustn’t think that you could have changed anything just because of those emails. Do you hear?”
“I hear.” She was frowning. “I just thought that because I’m smarter than most people, I should have been able to stop it from happening.”
“Well, there is that.” Kendra found herself smiling in spite of the gravity of the situation. “But even Einstein might have had trouble balancing guilt and responsibility. I know you feel terrible about Mr. Kim and Ms. Wessler, but they wouldn’t blame you. They loved children and understood them.”
“You’re sure it’s not my fault?”
“I’m very sure.”
Ariel gave a deep sigh. “Whew. When those terrible things happened to both of them, I wondered if maybe I should have let someone know about it. Even if I got into trouble for hacking.”
“I’m not saying that the hacking wasn’t wrong. It certainly was wrong and you should have gotten in trouble for doing it. I’m only saying that it wasn’t your responsibility to run the lives of the people you chose to hack. That would have been an even greater intrusion.”
“But if I hadn’t been hacking, I wouldn’t have had anything to tell you and that would have been bad, too.” She gazed at her hopefully. “And everything is important in a murder case, isn’t it? So didn’t that kind of make up for it?”
Kendra couldn’t argue with that logic even if Ariel had twisted it to suit herself. “Maybe. As long as you don’t do it again. It’s true the FBI should know everything you’ve told me about Ms. Wessler and Mr. Kim. I want you to give me copies of those emails.” She tilted her head. “Now, is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She thought about it. “Except I don’t know if I shouldn’t feel guilty just because I’m a kid. If I’m smart enough to hack emails, shouldn’t I be smart enough to know what to do with them?”
Kendra was silent. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself. I’ve given you my opinion. Anything