matter how awful it may be.”
“He’s right,” Maggie said quietly.
“I know that now.”
“Yes,” she said. “You’ve lived among them. You know that now.”
“He thinks I need to tell you about Alissa’s father, even though it’s only a feeling. My father never liked him. They met twice. Both times my father insisted afterward that there was something wrong with her father.”
“Like what?”
“He wouldn’t say,” Bobby explained. “He just said that Mr. Hayes had something missing in him that decent people had, no matter how good he might look on the outside. My mother hushed him up and said it was losing his wife that had made him that way. But my father disagreed.” He paused. “My father once told me that if I really cared about Alissa, I would take her away from her father as fast as I could.”
Maggie stared at him more intently. “What did you think he meant when he said that to you? Tell me what came into your mind.”
“I thought of all the times her father had waited up for us until I brought Alissa home, how angry he was, even though we never broke her curfew and she was twenty years old by then. I thought of the way he would look at me—he really hated me, you know. Truly hated me. He felt I had taken Alissa from him. I always blamed him for . . . for what happened to me in the end. I didn’t blame the detectives. I didn’t help myself much at the time, you know. They only did what anyone would have done.”
“That’s kind of you to say,” Maggie said grimly. “Though you may not quote me on it.”
“I thought, at the time, that Mr. Hayes was just being protective, like any father might be. I don’t really know how fathers are toward their daughters. I don’t have any sisters. And Alissa was my first real girlfriend.”
Maggie nodded, willing him to go on.
“But his protectiveness went beyond that, I think, and . . .” He paused.
“And what?” Maggie prompted.
“He lied about me at the trial and during the investigation. Again and again. He said things about me that just weren’t true.”
“Did you tell Detectives Bonaventura and Fahey that?” Maggie asked, though she knew the answer.
Shame washed over me as Bobby Daniels answered. “I kept telling them he was lying. But they didn’t really hear me. Or they didn’t believe me. I don’t know which.” He hesitated. “There must be a record of what I said in the files.”
Maggie raised her eyebrows but said nothing. I knew what she was thinking and was humiliated by her thoughts: not only would his protests not be in the file, Danny and I had kept them out on purpose to bolster our case.
But Bobby Daniels wasn’t really concerned about how he had been treated. What he wanted, and what he needed, was justice for Alissa. He stared at Maggie as he spoke, needing her agreement. “Why would he lie if he wasn’t trying to hide something?”
“Are you coming to me out of vengeance?” Maggie asked gently. “Because putting the wrong man in jail again won’t take away what happened to you.”
“No,” he said. “I understand that he saw me differently from the way Alissa saw me, but it went beyond that. The change was so sudden. One moment he tolerated me, and the next, when I started going out with Alissa? I became his enemy. Instantly. He was my graduate advisor, you know?”
Maggie nodded.
“He was fine toward me before I started seeing Alissa. Maybe a little aloof. Certainly unpredictable. Interested in my progress one day and distracted the next.” He shrugged. “I guess a lot of advisors are like that. But after I started seeing Alissa, the way he acted toward me changed so much. He was no longer distracted or uninterested. It was worse.”
“How?” Maggie asked.
“He never took his eyes off me. I couldn’t walk across the room without him following my every move. I couldn’t leave a room without him, literally, following me. It was like he was . . .”
“Hunting you?” Maggie suggested.
Bobby considered it. “Yes, I’ve seen that look since. Many times in prison.” He closed his eyes against the memories. “It was like he was hunting me.”
“Because you were going to take Alissa from him?”
Bobby Daniels nodded. “Yes. And I think that’s why he killed her. To keep that from happening. He killed her because of me.” With that, he broke down, unable to continue. His sobs filled