There were also several chapters about Casey and everything that had been done to help her while she was in her coma. Ashley was saddened by Miles’s account of Henry’s plight. Casey’s father had put on a brave front during their meals together. He had never let Ashley see the depth of his sorrow. Ashley had no doubt that watching helplessly as his daughter wasted away had shortened Henry’s life.

An hour after she started the book, Ashley reached the chapter detailing her escape from the Academy dormitory. Her eyes were tired from reading. Ashley closed the book. It was almost noon. She was hungry. She placed Sleeping Beauty on the end table and carried her mug into the kitchen for a refill. As she fixed a sandwich, Ashley tried to evaluate Sleeping Beauty. Miles had done an outstanding job of telling what had happened to her and her family, but he had failed to re-create the terror she had experienced. Ashley could not fault Miles for not succeeding here. Only someone who had lived through a rape or an attack knew what it was like. No one could imagine the despair, the disorientation and the stark terror, or the way your heart pounded.

Ashley was starting to put mustard on a slice of rye when she froze. Something was not right. She frowned and put down the knife. A moment later, she was in the living room thumbing through the bestseller until she found what she’d been looking for. She read the paragraph and lost her appetite.

“No,” she said out loud. “This can’t be right.”

So much time had passed. Her memory had to be faulty. There was a logical explanation. She just wasn’t seeing it. She read the paragraph again. When she finished, Ashley felt sick and confused. If she was right… But she couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense. She had seen Maxfield in the boathouse holding the knife that had killed Terri.

Ashley read the paragraph a final time. The words had not changed and neither had the import of those words. What should she do? She could talk to Jerry, but she didn’t want to worry him. And she didn’t have enough facts yet. To be certain, she’d have to review the police reports and the trial transcripts. How would she get them? Delilah, of course. And who better to talk to about what was troubling her.

Delilah picked up after three rings.

“Hi, this is Ashley.”

“What a nice surprise! You recovered from the Van Meter bash yet? I never saw so many VIPs in one place.”

“Casey knows how to throw a party,” Ashley agreed. Then she paused, unsure of how to proceed.

“What’s up?” Delilah prodded.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“So talk. I’m listening.”

“Do you have the Maxfield file?”

“It’s at the office.”

“Does it have a transcript of the trial and the preliminary hearing and the police reports of my interviews?”

“Sure. Why?”

Ashley hesitated. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she was wrong.

“You still there, hon?” Delilah asked.

“I’ve been reading Sleeping Beauty. I never read it before.”

“I thought you wanted to put all that bad stuff behind you.”

“I did, but the book was there and I wasn’t reading anything and… Anyway, there were some things that Miles wrote about that I didn’t know. It made me curious. I was wondering if I could look at the file today or tomorrow?”

“You want to make me come down to the office on my days of rest?”

“It’s important.”

“Important how?”

Ashley didn’t answer. She was afraid of sounding foolish.

“What are you up to, Ashley? What’s really going on here?”

“Something might be wrong.”

“Wrong how?”

“I’d rather not say until I read the file. I’m probably way off base. I don’t want to waste your time if that’s the case.”

“I’m not following you. What type of thing is wrong?”

“What if we’re all mistaken about Joshua Maxfield?”

Delilah laughed. “Joshua Maxfield is a bad man, Ashley. Make no mistake about that. He’s on death row because he deserves to be on death row.”

“I know, but…”

“Look, the man is going to be executed and you had a lot to do with that. Any normal person is going to feel bad about having some responsibility for a man’s death even if that man is a monster. That’s why you’re not a serial killer, because you have empathy for people. But don’t let those feelings blind you.”

“Delilah, I’ve got to see the file. Please. I’m sure I’ve got this all wrong, but if I don’t…”

“Okay, sugar, spell it out for me. Let me hear what you’ve got to say. Be an advocate for your position. If you convince me, I’ll take you to the office in an hour.”

There were a few deputy DAs working in their cubicles when Delilah let Ashley into the district attorney’s office, but most of the office was dark and deserted. Delilah put Ashley into an empty room with a large table and returned fifteen minutes later pushing a dolly loaded down with banker boxes. Ashley helped stack the boxes on the table, and the two women unpacked them. One box contained Delilah’s files, including an indexed set of the police reports. Two large boxes held copies of the transcripts of Maxfield’s trial, which was under review in the Oregon Supreme Court. Several boxes contained exhibits that had been introduced at trial. Another box held evidence that Delilah had not entered as exhibits. While Ashley was unpacking the last box, Delilah disappeared. She reappeared moments later with a mug and a thermos of coffee.

“Figured you could use this. You’re in for a long day. And don’t worry, girl. This ain’t the horrid office brew. It’s Delilah’s caffeine special, a secret blend I perfected during years of late nights and early mornings.”

Delilah left and Ashley got down to business. She grabbed the transcript first. Since she knew what she was looking for she didn’t have to read all of it. She skimmed the opening statements and closing arguments of both attorneys, her testimony, and the testimony of Larry Birch and Tony Marx. When she was done with the transcript, Ashley read through the police reports, concentrating on the interviews that Larry Birch had conducted with her but also reading any report that summarized the case. Two hours later, she had not found what she was looking for, and that scared her to death.

Even if she was right about this one thing, there were other unanswered questions. She pulled the draft of Maxfield’s unfinished novel out of the court exhibits, hoping it would hold the answer to one of them. Delilah had not offered the whole manuscript into evidence. Only those pages that had scenes that corresponded to the evidence that had been withheld from the public had been marked as exhibits. Joshua Maxfield was printed on the top left corner of each page. She skimmed the one hundred and seventy-odd pages, but none of them contained an answer to her questions.

Ashley had read the police report that detailed the search of Maxfield’s cabin. She knew that an earlier draft of the novel had been found on a table in the room where Maxfield did his writing. After a few minutes of searching she found it. The earlier draft did not have Maxfield’s name on it and it was significantly different from the other draft. By the time Ashley was through reading it, she was certain she knew what had happened, but there was one more thing she had to do to be certain that she was right. She walked down the hall and knocked on the doorjamb of the prosecutor’s office.

“Delilah,” she said when the deputy DA looked up, “I have to talk to Joshua Maxfield.”