Page 98 of Blade

My phone pings, and I reach for it in my coat.

Artis glances over with anticipation. “Is it Grace?”

I shake my head. “It’s my office,” I tell him. “They’ve been chasing a lead.”

He returns his eyes to the road, hands on the wheel, while I read the text.

??Not sure what this means but read the file,??it says.

So I click the link and get to a filing in a Colorado court. It’s a family matter.

Artis pulls onto the access road, his SUV slipping in the deep snow. “Christ,” he says. “This is bad.”

I’m reading a court filing in a custody case.??Emile Dresiér v. Shannon Finch—Petition for Sole Legal Custody and Relocation of the Minor Child, Caleb Finch...??

What the hell is this?

I read on, pulling out the facts. The minor child is five years old, the petition says. It recites the history of the legal proceedings. The ongoing custody hearings. The recent decision in Emile’s favor. The appeal Shannon filed.

I think about the cartoons playing in Shannon’s apartment at Avery Hall. The LEGO set in the corner. Shannon never married, but she had a child—with Emile, the pleadings say. They’d been battling over him for years. And now Emile was moving to California. He was taking his son with him.

And then I hear Artis’s question from moments before. About Grace’s dress and who might have had access to her room.

There’s the answer—right in front of me.Shannon Finch.

Artis looks from me to the road. Back and forth.

“Ana,” he says, as the car creeps through a tunnel of white. We can’t see more than a few feet beyond the hood. Can’t even get our bearings from the landscape, the shape of the road, the direction we’re heading.

“I know it’s bad—just keep going,” I say. But that’s not what he wants to tell me, about the storm and the snow and the dangerous driving conditions.

“It’s about the dress . . .”

Now he has my full attention. “The dress? What about it?”

“Look on the back seat,” he says. So I do. I turn and see a clear plastic bag with something inside. A piece of clothing.

Baby blue. Yellow butterflies. The distinct reddish brown of dried blood.

My heart is in my throat as I reach back for the bag. But then I stop. If that’s Grace’s dress, it’s evidence in the crime. There could be prints on the bag, from whoever took it from her room that night. And now from Artis.

“Where did you get that?” I ask, my mind reeling with possibilities as I get another text.

??And this ...??it says, with a second file attached—one with supporting affidavits.

But I’m still focused on the dress with the blood in the back seat of Artis’s car. I think now that Shannon must have taken it and given it to Artis after we left this morning. Maybe that’s where he’s been all day.

“Did you get that from Shannon?” I ask him, not sure what to think or do. We have no obligation to disclose incriminating evidence, but Shannon was technically obstructing justice.

And then I have to wonder—why would Shannon take the dress? And why would she give the dress to Artis?

I look back to the files. My eyes dance over the names but now one of them is pulling me back as the pieces fall into place.

Affidavit of Artis Frauhn in Support of Defendant Shannon Finch.

My God . . .

“Artis,” I say now. “Why did Shannon give you that dress?”