Page 37 of Phoenix

“Uh-huh. And he didn’t like that?”

“No, he didn’t. He tried to change her mind. Used the nice guy approach first, and when that failed, he fell face first into movie creep stereotypes and told her that if he can’t have her, he would make sure nobody else would want her.”

Tor was quiet for a while, so Jule knew he was focusing on the case information. He put the dishes in the dishwasher, washed, dried, and put away the pans, and then wiped down the counter. Out of things to do, he rested his back against the sink and watched Tor work.

“The stalking is based on these emails, right?” Tor asked after a few minutes, still looking at the screen.

“Yes. You can see where she’s telling him details about places he’s been, who he was with, what he was wearing. They almost always come in within hours of him being there. We scoured social media and there aren’t pictures or anything posted so there shouldn’t be a way for her to have known about it.”

Tor nodded. “And she says she didn’t send the emails,” he said more than asked.

“Exactly. How’d you know that?”

“Because she didn’t send them.” Tor looked away from the computer and at Jule.

“The prosecutor sent us those copies”—Jule pointed at the laptop as he walked toward Tor—“and the emails came from her account: Rachel M Thompkins at gmail dot com.”

“No, they didn’t.” He waited for Jule to sit beside him and then he moved the laptop in front of him. “That’s a number one not a lower case ‘L’.”

Jule frowned and leaned forward. “It is?”

“Uh-huh.” Tor nodded.

“How can you tell?”

“See the ‘L’ in gmail? It’s different from the one in Rachel. The line on top is shorter and the one at the base is longer. Someone made an email account that’s almost like hers but instead of the ‘L’ in her name, they used the number one and then they sent these emails pretending to be her.”

“Holy shit.” Jule pulled his computer closer and carefully looked at each letter with a fresh eye. “You’re right. I can make a request for the source data, not just the printouts they sent, and we’ll be able to prove that these came from another address.”

He turned to Tor, awed. “How’d you figure that out?”

“People do that shit to set up bank accounts and launder money or cash checks or take transfers that the sender thinks they’re making to a different recipient. The boyfriend just came up with a new way to use an old scam.”

Jule nodded. “You think the boyfriend did this?”

“Probably. He stabbed himself so sending some bullshit emails doesn’t seem like a stretch.”

“Tell me how you know that.”

Tor clicked through the file to the images of the stab wound.

“He was stabbed above his right hip from front to back.” He pointed at the images. “Not too deep and angled just a little down. See that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Rachel’s left-handed.”

Jule nodded. “How’d you know?”

“In the pictures I saw that she wears her watch on her right wrist and that her eye makeup is applied better on her left eye.”

“Her eye makeup,” Jule repeated.

“Uh-huh. Like the mascara and shit.”

“Are you fucking with me right now?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’ll switch to her pictures and show you when I’m done with this one.”