PART 7 — The Draft Email Saved the Morning After the Murders
Voss said he wrote the email after reading papers collected from Daniel’s office. That explanation might have fit if the police inventory had mentioned the hidden drawer. It did not. Daniel’s original deed remained behind its false back until Ruth and Mara found it three years later. Investigators asked how Voss knew there were multiple copies.
He said Elise had told him Daniel copied everything. Elise, questioned separately, said she knew only about the office file. Neither could point to a message where she had told Voss about backups. Mara marked the contradiction and waited for the independent team to examine the rest of the laptop.
They found a map search from the day before the murders. Voss had looked up the bank where Daniel rented his safe-deposit box. He could not access its contents, and the search alone proved little. Daniel’s notebook had mentioned an outside copy without naming the bank. Investigators asked Voss where he obtained the address. He said he did not remember.
By then, the state had stopped arguing that my vacated conviction should be reinstated. Prosecutors said they were reviewing whether to bring a new case against me, Elise, Voss, or someone else. My name remained in that sentence because no one had formally cleared me. I tried to concentrate on the fact that people were finally examining the evidence.
Mara sought my release while the review continued. The state opposed it at first, citing the seriousness of the charges. At the hearing, she pointed to the incomplete trial record, the revised timeline, and my conduct during three years in custody. The judge set conditions I could meet if released and asked the state to explain why detention remained necessary.
The prosecutor said the gun and the footage still raised questions. Mara answered that the gun did not date my print and the full footage did not identify me. He asked for another week to review material from the independent team. The judge gave him four days. I went back to my cell carrying that number like a small object I could keep in my pocket.
Lucy asked whether I could come to her birthday. It was two months away. I wanted to tell her yes. I said I was trying. She held up a page from a catalog and showed me a model train set she hoped to receive. I promised that when I saw her, we would find a place to lay out the tracks.
The neighbor who had kept the doorbell video met with investigators. Her backup showed my mother entering our building at 8:48 on the night of the murders. From then until morning, the front entrance opened only for another tenant and a delivery driver. The image could not show the inside of our apartment, but it weakened the route prosecutors had described.
She had supplied a copy during the original investigation. Voss’s team labeled it inconclusive because the building had a rear utility yard. An investigator photographed the yard after Mara raised the issue. Its gate had a heavy chain secured from a neighboring property, and the apartment windows were well above the ground. No witness had reported anyone climbing there.
My mother had testified that Lucy’s fever kept us both awake. She remembered me moving between the sofa and the child’s bed, changing washcloths and measuring medicine. At trial, prosecutors suggested she had confused that night with another. The doorbell footage could not prove every minute, but it fixed her arrival and the hours she remained.
Ruth gave Mara an old receipt from a hardware store. Daniel bought screws and a narrow panel two days before the murders, the materials he used to build the false back. His effort to protect the deed was not a late invention created for the hearing. I wished he had sent the envelope to the auditor sooner. Ruth said she wished it too.
The traffic contractor located a backup after all. Its image quality was poor, and its clock required correction against a separate system. Once technicians aligned the times, they identified a car matching Voss’s entering the records office rear lot at 9:21 p.m. A similar car left four minutes later.
Voss confirmed it was his. He said he had driven there after Elise called, intending to check whether she needed help. He claimed he remained in the car and left when she said the conversation with Ben had ended. He had never mentioned that stop in his original investigative report or during my trial.
Elise’s first new statement had placed her at home by 9:00. Confronted with the traffic record and Voss’s account, she said she had remained near the office until about 9:30. She also admitted speaking with him by her car. She insisted Ben and Daniel were alive when she left the building.
Mara told me every change in Elise’s account made it harder to know what to believe. Still, each admission could be tested against the video and phone records. Elise’s card opened the side door. Voss’s car entered the rear lot. Both concealed those facts when I was tried. The question of what they did inside remained.
The independent team reconstructed the camera clocks. The side-door camera ran eleven minutes slow; the rear-lot camera displayed accurate time. With the adjustment, the dark-coated figure exited near the period when Voss was on the lot. The footage did not show whether they met. A pillar blocked part of the walkway between the door and parking area.
The coat’s torn hem became another issue. Elise said she no longer owned the dark coat she wore that winter. Her attorney produced photographs showing her in several similar coats, none with a visible tear. Investigators sought purchase records and images from local businesses. Mara told me a coat might help, but she did not want the entire case balanced on fabric.
While they searched, she returned to Elise’s trial testimony. Elise had said I asked how a person might copy a signature. Our dental office scheduled Elise for three shifts through a temporary agency. Mara interviewed everyone working those days. One receptionist remembered Elise, during lunch, describing a disputed land document and asking whether a scanned signature would look different when printed.
I remembered that conversation only after hearing the receptionist’s account. I had answered that I did not know; our office used electronic forms, but someone else handled them. Elise later testified that I initiated the question. The receptionist could not repeat every word, yet she was certain Elise brought up the subject. She had found it odd at the time.
The office owner produced a schedule placing Elise’s first shift after the Calder deed was filed. She had asked about copied signatures while facing questions about that very deed. Mara said the sequence gave a jury a different way to understand the conversation. It did not show who killed Ben, but it undercut a key part of my supposed motive.
The prosecutor requested copies of the receptionist’s statement. Mara sent them the same day. When I asked whether his office finally believed me, she said he was reviewing the evidence and its own conduct. Belief was a word she avoided in filings. I understood why, though I had wanted to hear it from someone in the state for years.
At the end of the four days, the judge held another release hearing. The prosecutor no longer opposed release under supervision while the review continued. Papers still had to be prepared, and I remained in prison that night. Mara called my mother before she called me, knowing Lucy would wake to news that might finally have a date attached.
Before I slept, a guard brought me an envelope from Mara. Inside was a copy of Ben’s recovered notebook, with one line circled that I had overlooked. Beneath Paul says he’ll come too, Ben had written, Elise says Paul has the earlier copy. Daniel had hidden one version. Someone had told Ben Voss held another.
END PART 7
