But I couldn’t be engaged to him or have sex with him. Like I said, I’m his sister. I never told him that, but I wanted to. I just never found the words.”

“That’s a load of bullshit.”

“Well, of course there’s more to it. I never had a family of my own, so I gravitated to Michael and accepted his affection…to a point. But I was going through a lot of personal stuff, and—you know the expression ‘any port in a storm?’ —That’s what Michael represented to me.”

“Mrs. Thorne says you used him to…” He stops in mid-sentence and shakes his head. “Oh, never mind. She destroyed her credibility with the mutual fund thing.”

“I’ll admit I stayed with Michael longer than I should have, but I did it so I could be around my real family.”

“Why didn’t you just tell them who you were?”

“Can you imagine how awkward that would have been? They didn’t want me, Detective. If they had, they would have located me and invited me into their lives. But they didn’t, so I had to force the situation. I wanted them to meet me as a stranger, with no preconceived notions. I knew they hated all of Michael’s former girlfriends, so this was my chance to see if they would like me. And they did. They loved me.”

Rudd says, “We never stopped working the blackmail angle. But since you gave the money to Michael before we began the investigation, it’s going to be hard to get any traction.” He looked at Broadus. “Can we turn off the recorder?”

He does, and Rudd says, “You know what I think? I think David had the hots for you and when you broke up with Michael he saw an opportunity, made his move and you told him you couldn’t have an affair with him because he was your father. And I think he felt bad about leaving you all those years ago, and wanted you to have something, so he sent you the cash.”

Broadus says, “Wrong and wrong. Because if that was the truth, she wouldn’t have had to transfer the money to Michael. But she had to.”

“How do you know?”

“Because no one’s going to give up $1.2 million if they don’t have to.”

Rudd says, “It’s going to be hard to prove it.”

“Not if we find evidence linking her to sexual activity with her father.”

“You won’t,” I say.

“Because you clean up well?”

“Because there isn’t any.”

4.

THE OFFICERS REMAINED in my house nearly four hours, and never found any evidence of David.

Like Detective Broadus said, I clean up well.

From the minute he and Rudd claimed they were terminating the investigation I knew they were lying and hoped to lull me into a false sense of security. So that very day, after getting my stuff from Michael’s apartment, I washed all my clothes, threw away my bed spread, sheets, pillow cases, all the items inside my refrigerator and closets, and scrubbed every surface in my house. I washed all the silverware and every dish and glass and all the pots and pans I own. I even got a ladder and wiped off all traces of rope fibers from the beams. I cut both ropes we used into one-foot pieces, and dumped them in gas station trash cans and dumpsters all over Louisville. I bought a new laptop, threw away the old one (after removing the hard drive and drilling holes in it with an industrial strength drill Michael had in his utility room). I also destroyed and threw away the video recorders and the pieces of both copies of the videos I made that chronicled my sexual activities with David.

After talking to Alison in the hotel that day I told Jessie who I was, and said the only reason I’d remained with Michael was so I could get closer to her. I said I intended for us to be together, though it couldn’t be right away. She said she’d wait for me till her eighteenth birthday if she had to, but no longer. I told her it might very well be that long, but said I’d be in contact as soon as I was convinced the police had concluded their investigation.

Then, even though I was convinced all traces of David were removed, I hired a cleaning crew to clean the house from top to bottom, including all surfaces, light switches, wall plugs, light bulbs, appliances, and I supervised their efforts. Two days later, I hired another cleaning crew to do the same.

As it turned out, Alison and Arthur Blass were lying about the insurance company denying the accidental death claim.