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believe she was either running away from her attacker, or pushed by such a person. She landed on her back on a boulder. Her skull was fractured from the fall. Based on the limited evidence—and from my gut—Ivy was attacked.”
    Max believed in gut instincts. She often had them herself when she was investigating a case, particularly when she sensed someone was lying. But she never reported her theories as fact based on mere impressions, just like cops couldn’t arrest someone just because their gut said they committed a crime.
    She asked, “Was there evidence at the top of the cliff to indicate a struggle?”
    “The ground was hard and yielded no usable footprints. It’s an area popular during the day—joggers, bikers—and we collected evidence within a large radius. Nothing was useful, at least at this point. She had no forensic evidence under her fingernails. We considered possible sexual assault, but there were no signs of recent sex, forced or consensual. She’d split with her boyfriend, Travis Whitman, at the end of the school year—a month before the murder—and we looked at him hard. She’d posted some negative comments about him on social media. But it was more than that. It was his attitude and confirmation from his peers that he was angry with Ivy. He was lying to me about something, though I still don’t know what.”
    “Would he be at the top of your suspect list?”
    “Two people vie for that honor—Travis Whitman, first, because he’s a jerk and a liar and I don’t like him.”
    Max smiled. “Honesty. I like that.”
    “Just because I don’t like someone doesn’t make them a killer.”
    “Except that he lied, but again, that’s your gut.”
    “Exactly. And my gut can’t convict anyone. After your call two weeks ago, I made another pass at him. Following up, basically just to annoy him. The night Ivy died he was home alone until eleven fifteen when his parents returned from a night out and found him watching television. They stayed up together until about one in the morning. I spoke with both parents, and they wouldn’t lie to protect their son—I don’t see it, at any rate. They were concerned, helpful, forthcoming. Unlike their son.” She almost smiled. “It was fun shaking him up. Since Ivy’s death fourteen months ago, we’ve had two murders in my jurisdiction. One a domestic violence situation, and one a drug-related homicide. Both I closed. It bothers me that I haven’t closed Ivy Lake’s murder.”
    “I will be talking to Travis,” Max said. “Because I’m a reporter sometimes I have success getting people to open up to me. They want to look good on the news or in the paper, so they talk too much. Liars tend to trip themselves up. Who’s your other primary suspect?”
    “Justin Brock.”
    Max raised her eyebrow. “Heather’s brother?”
    According to what Max had read in the local newspaper, Heather Brock’s family had filed a civil case accusing Ivy of using social media to bully and ostracize Heather until she became so depressed she killed herself on New Year’s Eve with alcohol and pills. The family’s civil suit was dropped several months after Ivy’s death.
    “Justin is the opposite of Travis. I don’t want him to be guilty. His family has been through hell with the suicide of his sister, and then dragged through the mud when they filed the civil suit against Ivy and her parents. When Ivy was killed, it all came up again about Heather’s suicide. Justin certainly had the rage to kill her, and he’s the only one without a solid alibi. He was home from college for the summer and his parents were out of town. He was alone, claimed to be sleeping. He could have been. No one can say, no one saw him after he left a party with his girlfriend at nine that night; his girlfriend said Justin was with her until nearly midnight, when they had an argument and he went home. With no physical evidence and no witnesses and a strong motive, I pressed him hard, but he