94 Trash Folder
Trash Folder
My father and I were having lunch at the diner he used to take me to on Sunday afternoons, when he filled me in on what was happening. This diner gave you two hamburgers for the price of one and your first beer on the house.
“The case won’t hold up in court. Everyone knows Regina talked about taking her life for years.
” He didn’t know yet—because I hadn’t told him—about the Polaroids I’d taken, the tapes, the spiral notebook in which I’d documented Forrest’s comings and goings that summer, including Brenda’s words to her friend that day at the Caboose about the plans to make a life with Forrest. And more.
The next Sunday—lunch with my father again—he told me the latest news.
The police had succeeded in getting a search warrant for Brenda Barnett’s computer.
It had taken them all of ten minutes to locate the draft she had written of what she’d constructed as Regina’s suicide letter, located in her trash folder.
(I had figured this out long before: In addition to being a really terrible person, Brenda was also a stupid one.)
On the basis of the draft of the fake suicide note, along with corroborating evidence in the form of the photographs I’d taken, Brenda Barnett had now been charged as an accomplice to murder, facing a sentence of twenty-five years to life.