Chapter 12: Exhibit

Jared left the diner without looking back.

The bell over the door rang behind him.

Through the window I watched him get into the G-Wagon, check his hair in the mirror and pull out into traffic.

The officer gave Sam a card with a case number on it.

"For what it's worth," he said to me quietly, "I've got a daughter."

Then he took the bottle away in its paper bag.

Sam drove me home himself.

Ray followed in the truck, and my lab tech went home with a promise from Sam to call a friend of his about her job.

For the first ten minutes Sam didn't say anything.

He drove with both hands on the wheel at ten and two.

"I'm sorry," he said finally.

"For what?"

"For what he said. About us. In front of all those people."

"He's said worse to me in the last two weeks."

"That's not the point."

"It's in a police report now," I said. "In his own words. With a case number."

Sam glanced at me.

Something in his face eased a little.

"You think like a lawyer," he said.

"I think like a chemist. Write everything down. Never throw out the sample."

On Wednesday he filed the women's lawsuit.

Thayer Professional. Alyssa Monroe Studio.

And Jared Thayer, by name, personally.

"He signed the release himself," Sam said. "He doesn't get to hide behind the company."

That afternoon he sat across from me at the long table in his office and slid a single sheet of paper over.

"I need a chemist," he said. "Somebody who can tell a jury what pH 12.8 does to a scalp, in words a bus driver understands."

"You want me."

"I want the person who wrote the formula they were pretending to sell."

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