Sarah Koenig

For a while, I couldn't let it go.

Because it seemed to me that whoever made this call, he must be the key to the whole thing.

But so far, I only have guesses that I can't responsibly say out loud.

Anyway, the day after the Pizza Hut talk on February 16th, the detectives do some paperwork that will ultimately crack the whole case open for them.

They get a subpoena for Adnan's cell phone records.

The results of that subpoena include a list of all the calls dialed and received on Adnan's phone on January 13th, the day he disappeared.

That list will become arguably the most important piece of paper among all the thousands in this case.

It'll become their map.

And they'll follow it, call by call by call, like footprints that end up at Adnan's front door.

If you look at that call log from January 13th, there are 34 calls that day.

Obviously, the first thing they have to do is figure out who all the phone numbers belong to, home, cell, and pager numbers.

Once they do, they realize, wait a minute, one person was called six times that day, much more often than anyone else.

That person is an 18-year-old girl named Jennifer Pusateri.

Jen is not a friend of Adnan's.

She's a friend of Jay's.

Remember, Jay had Adnan's car that day and his new cell phone.

That's Jen talking to detectives about the night of January 13th.

If you want to figure out this case with me, now is the time to start paying close attention, because we have arrived, along with the detectives, at the heart of the thing.

This interview with Jen happens on February 27th, 1999.

The day before, on the 26th, the cops had gone to find Jen at her house.