The palm print found on Sal Fidella's garage matched Quinn Glover's hand. Faced with that addition to the mountain of eyewitness and forensic evidence, Quinn's legal commandos tried selling out Tristram Wydette in return for a lighter sentence, pushing the notion that Quinn was a weak-willed follower caught in the spell of Tristram Wydette's evil charisma.

Tristram, his former best friend claimed, had masterminded the whole thing because getting into Stanford was the most important thing in the world to him, he felt like the stupid kid in the family, Aidan was the brainiac.

When told that Aidan had also used Trey Franck as an SAT surrogate, the boy was genuinely surprised. "No shit. What was his problem?"

"You tell me, Quinn," said Milo.

"He always seemed smart to me."

"Maybe he just wasn't smart enough."

"Yeah. Sir. You're right." Laughter.

"Something funny, Quinn?"

"I guess he just fucked up. Sir. I guess we all did."

"That's a fair assessment."

"Assessment," said Quinn. "That's an SAT vocab word. 'The act or instance of evaluating.'"

"How do you assess your situation, Quinn?"

"It was T's idea, sir. I didn't like it, what could I do?"

"No choice at all."

"Exactly, sir. T thought of the dee-ice, T put her--Ms. Freeman--in it. He also bashed in that loser's head--we were gonna shoot him--T was gonna shoot him but we forgot the gun at T's house and we already drove all the way there so T said let's just do it."

"How'd it go down?"

"Loser came to the door, we--T pushed him in, saw the pool cue and bashed him."

Milo said, "There was no sign of a serious struggle, Quinn. That means Mr. Fidella was restrained."

"If you say so, sir."

"Be a lot easier for two big guys to restrain one middle-aged loser."

The boy's lawyer, silent and working his iPhone till now, said, "I'd prefer he doesn't answer that."

Milo didn't protest. "So T bashed in the loser's head. Then what?"

"Then T got into the Jag."

"And you drove away in the loser's Corvette."

The lawyer said, "I'd prefer if--"

"And I'd prefer not to waste my time, Mr. Neal. Grand Theft Auto is not your client's problem."

"It's not a matter of that, it's a matter of--"

Milo stood. Motioned to me to do the same.

"That's it?" said Quinn.

"According to Mr. Neal it is, son." To the attorney: "So far, I haven't heard anything of a 'forthcoming nature' and John Nguyen won't take kindly to that. Particularly in light of multiple victims, murder for gain, extreme depravity, lying in wait--"

"Fine," said Neal. "He drove the car."

We sat back down.

Milo said, "You drove off in Mr. Fidella's Corvette."

"Piece-of-shit wheels," said Quinn. "Made all sorts of noises." Smiling and hoping it caught on.

"Then what happened?"

Client glanced at counsel. Counsel nodded.