When Eric had been called down to the office, he’d refused to speak to Keller without his father there. A wise move, all things considered. It was always the affluent, the well-educated, who lawyered up—or in this case, parented up. They’d been exposed to lawyers, or studied Miranda in their AP Government classes, or had been schooled by America’s biggest educator on police procedure and the Bill of Rights, Law & Order.

Though not every kid. Danny Pine hadn’t been so worldly-wise. If he had just asked to speak to a lawyer, he’d probably be a free man. Keller had watched the video of his interrogation several times, and it turned her stomach. That didn’t mean the interrogating officers were corrupt. They were small-town Nebraska cops with little training. And the scant interrogation instruction they’d received—a method known as the Reid Technique—had one critical flaw: it often resulted in false confessions. The great strides in DNA had not only freed many innocents, but had proven, contrary to conventional wisdom, that people did in fact confess to crimes they did not commit, especially juveniles.

A couple years ago, Keller had attended an interrogation best practices workshop and she’d been shocked at the number of false confessions. Keller remembered her instructor, a renowned expert in interrogation techniques, saying, “We used to teach you to look for signs of lying, like bad eye contact, fidgeting, but that’s just what kids do when they’re uncomfortable. We used to teach you to prod the suspect with a few details of the crime, but we found out that kids just parrot the words back. And we used to teach you to employ minimization techniques and tell kids that if they told the truth they could go home, but we found out that kids often jumped at the chance and confessed, believing that their innocence would be straightened out later.” The instructor closed the session by saying, “I interrogated a fifteen-year-old who falsely confessed and spent eleven years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. It’s my goal in life that it never happens again.”

That didn’t mean Danny Pine was innocent. He was an obvious suspect. He’d dated Charlotte, and the truth of the matter was that it was rarely a stranger who killed you; it was usually someone you held dear. As Keller knew too well, the sheep spends its life worried about the wolf, only to be eaten by the farmer.

Keller looked at the wolf—no, wolves—sitting across from her.

“What’s this about?” Eric’s father said to Keller. “And I do not appreciate the school letting our kids being grilled by a federal agent without a parent present.” His glare landed on Principal Flowers, who insisted on being present at the meeting.