He apparently knew more about me than I thought. Maybe he’d read my book. Understanding Crime and Space hadn’t hit any bestseller lists, but it was out there, and he wouldn’t have been the first criminal to research a book like that in order to identify weaknesses in an investigator’s approach.

“Mannie, what were you doing on Amber Road yesterday?”

“Keeping an eye on the funeral.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to see who spoke with Senator Murray.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t able to confirm what I was hoping to.”

“What do you know about Jon Murray’s death?”

“I know that he didn’t want to kill himself.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw the video. He was crying when he tipped the chair backward.”

I wasn’t sure how far to pursue this line of questioning, but I decided that it might help me land on what DeYoung had brought me in to discern: “the connection beneath the connection,” as he put it.

“If he didn’t want to commit suicide, why did he do it?”

“The tox screen came back positive, didn’t it? Selzucaine?”

I wanted to find out if he knew who was present in the senator’s living room when Jon died, but I didn’t want to give away any information he might not already know.

“What else?”

“Do you know what percentage of cases actually go to trial, Agent Bowers?”

“Less than ten. What do you know about the Selzucaine?”

“Just three percent. The rest are pled out—ninety-seven percent. Don’t you find that astonishing?”

It wasn’t at all how the system was intended to work. In one of the greatest failures of our judicial system, plea bargaining has become the norm rather than the exception. It’s simply a way of saving money and resources by having fewer cases brought to trial, but it in no way serves the greater good or the cause of justice.

No legislator wants to be seen as “soft on crime.” So with the increase in drug-related violent crimes during the seventies and eighties, a lot of mandatory minimum sentencing laws were put in place. As a result, some offenders, even today, faced decades in prison for minor or nonviolent drug offenses, and rather than go to trial and chance being found guilty, they pled out.

“What is the role of our justice system?” Mannie asked me.

Though I wanted to focus on Jon’s death and the drug connection, I figured as long as Mannie was talking I didn’t want to shut things down, so rather than change the subject, I said, “The official answer would be that punishment serves four roles: rehabilitation, retribution, and general and specific deterrence. If the plea deal can promote one of those, it’s usually offered.”

“Innocent people will accept plea bargains. Why?”

“Are you wanting to work out a plea bargain?”

“Why do innocent people accept them, Agent Bowers?”