That part was true. Our shrink had told me more than once that making Jennifer Chesterman testify would be like abusing her all over again. Besides, even if I could convince myself that the ends of putting Chesterman away justified the trauma to his daughter, Lauren was right: we’d most likely still fail. Jennifer would be sufficiently eviscerated by Michele Sutton on cross to ensure that the jury wouldn’t believe her.

Still, I thought that anything less than a lifetime prison term for Donald Chesterman was giving up. “Then let’s go to the jury without Jennifer,” I said. “I’d rather lose at trial than live with the fact that I was responsible for allowing Chesterman ever to be free again.”

I remember almost verbatim what Lauren said next, because it has guided me as a prosecutor ever since.

“This job should not be in any way, shape, or form about how you feel, Ella. It’s about your clients, the people of the state of New York. And given that this is a family situation, I’m not all that concerned about the citizenry at large. But I am deeply worried about what happens to those children. How will they feel if Donald Chesterman goes free? Letting him plead to anything other than the max might not seem like justice for what he’s done—and believe me, I agree with you, it’s not—but with any luck, he’ll be locked away long enough for them to become adults and be able to stay away from him when he gets out. In that context, we’re giving these children their lives. Isn’t that more important than taking away Donald Chesterman’s?”

Chesterman took the deal. Maximum sentence of fifteen years, although he could get out sooner with good behavior, which is apparently what happened.

Shortly after he became a long-time guest of the New York Department of Corrections, Lauren received a letter. Typed, no return address, no name even, but we both knew it was from Chesterman. He must have had someone smuggle it out of prison, because prison mail is reviewed before it goes out. It was only one line, all caps, centered in the middle of the page:

THE MOMENT I GET OUT, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.

As a prosecutor, you get a lot of death threats. Defendants live with a level of desperation unknown to most people. They’re on the verge of being branded and caged. Even though they only have themselves to blame, they often look to foist it onto someone else. Who better than the person asking the judge to impose biblical punishment?

I scan the street. There are a dozen or so people in my line of sight, most making their way to the subway. Is one of them Donald Chesterman, preparing to complete his revenge? Or a man he hired to do his bidding?