The girl was distraught when they questioned her, and denied everything, all the while sobbing and unable to offer any other explanation for how the texts had ended up on her phone. Her father sat beside her, looking clammy and trembling with anger. Apparently he’d been friendly with Jake, which made the whole thing worse for him. They kept the questioning short. She was eighteen, after all, and technically of age to consent. “He didn’t do anything!” she kept insisting. “Like hell he didn’t!” her father yelled. The DA had to explain they were investigating it not as a crime, but as a professional ethics violation.

Jake, under questioning, looked honestly shocked, and then, as it sunk in, outraged. When they didn’t let up, he’d become flat and monosyllabic, and Hal had informed him the case was being handed over to the bar association’s discipline committee. Later, in the bathroom, Hal heard him throwing up. It wasn’t dispositive, however. Plenty of people fooled themselves into justifying their bad behavior, believing that they weren’t capable of evil motives or actions, and that if it felt right, it must be right. Perhaps that’s where Jake’s initial rage had come from. When Jake’s phone was examined by the office tech support, and a deleted photo of Rosie Mendoza was recovered, it seemed clear Jake was lying. She was listed in his phone as Rosalita, a childhood nickname according to her father. It turned Hal’s stomach.

Hal suspected, but couldn’t prove, that it was Jake who had alerted the city media to the story. They’d been digging around ever since, and one of the city papers had managed to turn up an old photo of Hal and Dom Finch sitting together at a fundraiser. The DA’s office was getting calls and letters every day now from concerned citizens who wanted to know how their tax dollars were being spent, whether old cases against them could be reopened in light of the leniency those kids had received, and even, in some cases, calling for his resignation. To Hal’s mind, the kind of man who would sabotage his own department that way was the kind of man who was capable of anything. Even sleeping with a young woman—a teenager—whose friends he was trying a case against.

Hal had always suspected Jake was gunning for his job. As if some upstart from out of town was ever going to be able to replace him. Hal wasn’t retiring anytime soon. Why should he, when there were plenty of hungry young lawyers to do the grunt work while he tried the winners and attended the dinners? Jake had gotten too big for his britches, and looked at one way, this whole sordid business with the high school student was as good an excuse as any to show him the door.