Detective Murray’s first task of the day on Thursday was to stop in at the DA’s office to catch up with Jake Tillman. Not that he had much to report. He had called around to the parents of all of the kids that they’d picked up on River Road, and, to his surprise, not a single parent had agreed to voluntarily bring their kids in for questioning, even when he described the destruction at the house party. As Murray saw it, he and the parents should have been on the same side. It didn’t do any good for kids to get away with this stuff—it just encouraged them to push it further the next time. But these parents saw it differently. They seemed to think that their role was to protect their children from consequences rather than to guide them through their mistakes. It worked, he thought, as long as you had money for lawyers. As a cop, he knew the truth: the poorest people often paid the highest price for their crimes, and sometimes for the crimes of others.

At Jake’s office, Murray accepted a cup of terrible coffee from Donna and told Jake about being stonewalled by the parents. “If we want to bring them in, we’re going to need warrants.”

“What about the contractor?” Jake asked.

“We can’t totally discount the possibility that someone from his crew threw the party,” Murray said. “I have an officer following up with his guys. Actually, we already turned up one interesting piece of information: Apparently they were leaving the garage door opener under the overhang on the deck so that when subcontractors stopped by they could have easy access to the house in case the regular guys weren’t there. It’s another question whether they used it to open up the house for the party, or whether someone else knew it was there. And I’m going to follow up with the Jensens about the check that bounced. But this doesn’t look like an insurance money play to me. If that was the case, they’d just burn it down. My money is still on the high school students.”

“What about the O’Connor boys?” Jake asked. “Anything there?”

“Nothing solid,” Murray replied. “Not yet, anyway.”

Jake got up from his desk and stood by the window. “I met with the Jensens. They’re pressing us hard—especially the husband.”

“They’ve called our office three times already for updates,” Murray said. “They want to see arrests, and I don’t blame them. But they have to understand that if we rush it, the case could fall apart. Right now, all we have are the tickets that I gave out on the road nearby.”