It was unusual for Hal to call a meeting at this point in a case. That was one thing Jake admired about Hal—he trusted his deputies, and, as he liked to say, he let them have their head. Every year he cherry-picked a few cases to handle himself, or to follow closely. Even the staid Hart County served up an occasional dead body or unexplained fire. But for most of the run-of-the-mill incidents—hit-and-runs, domestic violence—Jake ran his own cases. If Hal wanted to meet now, while the investigation was still ongoing, he must consider the case serious. And Jake agreed. Something about this one bothered him.

When Jake entered Hal’s office, Hal and the police chief, Bob Whitman, were already deep in conversation. The chief was wearing a dark uniform suit and tie, but Hal was in his full DA regalia: tweed suit complete with vest, pocket square, and round horn-rimmed glasses. He liked to dress the part of the country lawyer.

“Come on in, Jake,” Hal boomed. “I was just telling Bob here that he’s lucky to have you on this case. That you’ll know exactly how to handle such a delicate matter.”

“Chief,” Jake said, nodding. Delicate wasn’t exactly how he would have described the case, but he guessed that Hal was referring to all of the kids involved. It was going to be tricky separating out responsibility and charges between the kids who would be routed to juvenile court and those, like Trip O’Connor, whom they could fully charge as adults.

Chief Whitman offered up his hand for a shake, and Jake took it. “Tillman. Didn’t I see you at the country club last week? You played in the Union Club charity tournament, didn’t you?”

Jake laughed as he sat down across from the chief. “No, afraid not. My golf is a bit rusty. I don’t think I’ve been out since law school.”

Jake was ready for the small talk to be over. He knew, though, that if he was serious about aiming for Hal’s job at some point, he should probably suck it up and start getting in good with the chief. Even if that meant investing in some golf clubs.

“Here,” Jake said, handing copies of his file to Hal and Chief Whitman. “I’ll run through what we have so far, and then we can discuss the possible charges.”

Hal took the file, but didn’t look at it. Jake started anyway.