Around ten-thirty that morning, a jailer came to his cell and handed Gavin some papers. “Be ready for court in ten minutes.”

The first document was a complaint, charging him with various levels of attempted murder, criminal sexual assault, and kidnapping—eight counts in all. If they thought this might ruin his day, they were wrong. He needed the charges to be heavy for the next phase of the plan. The second document was a bail study recommending that Gavin be held without bail. That too was part of the plan.

He rolled the papers into a scroll and made his way to the pod entrance, waiting there while the jailer gathered five others. After being cuffed at the wrist and shackled around the ankles, the six men, wearing orange jumpsuits, orange socks, and orange sandals, marched through the underground tunnel that led to the Government Center. On the third floor, they were ushered into a courtroom through a special side entrance and told to sit in the jury box, where they would await their respective hearings.

Gavin had never been in a courtroom before, although he had imagined it—planned for it—a thousand times. He looked around at the laminate tables, the gray carpeting, and the cheap ceiling tile, and he felt disappointed. Where was the majesty? Remove the judge’s bench and the gallery pews and the room could just as well be cold storage. It was hardly a venue befitting the intrigue he had planned in the coming days.

People who he assumed were attorneys walked in and out with the casual gait of shoppers at a farmers’ market. Where was the drama? Shouldn’t these attorneys be under some modicum of stress? They were dealing with people’s lives—their freedoms—and not a one of them seemed to have a worry in the world. But then it occurred to Gavin that for them this is just another day at the office. Convictions and prison sentences were just words when you weren’t the one sitting in the box. And at the end of the day, the lawyers all went home.

Gavin settled into his chair and watched the goings-on, soon figuring out which table belonged to the prosecutors and which was reserved for defense attorneys. Prosecutors occupied the farther table, sitting like lords of the manor as they received a host of groveling defense attorneys whispering their requests with bowed backs.

One of the prosecutors, a younger woman who seemed less involved than the others, sat in the gallery just behind the others and held a single file on her lap. She read a document from that file over and over. Something about her held Gavin’s attention—the way her nose curved, or the line of her chin. He couldn’t put his finger on where or when, but he had seen her before.

The bailiff called for everyone in the room to rise.

A grim-faced woman with gray hair and a black robe entered and took a seat behind the bench. An administrator to her left handed her a stack of files, and she lifted the top one and called, “State of Minnesota versus Gavin Spencer.”