Excerpt:

Sutherland paused, staring at the floor. “Look at the mess we’ve gotten into here. If Jake had just let the law take its course with Pickens and Bullard, they likely would’ve ended up getting tossed from the force for belonging to the Ku Klux Klan. The two Hardinton cops would’ve been hit with felony charges for running an illegal dog fighting operation and gambling. Yeah, they might’ve seen a little jail time. But that stuff is a hell of a lot less serious than murder and attempted murder charges, which is what me and Jake are looking at—and maybe Pickens and Bullard as accomplices if Garbuncle can convince the jury they were complicit.”

“Okay, now just hold on,” said Seward. “It sounds like you’re throwing in the towel with the fight barely underway. The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings. Yes, you guys are in a pickle. You’ve got a decision to make. You can take your chances with my legal skills, but I don’t hold out a lot of hope I can win, especially against that shrewd bastard Garbuncle. Or …” He brushed his lips with his forefinger.

“You just might already be in a hole too deep to crawl out of. If you see it that way,

there’s only one way out of this, in my estimation. You’ve got to stop the trial from going forward.”

 “That’s easy to say,” said Sutherland. “How?”

 “One way would be for me to just drop the charge.”

  “So why don’t you do it?”

 “It’s not that simple. There likely would be some bad repercussions. Suspicions would arise as to why we weren’t pursuing it. The boss would wonder why. He’d quiz me about it. The media probably would raise the issue, and the public would wonder what was going on. A lot of people would ask questions. Reporters would do some digging. Hawk reporters would be abetted by their colleague Brad Hitchens, even though he’s probably recused himself because he was a witness in the trial.”

 Sutherland threw his hands up and sighed. “What the hell are we gonna do?”

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