Chapter
One

Seven men in their early fifties occupied the local police station's interrogation room. Detective Jerry Callow stood tall with his arms crossed. After graduating college, Callow had tried becoming an attorney. He dropped out after just one semester of law school. He would explain to his few friends and fellow coworkers how, at least three or four times a day, somebody would say to him:

"Jerry Callow? Jerry Callow is dead."

They always quoted Joe Pesci's lines from My Cousin Vinny. If you think the movie was popular in the real world, well, it was quoted daily in the world of attorneys.

After leaving law school, Callow still wanted to be part of the legal world. So he earned his master's degree in criminal justice and eventually became a detective with the Hanover Police Department.

Hanover was a South Shore town roughly twenty miles south of Boston. Small. Still somewhat rural. One of those towns fueled by gossip, local politics, and high school sports.

Always sharply dressed, Callow wore a gray suit with a heavily starched white dress shirt. Normally he wore a tie, but not today. Standing just under six feet tall and weighing a lean 185 pounds, he slowly scanned left to right, his eyes leading the movement before his head followed behind.

The six men sitting across from him were all suspects in a brutal crime.

"OK," Callow said while glancing at the clock mounted on the cement wall beside him. "Who wants to go first?"

The six men sat shoulder to shoulder on one side of a large metal fold-up table. Cement walls boxed them in on three sides. Behind Callow sat a one-way mirror and a steel door.

"OK. I'll go first," Michael said quickly.

Michael sat directly in the center. He looked at the two lifelong friends to his left, then the three lifelong friends to his right, before staring back at Detective Callow.

"I represent these guys and myself," Michael said, "and we're not saying anything."

"That's smart, Michael," Callow replied. "I wouldn't say anything either."

Michael was the only friend who had moved out of state. After graduating from Suffolk Law School, Michael — unlike Callow — pursued his dream in law. He eventually represented musicians out in Los Angeles and built his own small law firm.

"Smart," Michael replied sarcastically. "At least you learned something from that one semester of law school."

The men beside him couldn't help themselves. Their stone-faced expressions cracked into boyish laughs.

✦ ✦ ✦

Unless Michael was standing in a courtroom, he was usually found wearing jeans, flip-flops, and a concert T-shirt. Most of the time it was a band from the '90s. Today he wore a Jane's Addiction shirt featuring Siamese twin girls dressed in white dresses with their hair on fire.

Nobody would ever guess he was an attorney.

For a second, it felt like they were fifteen years old again — the boys on one side and Jerry on the other.

Except this time it was serious.

Really serious.

"Look, none of us knows what happened," Graham said. "And if one of us did, we ain't saying shit here or anywhere else."

Callow pointed at Graham. "First off, I know you didn't do it, Graham. And secondly, you should listen to your attorney."

Callow raised his eyebrows and pointed toward Michael. Michael turned toward Graham with a sarcastic grin. "He's right."

Ronnie leaned forward. "Jerry, all things aside, we really don't know what happened." Wearing a Vineyard Vines branded vest over a Harmon Country Club golf pullover, Ronnie spoke with his palms open like he was trying to calm everybody down.

"Are you retarded?" Michael snapped. "Shut the fuck up."

"Alright, alright... I get it," Ronnie muttered, regretting he opened his mouth.

"Are we done here?" Michael asked.

"No," Callow replied.

Then he reached over and shut the blinds covering the one-way mirror.

Moments later, Michael woke up. It was all a dream. He was sweating. The anxiety at this point in time was higher than ever. His nightmare exemplified what he feared.