burden of proof

Three things were true about Preston Hale's murder before Julian Voss ever opened the file: it would be in every paper in Chicago by Friday, it would make somebody's career, and the state's best prosecutor would rather burn his own case to the ground than let Julian win against him a second time.

Julian didn't know that last part yet. He would, in about four hours.

For now, he didn't look up when Marisol dropped the folder on his desk.

"Tell me it's not the Hale case."

"It's the Hale case."

He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. "The judge who died in his study. That Hale case."

"Judge Preston Hale. Found dead six days ago by his husband. Officially ruled a homicide as of eight this morning." Marisol dropped a second, thinner folder on top of the first. "And you're representing the husband."

"The grieving widower."

"The twenty-six-year-old grieving widower who stands to inherit eleven million dollars and a house in Door County." She said it without judgment, just fact, which was exactly why he'd hired her. "Daniel Hale retained the firm an hour ago. He asked for you by name."

"Everyone asks for me by name." Julian flipped the folder open. A photograph of Preston Hale in his robes looked back at him — silver-haired, granite-jawed, the kind of face that had scared juries straight for twenty years. "What's the state's theory?"

"Jealousy, opportunity, eleven million reasons. Same as it ever is." Marisol perched on the edge of his desk. "You'll want to sit down for the next part."

"I'm sitting."

"The ASA on this one requested it. Personally. Walked into his supervisor's office the morning it got reclassified and asked to be put on it."

Julian's pen stopped moving. "Requested. As in, went and asked."

"That's the rumor." She watched his face the way she always did right before she was about to enjoy something. "Adrian Cole. You two have history, don't you? Something from the Delgado trial?"

"We have professional history."

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the only answer you're getting." He stood and shrugged his jacket on. "When's the status hearing?"

"Tomorrow, nine a.m. Judge Whitfield's courtroom." Marisol slid off the desk. "You want me there?"

"I want you finding out everything there is to know about Preston Hale's private life. Financials. Phone records. Who he was sleeping with when he wasn't sleeping with his husband."

"You think there's someone else?"

"I think a man like that always has a locked drawer somewhere." Julian studied the cold, handsome face in the photograph a moment longer. "Find the drawer."

Cook County Jail smelled like bleach trying to cover something it couldn't.

Daniel Hale sat on the other side of the glass in an orange jumpsuit two sizes too big, hands folded like he was still waiting for someone to explain that this was all a misunderstanding.

"Mr. Voss." He half-rose, caught himself. "Thank you for coming."

"Don't thank me yet." Julian sat, set down his legal pad, didn't open it. "Tell me exactly what you told the police. Every word. Even the parts that make you look bad."

"I didn't kill my husband."

"I didn't ask if you did. I asked what you told them."

Something in Daniel's composure slipped, just slightly, at the correction. Good, Julian thought. That's a real reaction. "I said I was at the gym until nine. I came home, found him in his study, called 911. I told them we'd argued that morning — about the caterer for some bar association dinner, nothing—"

"What kind of argument."

"The kind married people have." Daniel's folded hands tightened around each other. "He'd been distracted for months. He used to tell me everything about his cases. Lately he'd just go quiet. Take calls in his study with the door shut."

"You thought he was having an affair."

Daniel looked up, startled. "I never said that to the police."

"You didn't have to. You're saying it to me right now." Julian watched him carefully. "Why not tell them?"

"Because I didn't want to hand them one more reason to think I had a motive." Daniel's voice cracked on the last word, the first genuinely unguarded sound he'd made. "So I said nothing. And now you probably think I'm hiding something."

"I think you're hiding exactly one thing, and it isn't the thing they arrested you for." Julian leaned in. "If your husband was seeing someone, Daniel, then I'm not the only person in this city who benefits from him being dead. That's not a problem for you. That's the only thing that gets you out of that jumpsuit."

Daniel held his gaze a long moment, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. "Find out who it was," he said quietly. "Please. I need to know who it was."

"That makes two of us."

The courtroom smelled the way it always did — dust, floor wax, other people's nerves. Julian took his seat at the defense table at 8:58, two minutes early, which for him counted as fashionably on time.

He felt Adrian Cole before he saw him. That hadn't changed in three years.

"Voss."

"Cole." Julian turned, and there he was — dark suit, tie still knotted tight because the day hadn't beaten him down enough yet to loosen it, the same unimpressed line between his eyebrows that Julian used to think about more than was healthy for either of them. "Heard a rumor you asked for this one."

"Heard a rumor you still talk too much before a hearing starts."

"Old habits." Julian let his eyes travel, deliberate, unbothered, the way Adrian's jaw ticked in response, also unchanged. "You look well."

"Don't."

"Don't what? Compliment you?"

"Whatever this is." Adrian's voice dropped, even with the room filling in around them, even with a bailiff ten feet away. "We do this like professionals. You take your shots in the courtroom. I take mine. Whatever happened in Milwaukee stays exactly where we left it."

"Which was a hotel room, if I recall correctly."

"Julian."

It was the first time in three years he'd used his first name, and Julian felt it land somewhere below his sternum — a small, unwelcome victory. "Fine. Professional. You prosecute, I defend, we both pretend the last three years didn't happen."

"That's the idea."

"For what it's worth," Julian said, quieter now, quiet enough that it belonged only to Adrian, "I did think about calling."

Something moved behind Adrian's eyes, there and gone before Julian could name it. "Court's in session in ninety seconds."

"Right." Julian faced front. "Ninety seconds."

"All rise."

Judge Eleanor Whitfield took the bench without ceremony, reading glasses already low on her nose. "People v. Hale. I assume both sides are ready to discuss scheduling."

"Defense is ready, Your Honor." Julian rose halfway, a habit more than a requirement.

"State is ready." Adrian didn't rise at all. He never wasted motion he didn't need.

"Good. Mr. Cole — where are we on discovery?"

"The medical examiner's supplemental report was finalized this morning, Your Honor. We'll have it to the defense by end of day."

Julian was on his feet before Adrian finished the sentence. "Your Honor, if the classification changed from suicide to homicide six days after the fact, I'd like to understand why — and I'd like to understand it before end of day."

"Mr. Voss—"

"With respect, Judge, my client has spent six days in a cell on a theory the state's own medical examiner wasn't sure of until this morning. I consider that relevant to bail, which I intend to raise again at the earliest opportunity."

Adrian's jaw ticked once. "The defense is welcome to file a motion like everyone else, Your Honor."

"I'll have one on your desk by five." Julian sat, satisfied, and didn't look at Adrian, which took more discipline than anything else that had happened all morning.

Whitfield exhaled through her nose, the sound of a woman who'd refereed worse. "Trial date. I'm looking at March, gentlemen, and I am not moving it. Anything further?"

"Nothing further," Adrian said.

"Nothing further," Julian echoed — and this time he did look, just once, just long enough to find Adrian already looking back.

He caught up with Adrian at the elevator bank, which he told himself was a coincidence and didn't believe for a second.

"You didn't have to ask for this case."

"You don't know why I asked for this case."

"Enlighten me."

The elevator arrived empty. Adrian stepped in first; Julian followed, and the doors closed on a box that suddenly felt eight sizes too small.

"I asked for it," Adrian said, watching the floor numbers instead of him, "because I read the file, and I knew — before I ever saw the defense motion — that they'd call you. Rich. Dead. Complicated. That's your entire client list."

"Ouch."

"And I decided," Adrian went on, like Julian hadn't spoken, "that I was done being the guy who finds out you're in the building secondhand. If we're doing this, I wanted to see it coming."

The elevator chimed for the lobby. Neither of them moved.

"That's either the most professional thing you've ever said to me," Julian said, "or the least."

"Maybe both." Adrian finally looked at him, and there it was — the thing Julian had spent three years pretending he didn't remember, right there in the tired, furious set of his mouth. "You don't get to flirt with me in a murder case."

"I'm not flirting. I'm being honest. There's a difference. You used to be able to tell them apart."

"Used to."

"Adrian—"

"Your client's husband is dead," Adrian said, low and even, the words doing exactly what he meant them to do, which was end the conversation. "Try to remember that before you try anything else."

He walked out like a man closing a door on purpose. Julian stood there a beat longer than he needed to, then followed, because the alternative was standing alone in an elevator, which had never once made him feel better.

His phone rang before he reached the parking garage. VANCE, the screen said — Nora Vance, the one investigator he trusted with things he wouldn't say out loud to anyone else.

"Tell me you have something good."

"I have something." A pause, the sound of a page turning. "Not sure 'good' is the word. You sitting down?"

"I'm walking."

"Sit down anyway." Another pause. "Preston Hale had a second phone. Prepaid, three years of activity, one number he called or texted almost every day. Registered to nobody. Burner on the other end too."

Julian stopped walking. "Since when?"

"Three years, like I said." Nora let that sit a moment. "Julian. The last text on that phone went out four hours before he died."

The garage was cold and nearly empty, and Julian Voss — who did not lose, who did not flinch, who had built an entire career on being the calmest man in any room — felt something in his chest go very still.

"Get me everything on that number," he said. "Tonight."

"Already on it, boss." Nora hung up first, which she never did.

Julian stood in the concrete quiet a long moment, Preston Hale's cold, handsome face still sitting in his mind, and thought: someone else knew you. Someone else knew you, and I am going to find out who before Adrian Cole does.

He just wasn't sure yet which discovery scared him more.