Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain descriptions of child abuse, rape, sexual assault, murder, racism, anti-gay bias, and misogyny. In addition, the source text uses offensive racist, anti-gay, and misogynistic terms, replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Rusty Sabich remembers the advice the chief deputy prosecuting attorney John White gave him on his first day at the prosecutor’s office 12 years ago. John said to point at the defendant during an opening statement, saying, “If you don’t have the courage to point, […] you can’t expect them to have the courage to convict” (3). When Rusty began as a prosecutor, he felt empathy for the defendants, but now, he feels that he is a cog in the justice system, functioning to help society separate right from wrong.

Rusty Sabich and his boss, Raymond Horgan, are going to Carolyn Polhemus’s funeral. Three days earlier, Carolyn, a fellow prosecutor, was raped and murdered in her apartment. Raymond wants to believe that the killer was a stranger, but he is unsure.

Raymond, the Kindle County prosecuting attorney (PA), puts Rusty, his chief deputy, in charge of the investigation into Carolyn’s death. Raymond faces his campaign for reelection against

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