My eyes followed him through the window as he dropped his silver pen onto the counter, grabbed the wall phone, and dialed a number with quick movements.

He didn’t know I could see him rushing the preliminary screen, but the sudden pale look on his face told me the first result had frightened him.

By two o’clock that afternoon, I was sitting across from Attorney Lin in his strip mall office on the west side of Crestview.

Attorney Lin sat behind a dark oak desk, his sixty-eight-year-old hands resting flat on top of a thick manila folder.

He steepled his fingers and leaned back slowly in his high-backed leather chair.