And when Abascal said the words “the clerk could be charged with a felony,” my thirteen-year-old son said: “Because of me?”

“No,” said Abascal.

“Because of a decision he made.

He’s an adult, he knew the rule, and he broke it.”

“But he only did it because of what I told him.”

And Detective Vicente Abascal put both of his hands flat on Jillian Lin’s kitchen table and said the sentence that my son repeated to me about eleven times over the following two years, and which I now believe is the most grown-up thing anybody said in this entire story.

“Son, listen to me.