I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, where the old green cloth ledger binder had sat until Mark Vance turned it over to the district attorney.

The clean wooden space held nothing now but fresh notepads and my spare set of office keys.

I shut the drawer and felt the smooth latch catch cleanly.

At noon I drove my truck down Elmwood Drive in East Dallas and stopped in front of a small brick house with a white porch railing.

The family trust had bought the place six weeks earlier, giving Rebecca and her child a home of their own that no legal challenge could touch.

I knocked on the front door frame and stepped into the sunny kitchen.