Especially Williams. He was a politician first and a prosecutor second. That made him even more dangerous. Though briefly a prosecutor early in his legal career, he spent two decades as a civil rights attorney before running for the DA post as an outsider and riding into office on a tide of anti-police and -prosecutor sentiment. I was employing full caution at the fancy lunch from the moment the napkin went across my lap.

“Work for you?” I asked. “Doing what exactly?”

“As a special prosecutor. A onetime deal. I want you to handle the Jason Jessup case.”

I looked at him for a long moment. First I thought I would laugh out loud. This was some sort of cleverly orchestrated joke. But then I understood that couldn’t be the case. They don’t take you out to the Water Grill just to make a joke.

“You want me to prosecute Jessup? From what I hear there’s nothing to prosecute. That case is a duck without wings. The only thing left to do is shoot it and eat it.”

Williams shook his head in a manner that seemed intended to convince himself of something, not me.

“Next Tuesday is the anniversary of the murder,” he said. “I’m going to announce that we intend to retry Jessup. And I would like you standing next to me at the press conference.”

I leaned back in my seat and looked at them. I’ve spent a good part of my adult life looking across courtrooms and trying to read juries, judges, witnesses and prosecutors. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it. But at that table I couldn’t read Williams or his sidekick sitting three feet away from me.

Jason Jessup was a convicted child killer who had spent nearly twenty-four years in prison until a month earlier, when the California Supreme Court reversed his conviction and sent the case back to Los Angeles County for either retrial or a dismissal of the charges. The reversal came after a two-decade-long legal battle staged primarily from Jessup’s cell and with his own pen.