True Justice [Paperback]

For Butch Karp, chief assistant district attorney for New York County, the nightmare begins when a shocking act of negligence results in the death of a newborn. Goaded by the media and the public's scream for blood, Karp's boss, D.A. Jack Keegan, orders the prosecution of the baby's fifteen-year-old Hispanic mother.

Butch's wife, Marlene Ciampi, is taking on an equally unspeakable tragedy following her recent return to law. With Butch and Marlene squaring off on opposite sides of an incendiary national debate, things couldn't get more tense...until an astonishing turn of events puts their daughter, Lucy, at the center of a horrifying crime. Drawn into a maelstrom of big-city politics and small-town values, Karp must struggle to salvage his self-respect, his career...even his life.Chapter One

A Salvadorean Chinese man wearing a red Hebrew National apron with a black-checkedkefiyaaround his neck and a Yankees hat on his head -- in short, a typical New Yorker -- jaywalked across Tenth Avenue at Fifty-second Street, contemplating, like so many of his fellow citizens, a minor offense. He was a food vendor, the January dusk was closing in, and he wanted to dispose of the considerable trash that had collected on his cart after twelve hours of dispensing edible garbage. He was supposed to carry it back to the cart depot, but he was now about to deposit a fat plastic bag in one of the row of trash cans he knew was kept behind the pizza joint across the street. The commercial trash collectors of the city were still recovering from a week of snow and ice, though, and he discovered that the five cans in the alleyway off Fifty-second were full, with bulging black bags stacked around them. The man looked over his shoulder to see whether anyone was watching and lifted up one of the bags. His plan was to secrete his own modest contribution behind one of these stinking blimps. Instead, he froze, goggling, and stumbled backward, knocking over one of the trló/