Smoke and Statutes
When Morgan Vance ignores the three a.m. call from Alderman Dominic Ashford, he thinks it's just another late-night favor from a man with too many enemies. By morning, Ashford is dead, and Vance is the only person who knows what that final voicemail meant. Forced to investigate a murder the police would rather call a mugging, Vance digs into the alderman's civic dealings , zoning variances, pay-to-play contracts, a judicial appointment that's made Judge Nathaniel Holt very nervous. Detective Raya Okonkwo is following her own trail through the wreckage, but the two investigators circle each other warily, neither sure the other can be trusted. With help from Vivienne Chen, a clerk who knows where the bodies are buried in the city clerk's office, Vance begins to assemble the shape of a conspiracy reaching from the council floor to the federal courthouse. But every answer surfaces a more dangerous question, and when Agent Halverson arrives from Washington asking about a man named Randall Poe, Vance realizes the corruption runs deeper than Chicago , and that someone inside the investigation is already feeding information to the other side. Now, with a deadline closing in and his aunt Bess Vance begging him to walk away, Morgan must choose: expose the rot and put everyone he loves in the crosshairs, or bury the case the way the city has buried so many others. Some secrets don't stay buried. They burn.