Writing
J.J. is a rookie in the Sheriff's Department and the first black officer at that station. Racial tensions run high in the department as some of J.J.'s fellow officers resent his presence. His only real friend is the other new trooper, the first female officer to work there, who also suffers similar discrimination in the otherwise all-white male work environment. When J.J. becomes increasingly aware of police corruption during the murder trial of Teddy Woods, whom he helped to arrest, he faces difficult decisions and puts himself into grave personal danger in the service of justice.
An eccentric older woman implicates her brutal & controlling lover in the murder of a young girl. Absorbed with "Murder She Wrote" and "Matlock", she creates details of the murder from clues she picks up from the detectives on the case. Implicating herself and sentenced to jail, she then recants her testimony. But no one believes her until clues surface from the real killer that he is still out there, has killed before, and will kill again. He signs his messages with Happy Faces.
A couple's idyllic life is shattered when authorities accuse them of child abuse and take away their three young children. When they desperately search for the source of the rumors about them, their suspicions lead them to a young woman who recently arrived in their small town, but they can't believe that this person they befriended would turn the town against them.
