State's Attorney's Office

The State's Attorney's Office is the Cook County prosecution institution that becomes a point of contact in the investigation of Nancy Cleghorn's death. Nancy had reported that someone was following her, and the office had said it would open a file. When V. I. Warshawski goes there after Nancy's death, she finds an institution that can receive statements and maintain a case file, but whose staff say they have little concrete information to offer. The contrast between formal access to prosecutors and the uncertain practical value of that access shapes the office's role in the novel.

Institutional Position and Working Culture

V. I. Warshawski approaches the office with the skepticism of a former public defender. She recalls that both prosecutors and defenders worked for the Cook County Board, yet prosecutors earned fifty percent more. In her account, prosecutors also received their names in the newspapers when a prominent case drew attention, while public defenders went unmentioned even when their work was effective. This is her perspective on an unequal professional culture, not a neutral institutional report; it explains why she expects neither special assistance nor old professional loyalties to open doors for her.

Her view of the office is similarly shaped by the career paths she associates with its attorneys. She describes young prosecutors as people moving toward positions in large law firms or desirable political appointments, and notes that she sees few older attorneys remaining on the prosecution side of the bench. The observation places the office within a broader hierarchy of legal and political advancement. Its staff are not presented as detached from that system: even the receptionist is described as a patronage employee, like others in the building. Yet Warshawski also knows how to use the institution's routines. Her courthouse experience helps her approach its staff as a familiar presence rather than as an outsider asking for exceptional treatment.

Nancy Cleghorn's Earlier Contact

The office had encountered Nancy and Caroline Djiak before the murder investigation. About eighteen months earlier, Hugh McInerney had taken statements from them concerning problems connected to Steve Dresberg, a local figure involved in garbage disposal. Nancy and Caroline had testified that they received death threats because they opposed the proposed PCB incinerator associated with Dresberg and the Sanitary District. That history makes Nancy's later report of being followed part of a continuing record of intimidation, rather than an isolated concern with no known background.

Caroline tells Warshawski that Nancy went to the State's Attorney's Office after someone began following her over a weekend. Nancy did not report the matter to the police, according to Caroline; she spoke to a prosecutor, and the office said it would open a file. Caroline believes the prosecutor may have been McInerney, whom the activists had dealt with on other matters, but she does not claim certainty about whom Nancy saw. The distinction matters: the office has a documented connection to their earlier statements, while the precise circumstances of Nancy's final visit remain partly unclear.

Warshawski's Inquiry at the Office

After searching the area where Nancy had been found, Warshawski heads to the courthouse because she wants to identify the prosecutor Nancy had consulted. She arrives late in the business day and, still dressed in clothes marked by her earlier search, goes first to the third-floor reception desk. Rather than display a badge, she relies on the force of her professional manner and identifies herself as a detective seeking McInerney about the Cleghorn case. The receptionist telephones ahead, and McInerney takes her into a private conference room while he retrieves Nancy's file.

McInerney is young, physically fit, and equipped with a courtroom-ready speaking voice, details that fit Warshawski's broader picture of prosecutors as early-career professionals. More important to the inquiry, he confirms that Nancy came to see him on Tuesday because she believed she was being followed. He had read of her death in the morning paper and had been waiting for the police to arrive. He says he had no concrete information to give them and no name for the person Nancy feared. The office's file and McInerney's recollection establish the timing and content of her report, but they do not identify who followed her or explain why.

Threats, Legal Process, and Limits

The office's presence in the novel also clarifies the distance between a threat being known and a threat becoming actionable evidence. In discussing a separate workers' compensation case, McInerney recounts that the workers' lawyer received a threatening phone call while considering an appeal. The caller made a general reference to the dangers of using the appellate system, rather than naming the case. The lawyer did not report the call to the State's Attorney's Office. The episode therefore does not show the office investigating or suppressing the threat; it shows how intimidation can remain outside formal channels when the recipient does not bring it to prosecutors.

The workers' case had already been difficult to prove. The company argued that smoking, drinking, and polluted air could account for the workers' illnesses, and that their exposure occurred before the toxicity of the chemical was known. The suit failed, and the lawyer concluded that there was no viable basis for an appeal. These details belong to the civil compensation dispute, not to a prosecution by the office. Their relevance is the contrast they create: legal claims depend on what can be established within a particular process, while threats may influence whether people pursue that process without ever becoming a clearly documented charge.

Narrative Function

The State's Attorney's Office is neither a simple source of rescue nor an institution shown to be wholly absent. Nancy had sought its help, and her prior statements about threats were taken there; after her death, McInerney can confirm that she reported being followed. At the same time, he has no concrete lead and has not independently contacted the police. The gap between a file being opened and a danger being resolved is central to the office's limited but consequential presence in the investigation.

Warshawski's dealings with the office are filtered through her own legal experience. Her mistrust is informed by the pay and recognition gap she remembers, yet she can still navigate the courthouse, gain an interview, and draw useful facts from McInerney. The institution thus functions as both a repository of prior warnings and a constrained source of information. Its records help connect Nancy's murder to a history of threats against local environmental opponents, but they do not supply the answer to the murder itself.