Billy Devore’s theft case and its legal disposition turn a late-night arrest into a test of family loyalty, parental responsibility, and trust in the justice system. After Billy and Jim Bucklin are caught leaving a computer store with stolen software, Burke Devore insists that his son has never committed a crime before. That claim becomes both a defense in court and a story Burke must actively protect: he and Marjorie Devore conceal the software hidden in Billy’s closet, while legal proceedings eventually give Billy a chance to avoid a felony conviction.

The Break-In and Arrest

Marjorie receives the news by telephone: Billy has been arrested with another boy. The two have broken into a store, fled when police arrived, and been taken to the State Police barracks in Raskill. The arrest is especially disorienting for Burke, who has been preoccupied with the possibility that he himself might be arrested. He quickly shifts from that private fear to the immediate crisis facing his son.

The break-in was planned in advance. The boys visited a small computer store in the mall where Marjorie works for Dr. Carney, and arranged for its rear delivery door to appear locked while remaining unsecured. Later, after Billy had seemed to go to bed at home, he left the house and joined Bucklin, who had a car. They entered through the back and gathered software into canvas tote bags. The store had already been robbed three times in the same way, so a newly installed silent alarm alerted the police. Four police cars converged on the mall. The boys abandoned the bags and ran, but officers caught them almost immediately.

At the barracks, a soft-spoken detective explains that the police have the stolen goods, eyewitness accounts, evidence that the door was rigged, Bucklin’s admission, and the boys’ attempted flight. They want to determine whether the pair committed the earlier burglaries as well. Burke experiences the interview room as a place built to be cleaned after something terrible: its plastic surfaces, bare concrete-block wall, and green chair sharpen his attention to the room even as he struggles to concentrate on the detective. Marjorie, by contrast, calmly asks questions and takes notes.

The detective presents cooperation as a way to finish the paperwork and restore ordinary family life. Burke rejects that appeal by insisting that this is Billy’s first time. He does not claim to know what Bucklin may say; instead, he repeatedly tells Billy that he must not change his account of having never broken into this or any other place. He also warns Billy that the walls may be listening, then embraces him. Billy cries, and the parents cry with him. The family’s response is protective, but it is also bound up with Burke’s determination to prevent the police from connecting his son to the earlier crimes.

Concealment and the Police Search

Burke and Marjorie cannot take Billy home that night. The detective says Billy must appear before a judge in the morning, where a lawyer can seek his release into his parents’ custody. The encounter hardens Burke’s view of the police: he sees the detective’s concern for neat paperwork as indifference to the people caught in the process. Marjorie, initially sympathetic to the officer, becomes less accommodating after Burke makes his distrust clear. She asks again whether they can take Billy home, but the answer remains no.

When Billy is eventually with his parents, Burke reminds him that the conversation is not private and repeats the instruction to stick to the claim that this is his first offense. The exchange ends in an embrace and a promise that the family will get through the crisis. Yet the reassurance gives way to a practical discovery. Burke leaves the car outside because he is not finished for the night, and he and Marjorie inspect Billy’s closet. Behind the clothes is a homemade bookcase with three shelves of software, worth thousands of dollars. The cache could raise the seriousness of the charge from petty larceny to grand larceny.

Burke says the goods must be removed before the police return with a search warrant. He and Marjorie pack the bright-colored boxes into saved supermarket bags and drive to a larger mall on the way to Fall City. After checking that no police or security cars are waiting, they throw the bags into a supermarket dumpster among its refuse. The stolen software disappears from view. They also remove the bookcase from Billy’s closet and hide it in the garage among paint cans and old rags, where it appears to have been stored for years. Before the family returns from the mall, Burke secretly takes a Luger pistol from his filing cabinet and conceals it inside the back seat of his Voyager automobile.

The next morning, the family returns home with Billy after meeting Porculey, their lawyer, and finds five uniformed officers waiting outside. The police search the house, but the cache and the conspicuous bookcase are gone. Burke believes there is nothing for them to find, including among the résumés in his office. His protection of Billy has therefore involved not only presenting a consistent account but also actively removing evidence that could undermine it.

The Separate Cases and Sealed Indictment

The court process unfolds over the two weeks following the arrest. Burke arrives prepared with a folder marked HOUSE, Billy’s birth certificate, and the parents’ passports, anxious not to be missing a document. Porculey, whom Burke had first imagined from a telephone conversation as a drunken lawyer, proves to be an elderly man in a maroon suit whose remaining legal ability is sufficient for the immediate task: getting Billy released to his parents. The procedure feels to Burke like a religious ritual whose participants follow rules they do not fully understand.

Bucklin’s case makes the insistence on Billy’s first offense more consequential. After his arrest, Bucklin spoke to police about earlier robberies and continued talking before his lawyer persuaded him to stop. He and Billy eventually give the same account—that the store burglary was their first—but police find computer software at the Bucklin home during the searches. Nothing illicit is found at the Devore home. Porculey uses that difference to argue that the boys’ cases should be separated, allowing Billy to be treated as a previously untroubled young person rather than being tied to Bucklin’s apparent history.

The judge agrees to hear Billy’s case separately, despite objections from the assistant district attorney and Bucklin’s lawyer. By then, the central question is not whether Billy will serve jail time but whether he will have a felony conviction on his record. Porculey points to Billy’s clean record, good school performance, promising future, and poverty, and proposes a sealed indictment. He explains that the judge can keep an indictment sealed and inactive for a specified period, usually a year. If the defendant commits another crime during that period, the indictment can be unsealed and prosecuted alongside the new charge; if the defendant remains law-abiding until the term expires, the indictment is quashed as though it had never been entered.

The judge ultimately separates Bucklin’s case for a later trial or plea bargain and seals Billy’s indictment. Billy keeps his head bowed and answers the judge respectfully as he is reprimanded for his thoughtlessness. At twenty to four that afternoon, the immediate legal crisis is over, conditional on Billy staying out of trouble. Burke and Marjorie leave with him, relieved that the court has not imposed a public felony conviction. For Burke, the outcome confirms that persistence can prevail against a system he distrusts; for Billy, the sealed indictment is a second chance, not an unconditional erasure of what happened.