A smirk was only a judgment. And judgments could be changed, if you did the work.

* * *

Lindholm stood and approached the lectern.

"Your Honor, the State's case is straightforward. On the night of August twenty-second, at approximately ten o'clock p.m., an anonymous caller reported suspicious activity at a residence on Pecan Lane. Officer Paul Haskins of the Camilla Police Department responded to the area. During a traffic stop, Officer Haskins observed the defendant inside a silver sedan, attempting to leave the vicinity. In the back seat were a flat-screen television and two laptop computers, items consistent with those reported missing from the home at 214 Pecan Lane."

She paused, letting the words settle.

"The defendant fled on foot when approached. He was apprehended after a brief pursuit and found to be in possession of..." She glanced at her notes. "A phone, a wallet, and a quantity of sunflower seeds."

A ripple of dry laughter. Tolbert allowed it.

"The State will present testimony from Officer Haskins and ask this court to find probable cause on all counts."

She sat. The room was quiet. Elijah looked down at his own notes and felt, quite distinctly, something click into place inside him, a small, cold, certain sound.

She said "fled on foot." The report says he was driving. Which one is it?

He underlined the line twice.

Tolbert nodded. "Call your witness."

Behind the prosecution table, the heavy door opened, and a big man in a pressed blue uniform stepped through, his boots striking the floor in slow, confident beats.

Chapter 8: The Officer

Officer Paul Haskins took the oath the way other men take communion: solemnly, with one hand raised and his eyes lowered, as if the words had been inscribed on him long ago.

He was forty-five years old, built like a former linebacker, with a thick neck and a square jaw and a voice that seemed designed for the radio. His uniform was starched stiff. Fourteen years of service had worn a groove in his shoulders where the gun belt sat. When he lowered himself into the witness chair, the old wood creaked.

He looked at the boy at the defense table, and Elijah saw it again, the same expression Isaiah had described through the jail glass. A long, flat, unreadable look. Not hatred. Something colder, because it was calm.

He knows exactly who we are, Elijah thought.

Lindholm approached with a folder. "Officer Haskins, please state your name and occupation for the record."

"Paul Haskins. Patrol officer, Camilla Police Department."

"How long have you served?"

"Fourteen years this November."

"And on the night of August twenty-second, were you on duty?"

"Yes, ma'am. Evening shift."

The questioning rolled forward in a smooth, practiced rhythm. Haskins described how he had received a call from dispatch about a possible break-in on Pecan Lane. How he had driven the neighborhood and spotted a silver sedan idling near the corner of Third. How he had initiated a stop. How the driver, he said, a young Black male wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, had exited the vehicle and attempted to flee.

"And did you identify that man?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do you see him in the courtroom today?"

Haskins turned and extended one thick finger toward the defense table. "Right there. Mr. Isaiah Carrington."

"Let the record reflect the witness has identified the defendant," said Lindholm.

"So noted," Tolbert said.

She asked about the pursuit, which Haskins described as "short but vigorous." She asked about the television and the laptops in the sedan's back seat. She asked whether any of the property had been recovered. He said they had been logged into evidence at the station.

By the time she finished, it sounded clean, tidy, inevitable, the sort of account that fits neatly into a report and a verdict. A few of the older men in the gallery nodded slowly. In the front row, a woman in a church hat murmured, "Mm-hm."

Tolbert turned his tired eyes toward the defense table. "Mr. Carrington. Does the defense wish to cross-examine?"

Elijah did not answer right away. He sat quite still, studying the page in front of him, and in that long pause he felt the whole room lean toward him, waiting to see whether he would stumble.

His pulse thudded in his throat. His palms were damp. He wiped them, discreetly, on his father's trousers.

A cross-examination is a staircase, he reminded himself. Small steps, one at a time. Never let the witness see where you're going until they're already at the top.

He stood.

* * *

"Your Honor, may I cross-examine the officer?"

A flicker of surprise crossed Tolbert's face, as if he had half expected the boy to freeze. "You may."

Elijah stepped out from behind the table. For a moment he did not know what to do with his hands, and then he did what he had practiced: he clasped them loosely behind his back and walked to a spot about six feet from the stand. Not too close. Not too far. The distance of a man who is merely curious.

Haskins looked down at him from the elevated chair, big and calm. A faint smile touched one corner of his mouth, the sort a man gives a puppy that has just tripped over its own paws.

"State your name for the record," Elijah said.

Haskins's eyebrows climbed. "You serious?"

"Name, please."

A few people in the back tensed up. The tone was not rude, but it was different from what they expected. It was not a boy asking. It was a conductor lifting his baton.

"Haskins," the officer said, in the lazy voice of someone humoring a child. "Paul Haskins."

"Thank you, Officer Haskins. I'd like to start by asking about the call you received that night."

"Dispatch relayed an anonymous tip. Suspicious activity on Pecan Lane."

"Anonymous."