TWO POLICE OFFICERS SHAVED MY HEAD—THEN DISCOVERED I WAS THE JUDGE ASSIGNED TO THEIR CASE.

Gloria examined the photograph under a lamp.

“That’s from 2004,” she said. “After the courthouse renovation.”

“What happened in the east stairwell?”

She pressed her lips together.

“A young officer tried to drag a boy downstairs because he’d seen something he wasn’t meant to see. One of my coworkers interrupted him.”

“What boy?”

“I never learned his name. But I recognized the officer.”

“Pike?”

She nodded.

I called Elena and told her Gloria wanted to give a statement. An investigator interviewed her the next morning; I stayed out of the room so nobody could accuse me of shaping her account.

An old maintenance book confirmed a complaint had been filed that same week. The report was closed as a dispute over building access. Attached was a faded signature from a supervisor who had since died.

It did not prove Pike had ordered my attack. But it gave the investigators a reason to seek older records.

Meanwhile, the hearing before Judge Ames went forward. From the public docket I learned that prosecutors wanted access to a protected archive that might contain a copy of Isaiah Bell’s confiscated footage. A police department technician had reportedly backed up material before the original storage system was replaced.

Voss’s lawyers objected.

Pike gave a television interview about the importance of respecting the presumption of innocence.

I watched him speak from a polished desk while my scalp still burned beneath its scarf.

My mother sat beside me and whispered, “He looks older.”

“He does.”

“Not kinder.”

The phone rang. Elena did not bother with pleasantries.

“We found the equipment box Keene mentioned,” she said. “It’s empty.”

“Then what was in it?”

“That’s what we need to know. But whoever took it left a fingerprint inside.”