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

The hospital offered me a private exit. I took it. By noon I was sitting across from my mother in her kitchen, wearing a scarf tied too tightly over the ruined patches of my hair.

Gloria looked at me for a long time without speaking.

Then she untied the scarf.

“Oh, baby.”

She did not touch my head until I nodded.

“I spent thirty-one years cleaning those floors,” she said. “I never imagined this.”

“Voss mentioned you. He knew your name.”

She drew back.

“Alan Keene called me last week. Said he’d found some old employee records and wanted to check my address.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“He already knew it.”

My phone vibrated. A message from a blocked number filled the screen.

I DIDN’T SHUT OFF THE CAMERAS FOR THEM. I DID IT BECAUSE THEY SHOWED ME YOUR MOTHER’S HOUSE.

A second message arrived.

SERVICE ELEVATOR. 8:17. ASK ABOUT THE BOX.

I forwarded both to Elena.

“Don’t reply,” she said when I called. “We’re tracing it.”

I wanted to return to the courthouse and turn over every desk myself. But I was a witness in a criminal investigation now, not the investigator, and Leah had already warned me that even one careless conversation could complicate the prosecution.

Gloria reached for my hand.

“You always want to fix everything,” she said. “Let other people do their jobs.”

The doorbell rang. Two federal protection officers stood on the porch.

Behind them, a dark sedan slowed at the curb.

One of the officers glanced at its license plate and shouted, “Get inside. Now.”