Chapter 7: Confronting The Junior Prosecutor
The third-floor hallway of the county courthouse smelled of damp wool, old floor wax, and the metallic tang of radiator heat that hissed every few minutes from the cast-iron grates beneath the tall, arched windows. Outside the district attorney’s office, the light was the color of dirty parchment, filtering through grimy wire-glass panes that looked out over the gravel employee lot. I stood near the marble water fountain, its chrome drain stained with a permanent ring of orange rust, and waited. My blue t-shirt was hidden beneath a thrift-store zip-up hoodie that was a size too large, the cuffs pulled down over my knuckles to keep the chill from my fingers. In my pocket, folded twice into a neat, square package, was a single photocopied page from the ledger I had spent the night before decoding under the hum of the desk lamp.
At two o’clock, the heavy mahogany double doors marked DISTRICT ATTORNEY — RESTRICTED swung open with a muffled thud. Two men stepped out into the corridor, their voices echoing off the hard terrazzo floors. One was an older man with silver temples and an expensive charcoal suit, talking loudly about a golf handicap. The other was Ethan Vance, the junior prosecutor assigned to my mother’s trial. Vance looked younger than thirty, with slicked-back dark hair, razor-thin lapels, and a leather portfolio tucked tightly under his arm. He had a habit of constantly adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with a sharp, impatient flick of his index finger.
As they reached the intersection of the hallway near the water fountain, the older man patted Vance on the shoulder and headed toward the grand marble staircase. Vance turned the opposite way, walking briskly toward the records alcove with his head down, scanning a yellow legal pad.
I stepped out from the shadow of the concrete pillar directly into his path.
Vance didn't look up in time. His leather-soled shoe clipped the toe of my sneaker, and he stumbled half a step forward, dropping his legal pad. Papers fluttered across the gray floor tiles.
"Watch it," Vance snapped, dropping to one knee to scoop up his notes. "Dammit. Don't you kids have somewhere else to loiter? The juvenile court is on the first floor."
I didn't bend down to help him. I stood my ground, my hands buried deep in the pockets of my hoodie, my fingers curled around the folded photocopy. As Vance straightened up, brushing a speck of lint from his lapel, his eyes finally rose to meet mine. Recognition flickered across his face—slow, then sharp, like a light being switched on in an empty room.
"You're the woman's kid," Vance said, his voice dropping an octave as he glanced quickly down the empty corridor to ensure no bailiffs were watching. "What are you doing up here? You aren't allowed in this section without a guardian or a court-appointed worker."
"I don't need a guardian to walk through a public building," I said. My voice was steady, pitched low enough that he had to lean in slightly to catch the words. "And I don't need an appointment to look at public records. But that's not why I'm standing here."
Vance’s jaw tightened. A tiny muscle twitched just below his left ear, the skin suddenly pale beneath his careful shave. "This is harassment. If you don't clear the hallway right now, I'll have the deputies downstairs escort you off the property and slap your file with a trespassing violation."
"You can call whoever you want," I said. I pulled my right hand from my pocket, holding the single photocopied page by its corner. I didn't unfold it completely—just enough for him to see the header, the column of initials, and the matching series of fund transfers that predated my mother's arrest by exactly three weeks. "I just wanted to make sure you had a copy of page forty-two. I figured a busy prosecutor like you might misplace things when the state audit finally starts pulling boxes from the archive room."
The color drained from Vance’s face so fast it looked like someone had pulled a plug in his neck. His eyes locked onto the black-and-white grid of numbers on the paper. For three full seconds, the only sound in the hallway was the rhythmic hiss of the radiator and the distant, muffled clatter of a typewriter from the bailiff's bullpen around the corner.
Vance reached out instinctively, his fingers twitching as if he wanted to snatch the paper from my hand, but he checked himself, balling his fist at his side instead. He took a sharp, shallow breath through his nose, his chest lifting beneath the tight cotton of his dress shirt.
"You don't know what you're holding," Vance whispered, his voice shaking with a cold, controlled fury. He took a half-step closer, lowering his chin so his eyes bored into mine with venomous intensity. "You think you're clever, playing detective with papers you don't understand. But you are stepping into something that goes a lot deeper than you, kid. If you keep pushing your nose into files that don't belong to you, nobody is going to bail you out. Your mother is already locked away behind thick glass where you can't protect her. Do you really want to join her?"
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"She's innocent," I said, holding his gaze without blinking, my pulse hammering against my ribs but my expression remaining completely flat. "And you know who signed the initial warrant."
Vance stared at me for another long moment, his chest rising and falling beneath his tailored suit. Then he adjusted his glasses with a jerky, nervous snap of his finger, turned sharply on his heel, and walked away down the corridor without looking back, his leather shoes clicking a furious rhythm against the gray tile.
