Cory's mother lived on the east side of Silver Pines near the old rail yard. Monica went to her apartment only after Cory had agreed that she might contact her, and she carried the courthouse copies in an envelope rather than displaying a federal badge she no longer possessed. Janice Hariston opened the door wearing faded blue nursing scrubs and recognized Monica from the street video that had circulated among families worried about the task force. When she heard her son's name, she stepped aside and invited Monica in. The apartment smelled of clean laundry and the onions Janice had begun cooking before the knock.
A framed high-school graduation photograph hung above the couch. Cory stood in his cap and gown, smiling so broadly that his face looked younger than the one Monica had seen through the jail glass. Janice noticed her looking and said that he had always smiled like that until the morning of the arrest. Then she pulled a shoebox from beneath the coffee table and opened it between them. Inside lay a paid speeding-ticket receipt, apprenticeship records, letters from the public defender, copies of rent notices, and a photograph of Cory's car before the police impounded it.
Janice had kept everything because she did not know what else to do. She showed Monica the receipt proving the old ticket had been cleared and the work logs demonstrating how close Cory had been to finishing his training. Finally she brought out a dark blue canvas work jacket with his name embroidered above an apprenticeship patch. It was the jacket he had worn to the gas station on the morning he was arrested. The jail had returned it to her in a paper bag, and she had kept it folded beneath the rest of his belongings.
"He calls every Sunday," Janice said, smoothing the collar between her fingers. "He tells me he's studying for his trade exam from books in the jail library. He thinks when he gets out he'll go right back to the program." Monica asked whether that would be possible. Janice admitted that the apprenticeship program had removed him from its rolls after the conviction and that she had not found the courage to tell him. She worked long shifts at a nursing home and took two buses each way now because she had sold her car to keep the apartment.
The prosecutor in Cory's case had argued that a firearm without a known ownership trail was particularly suspicious. Janice remembered the phrase because it had made her feel as though her son's inability to prove the existence of something he never possessed had somehow become proof of guilt. Monica asked permission to photograph the documents and was told to take whatever might help. She did so carefully, returning each paper to the same place in the box. Before leaving, she promised Janice that she would not pretend to know the outcome but would read everything that had been filed.