"Is this a joke?"
Prosecutor Dana Pierce did not raise her voice very far, but she had perfected the kind of contempt that traveled to the last row of a courtroom without effort.
She stood beside the prosecution table in a tailored charcoal suit, one hand resting on a stack of exhibits, and looked at the boy across the aisle as though someone had tracked mud over her carpet.
"Your Honor, are we seriously supposed to let a nineteen-year-old in a thrift-store suit play lawyer in a case involving more than two hundred thousand dollars?" she asked. "This is not a college debate. This woman is going to prison, and her son cannot wish that away."
Someone in the gallery gave a short, embarrassed laugh. A second person joined him, then stopped when Judge Arthur Harrison looked up from his notes. Elijah Cross remained standing beside the defense table, an oversized jacket hanging from his narrow shoulders and a battered legal pad pressed against his hip. His mother, Sarah, reached for his hand, but she was shaking so badly that her fingers missed it.
The room looked enormous from where Elijah stood. Courtroom 302 of the Cook County courthouse had dark wood paneling, high windows, and the stale warmth of a building where too many people had waited for decisions that would change their lives. Reporters had filled the last two benches after someone tipped them off about the young man helping defend his own mother. To them he was already a curiosity, a promising headline about a foolish son trying to fight a celebrated prosecutor with a library card.
Judge Harrison sighed and removed his glasses. "Mr. Cross," he said, "you were permitted to assist counsel with limited factual and technical matters. You were not given permission to turn this proceeding into theater."
He looked toward Sarah's court-appointed lawyer, Marisol Bennett, who sat beside her client with a yellow pencil between her fingers. "Ms. Bennett, I expect you to keep this matter within the rules."
Elijah nodded before Bennett could answer. He had rehearsed a dozen different replies to an insult like Pierce's, all clever, all satisfying, and all entirely useless. His mother was facing the possible loss of the small house where she had raised him and a prison sentence that could consume the remainder of her working life. He could not afford to win an argument about his suit while losing the argument about the evidence.
"I understand, Your Honor," he said. "Then please let us address what the records actually show."
Pierce's smile widened. She thought the hearing was nearly over, the defense cornered, the verdict waiting somewhere beyond a few procedural formalities. She could not imagine that Elijah had already found a communication in the city's computer archives that threatened the entire prosecution. She certainly did not know that before the week was finished, her own choices would become the subject of an investigation.