"When an image of a signature is copied into another document, does the second document prove the person signed it again?" he asked.
Pierce was on her feet before the witness could answer. "Objection. The question calls for an expert conclusion beyond this witness's qualifications."
Harrison sustained it. Elijah turned the page, asked a narrower question, and was interrupted again for assuming facts not in evidence. He tried a third time, but the words came out in the wrong order, leaving the jurors staring at him rather than at the witness. Bennett touched his arm and quietly took over.
He returned to the table feeling as though the whole room could see the heat in his face. Pierce never looked at him; that was worse than a glare. Sarah pushed a glass of water toward him with her unsteady hand. He could not drink because his throat felt too tight.
At lunch Pierce's remarks reached him through an open doorway. "It's touching," she told another attorney, "but someone should explain that loving your mother isn't a qualification." Elijah stood still behind the wall and waited until they had passed. In the bathroom he pressed cold water to his cheeks and told himself that humiliation was not a legal argument, either.
The third day began with a witness from the municipal finance office, a man named Howard Pell. Pell said the city had discovered suspicious payments during an end-of-quarter reconciliation, after which an internal review located Sarah's name in the transaction logs. Under Bennett's questioning, he acknowledged that several finance employees had access to the fourth-floor network terminal and that the review had not included a complete forensic examination of its physical device. He testified that the city had referred the matter to investigators quickly because federal grant money was involved.
"Quickly enough to preserve the device?" Bennett asked.
Pell hesitated. "I don't know whether it was preserved immediately."
"Quickly enough to image its storage before anyone continued using it?"
"I don't have that information."
Elijah underlined the answer twice. The prosecution had built an elaborate case around computer records while failing to establish whether the computer itself had been examined thoroughly. The missing step did not prove his mother's innocence, but it meant the investigation had settled on an explanation before exhausting alternatives. It was the first time he understood how a confident conclusion could rest on an unfinished investigation.
During the afternoon recess, a court clerk handed Bennett a supplemental production from the city. The cover sheet listed additional maintenance correspondence, security tickets, and raw network entries from the period of the alleged fraud. The files had been requested weeks earlier, but the production arrived as the prosecution was preparing to rest. Pierce dismissed the delay as administrative routine and said the government had complied with every order.