They both laughed.
Evelyn entered carrying coffee.
"Your Honor."
"Yes?"
"I've got tomorrow's docket."
Whitmore looked at her.
"Anything strange?"
She smiled.
"Not yet."
He leaned back in his chair.
"Then let's hope it stays that way."
Outside, the courthouse bell rang.
People filled the corridors again.
Lawyers hurried from one courtroom to another.
Clerks carried files.
Bailiffs checked doors.
The ordinary machinery of justice continued.
But the people inside that building had learned something they would never forget.
A courthouse could be made of stone.
A judge could sit behind a wooden bench.
Records could be locked behind steel doors.
But none of those things guaranteed the truth would remain hidden.
Sometimes truth waited inside a missing file.
Sometimes it appeared in a photograph.
Sometimes it walked through the courtroom carrying the morning docket.
And sometimes it began with the simplest mistake of all.
A bailiff looking at a man in a judge's chair and saying:
"Sir, you're going to have to move."
That morning, the bailiff thought he was removing a stranger.
He was actually standing at the beginning of the biggest investigation the courthouse had ever seen.