"Bryce, honey, I am going to need you to say all of that exactly the same way again on a recording so I can play it for a judge. Can you do that?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good kid." She turns to Tanisha. "Mrs. Bennett, I'm going to ask you to trust me. I know that's hard, but I'm going to fight this."
Tanisha looks at her for a long second. "You believe him?"
"I do."
"Why?"
Olivia hesitates, then: "Because liars don't draw hearts."
That night, the local news leads with a photo of Bryce. They use his school field day picture: smiling, missing one front tooth, in a yellow gym shirt, and put the word THEFT under it in red.
The phone in the Bennett apartment starts ringing at 10:14 p.m. and doesn't stop. Tanisha unplugs it. Bryce lies in bed and listens to his mama cry quietly through the curtain that separates his room from hers. He has never heard her cry quiet before; he has heard her cry mad, and he has heard her cry tired, but quiet is new, and quiet is worse.
Olivia spends the next three days the way only a young public defender with something to prove can spend three days. She subpoenas the city's emergency dispatch records: Bryce's 911 call exists, timestamped 4:47 p.m. It is a real call from a real flip phone registered to Tanisha Bennett, made from the GPS coordinates of a covered bus stop on Beatties Ford Road.
She pulls hospital intake: Eleanor Whitfield was admitted to Novant Health that afternoon. Diagnosis on arrival: moderate hypothermia, advanced dementia. Found at bus stop, accompanied by good Samaritan minor.