Harper leaned back.
“What do you know about them?”
“I asked first.”
Harper considered how much to reveal.
Then she realized there was no reason to play games.
“Three juvenile defendants over eighteen months. Malik Dawson, sixteen. Elena Ruiz, seventeen. Terrence Cole, sixteen.”
Cross said nothing.
“All three were charged with offenses involving property taken from commercial buildings,” Harper continued. “All three were arrested by officers from the same precinct. All three cases were assigned to Hensley.”
Judge Cross’s expression remained unreadable.
“All three pleaded.”
“Yes.”
Harper’s eyes narrowed.
“You already knew that.”
“I know every serious juvenile case that comes through this courthouse.”
“Then you know something else.”
Cross waited.
“The confession forms.”
That got a reaction.
Small.
But Harper saw it.
Cross sat down.
“What about them?”
“The formatting.”
Harper opened her bag and removed a legal pad.
“I received a scanned confession form in my discovery. Exhibit D. The address was wrong, but that was not the only problem.”
She drew three rectangles on the page.
“The document template had an unusual margin. The county seal was compressed. The signature line was positioned nearly half an inch higher than the standard police form.”
Cross leaned forward.
“I searched court records for other cases where similar documents had become public.”
“You found Dawson.”
“And Ruiz. And Cole.”
Cross’s jaw tightened.
“The same template?”
“Identical.”
“Same errors?”
“Different factual errors. Same structure.”
Harper opened another page of notes.
“In Malik Dawson’s statement, the police listed his middle name incorrectly.”
Cross listened.
“Elena Ruiz’s confession places her inside a warehouse at 10:14 p.m. Her school’s basketball team was playing an away game ninety miles away that evening. She was on the roster.”
“Was that raised?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She took a plea.”
Judge Cross looked toward the window.
Harper continued.
“Terrence Cole’s statement describes a green delivery door. Photographs show the building had a gray steel loading door installed six months before the burglary.”
“And today yours contained an address where you never lived.”
“Yes.”
Cross stood and walked toward a filing cabinet.
She opened the bottom drawer.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she removed a thin folder.
“Your house was broken into?”
“My mother called me fifteen minutes ago.”
“Police?”
“On the way.”
Cross placed the folder on the desk.