Elijah smirked slightly, still looking ahead. "You just wait."
Because if they thought the kid with the baggy suit was done, they were about to learn how wrong they really were.
By the time Elijah stepped back up for his second round of questions, you could feel it: the whole room had shifted. People weren't staring at the suit anymore. They were watching him, watching how he spoke, how he never raised his voice, never stumbled, never looked unsure—not once.
Elijah flipped open his notebook, hand-scribbled and dog-eared; it looked like it had seen some things. He turned to Officer Haskins again.
"Officer, you testified you found two laptops in the vehicle. Do you have the serial numbers of those items?"
"I... no," Haskins said. "They were logged after the fact."
"By who?"
"Property division."
"Can you confirm they were reported stolen?"
"I believe so."
"You believe?" Elijah asked.
Haskins hesitated. "Well, that's what I was told."
Elijah stepped aside, grabbed another paper. "Because according to this report from the electronics store three blocks from my house where those laptops were purchased, my brother bought them two days earlier using his own debit card."
He held up the receipt. Haskins stared at it.
Lindholm stood, objected. "Your Honor, I wasn't provided this during discovery."
"You didn't ask," Elijah shot back, holding her gaze, "because you assumed he was guilty."
Tolbert raised his hand. "Enough. Let me see the document."
Elijah walked it over, calm, steady. Tolbert adjusted his glasses and read. No emotion showed on his face, but something flickered behind the eyes. Lindholm sat back down slowly.
From the third row, someone whispered, "That boy came with receipts."
But Elijah wasn't finished. "I'd like to call my next witness: a man named Travis Dent."
A man stood in the back: mid-30s, goatee, wore work boots and a faded mechanic shirt. He raised his hand and walked to the stand.