"Save it for the judge," the deputy said.
They walked him out the front door, past the metal detectors, past the security desk, past the same floors he'd mopped that morning. His mop was still leaning against the wall, right where he'd left it. The bucket still had water in it. Nobody moved it. Nobody touched it. It just stood there like a ghost of the man who'd been dragged away.
The news hit the Ingram apartment before Elijah's phone call did. Isaac was walking Amara home from school when a neighbor held up her phone: local news, a headline that punched a hole through his chest.
Greenfield Courthouse Janitor Arrested for Equipment Theft.
There was a photo: Elijah in handcuffs, head down, standing in the lobby he'd cleaned for eleven years.
Isaac didn't say a word. He took Amara's hand, walked her home, sat her at the kitchen table, and told her to start her homework. Then he went to his room, closed the door, and stood there in the dark for a long time.
The phone rang at 6:00 p.m.—a collect call from Greenfield County Jail. Elijah's voice was thin, controlled, the kind of calm that only comes when someone is trying very hard not to break.
"I didn't do this, Isaac."
"I know, Dad."
"They're saying I took computers... boxes of them. I don't even know how to turn one on."
Silence.
"Dad, what's the bail?"
"Ten thousand."
Isaac closed his eyes. Ten thousand. They had $213 in the checking account. The rent was due Friday.
"If I get convicted," Elijah said, quieter now, "they're talking three to five years."
Three to five years. Isaac did the math in his head—not the numbers, but the consequences. Amara was twelve. She'd be in foster care by the end of the month. The apartment would be gone. Everything their mother had held together with her bare hands: gone.