“He slept the entire drive here,” I said.

“Good.

Let him sleep.”

Patricia and Spencer sat at the defendant’s table with a man I didn’t recognize, a lawyer in a gray suit with a folder already lying open.

Mallory sat behind them in the front row, her phone face down on her knee for a change.

The judge entered and we all rose.

Judge Ramirez was a petite woman with silver hair and a voice that carried without any strain.

“Case number twenty-four dash three one seven,” she said.