He went back to his table and came back with another sheet, a phone company printout full of columns of tiny type.

“Can you explain how a handset an eight-year-old dropped stayed live for eleven minutes?”

Claire reached into her folder and pulled out the central office switch log.

The paper was still warm from the folder.

“The master junction box in the upstairs hall had a secondary switch wired into it.

The line stayed open because that switch was closed.”

“Objection,” Pendelton said.

“She’s not a telephone technician.”