Every time the defense tried to suggest the girl had imagined it, or been fed it by a vindictive mother, a piece of cold hard evidence was sitting there saying: no, she was telling the truth, here is the proof of it.

The physical case and the child’s testimony held each other up.

Neither would have been enough alone.

Together they were unbreakable.

And the reason both existed was the same single fact, which Cordell thought about every time he told the story afterward: a child had been believed, and an officer had acted on that belief immediately, and everything else had followed from those two things.

The judge took off his glasses and looked at Lucian Fenwick for a long moment before he spoke.