The prosecutor kept looking, at some level, for the version he had believed to reassert itself, for the figure on the screen to somehow turn out to be Elena after all, for the story he had told the world to be rescued.

It did not reassert itself.

The footage was merciless in its clarity, and it went on being merciless, minute after minute, refusing every plea for it to be other than what it was.

There is no appeal against a recording.

A witness can be discredited, a confession can be recanted, a fingerprint can be argued over.

But a clear video of the actual crime, timestamped and authenticated, simply is what it is, and everyone in that room understood that they were watching the single most powerful kind of proof there is arriving five years too late to prevent five years of suffering, and just barely in time to prevent something final.

Chapter 19 — The Staging