The courtroom had barely recovered from Raymond Davis's verdict—death sentence—when the clerk repositioned the microphone, inhaled shakily, and looked down at the second stack of documents. The air changed. It wasn't just tense.
It felt sentient.
Like the walls themselves were holding their breath.
Nancy Baskin stood between two officers, her wrists cuffed, her face ghost-pale. Her usually perfect hair clung to her temples from sweat. Her knees visibly shook beneath her after hearing Raymond's sentence, a suit chosen not for confidence but for the cameras.
This case wasn't just the trial of the decade.
It was televised.
Half the country watched from their living rooms. The other half watched from their phones.
And everyone inside that courtroom felt it—the shift—that this was the moment everything would crack open.
The judge gave a single nod. "Proceed."
The courtroom clerk adjusted the papers and began reading.
