The hearing was three weeks later, in a county courtroom with a high ceiling and wooden benches and a clock on the wall that ticked too loudly. I sat in the front row with Duarte beside me and Sofia Levine two rows back with her mother. Wren was not there. Her parents had taken her home to Portland to finish the semester online, and her lawyer had submitted her written statement instead.
Diego was brought in first. He was wearing a jail-issue jumpsuit and his hair had been cut short, and when he walked past the gallery he did not look at me. He looked at the clock on the wall, and then at his attorney, and then at the floor.
The prosecutor read the charges. The defense attorney argued that his client had been denied bail unfairly, that the evidence was circumstantial, that the witnesses
