Ten days after the vote, Amelia put two English transcripts beside each other on her desk.
“These are being disclosed for the court proceedings,” she said. “We're not going to invent the rest of the investigation from them.”
I read the date at the top of each. The same interview. The same speaker labels. The same translation company's name.
In the first, Soto saw a blue cloth beneath the tape before the police arrived.
In the second, somebody told him about tape after the police arrived. No cloth. No claim to have seen it himself.
“Who translated it?”
“Paloma Rios. She has provided her retained delivery file and correspondence. She says the first is hers. Her name appears on the other one without her authorization.”
I put my hands under the edge of the desk. I did not want to touch either page.
“They didn't just change before to after. They changed seeing into being told.”
“That is what the documents and her statement indicate.”
“Who did?”
Amelia pointed to an email in the disclosure packet. The original had gone from the translation company to a city administrative investigator and a liaison at Arrival House, because the organization had commissioned a copy of the interview for its response to the city inquiry. The liaison was Paul Marin.
There was an attachment on the later message, supplied as a corrected version. Soto's office said an earlier error had been caught. The witness had checked it. The same page eventually went into the materials supplied to the police and then the case. Its neat translator's certification block traveled with it.
The correction had never gone back to the translator.
“And both lawyers accepted it,” I said.
“They accepted a translation as undisputed. Keene's team checked the timeline discrepancies in English. The original-language excerpt was played late because he was impeaching Soto with his own interview. These were mistakes people had opportunities to catch. Nobody's disputing that now.”
“Nobody asked her?”
“Rios says nobody asked her to authenticate the revised version before trial.”
I had no clever sentence for the size of that failure.
“The revised version lets somebody tell him about it by phone,” I said. “He can still arrive the next morning.”
“That is the account he gave at trial.”
“He names the cloth. He says he saw it.”
Amelia slid the original page toward me. “Mark the exact passage. Rios will have to account for her own translation.”
I marked the whole sentence, not only the word that had first caught my ear.
Amelia brought out another sheet.
It was a request for my attendance at a hearing. The scope included the reported contact, my recognition of Soto and the basis of that recognition. There would be argument about what could properly be asked. It was not going to become a trial of twenty years of border crossings. It was also not going to leave my earlier answers at jury selection untouched.
“The questionnaire and selection record are here,” she said.
I read my own words in the official record.
Had Leah Nunez contacted me? Yes.
Had I given her information? No.
Was there anything about that exchange or my own experience which might affect my ability to decide the case fairly?
I don't believe so.
I had meant: I don't want it to.
“You may be asked why you said that,” Amelia said.
“I know.”
“I'm not finished. The recognition is new. The document wasn't. You knew you had it. You told Leah she was mistaken. Those facts don't disappear because your later report was the right thing to do.”
I stayed looking at the page.
“I thought I could keep them separate.”
“Were you thinking about a fair trial or about not being asked about the list?”
For days she had let me answer slowly. Now she did not look away.
“Both.”
“Then don't tell the court only the first part.”
On the way home I stopped at the library. There was a printer I could use without persuading my own machine to feed paper.
I printed the four sentences June had published. Then I printed the email I had sent Leah. I laid them side by side at a table where a boy was doing algebra on his phone.
The old sentence was shorter. It had cost less to write and much more to keep.
I called Nico from outside.
“They're going to ask about the jury selection,” I said. “What I said then. I wasn't as honest as I should have been.”
“Do I need to be worried about you?”
“I'm not calling to make you take care of me.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
I watched a woman wrestle a stroller through the library door. The boy at the table got up and held it.
“Yes,” I said. “You can be worried. I have a lawyer. I'm doing what she advises about the risks, and I'm going to answer what I'm asked.”
“When?”
I gave him the date.
“Don't buy a new shirt,” he said.
“What?”
“For court. You'll buy a new shirt so you can think about whether it's the right shirt. Wear something you've got.”
He had learned me too well.
“Okay.”
“And tell me if the date changes.”
“I will.”
He hung up without saying he loved me. He had called me Mom at the beginning. I tried not to make an accounting system out of it.