A seven-year-old girl told the desk officer, “Daddy put something inside my sister’s belly.” Then she clarified, “He made her swallow it and told her not to tell anyone.”

Nora walked up to the same wooden counter. This time, she was not limping, and she was not holding a piece of evidence.

She placed a folded piece of paper next to Paul’s keyboard.

It was a drawing of two small girls standing inside a building with bright yellow lights, while an officer in a blue uniform stood near a locked glass door. At the top, written in wobbly, printed letters, Nora had written:

We went to the safe house.

Paul looked down at the two girls. “How are you doing, Violet?”

“My tummy doesn’t hurt anymore,” Violet said quietly.

Nora looked down at her clean, new sneakers, then back up at Paul. She gave a small, confident nod.

“I don’t have to hide anything in my shoes anymore,” she said.

Paul folded the drawing carefully and placed it inside the desk drawer where he kept his most important case files—a quiet reminder that sometimes the strongest force in a courtroom is simply a child who refuses to keep a dangerous secret.