She did not claim to hear every word. She had been near a bench, other people were talking, and she could not see our feet clearly through the crowd.
What she saw was his hand on my arm, my hand moving toward his wrist, and the slap. She described the sound, the falling case, and the accusation that followed.
Her phone recording played in its original sequence. There was no dramatic music and no caption announcing who I was; the room heard the actual voices and the sudden break in the ordinary hallway noise.
The defense asked whether I looked angry. Simone said I looked upset after the officer grabbed me, and that she could not know what I felt before that.
“You believed she was a judge because she said so?”
“I didn't know who she was when I started.”
“But afterward you understood that helping her could be valuable.”
Cross objected to the suggestion's phrasing, and the judge required it to be made specific. Simone then answered that I had offered her nothing and had not discussed what she should say.
Reading the exchange later, I put down the page. Even gratitude, carefully held at a distance, could be turned into suspicion when someone needed a reason to discount a witness.
The technical witness explained how the file was collected and checked. The defense questioned whether the online copies had been edited, and the witness distinguished those copies from the original provided directly by Simone.
The courtroom surveillance followed. Staff explained the cameras' locations, the absence of audio, and how the preserved segments related to the system's timestamps.
There was a modest difference between one display clock and the system log. Rather than hiding it, the witness described the offset and the method used to compare the sequences.
The discrepancy did not change the order of events. I knew how easily it could have sounded sinister if someone had discovered it only after a witness promised impossible precision.
Iris testified about the papers, the security log, and the preservation request. She acknowledged that she had not seen the first contact because she was behind the counter when the voices rose.
Keene described what he encountered on arrival. The defense asked why he addressed me by title and whether that changed his view of Rourke's conduct.
“I recognized someone who was injured,” he said. “Her title identified her. It didn't create the injury.”
He admitted knowing Rourke for years. He also admitted that familiarity had made it uncomfortable to step between them, although the discomfort did not alter what he believed he needed to do.
The defense asked whether he had assumed Rourke was wrong because a judge was involved. Keene said he saw a bleeding woman, handcuffs, and an officer who would not step away until challenged.
“I didn't witness the slap,” he added. “The recordings show that part.”
Those limits mattered. Nobody needed to become an eyewitness to a moment they had missed in order to make the next moment important.
A court employee later described the room's practical arrangements to me: water within reach, a place for witnesses to wait, and a clear explanation of when they could leave. Those details would never appear in the headline about the case. They mattered because people answered better when they were not also wondering whether they had missed work unnecessarily or would be called back without warning. I made a private note to review those arrangements in my own courtroom.
When Simone left the courthouse, she used a different exit arranged to avoid the reporters waiting near the front. Denise told me she was relieved to be finished for the day and wanted to go back to work the following morning.
I looked at my unsent note that evening. I did not revise it again; I wanted the words to remain thanks rather than another document polished until it resembled an argument.
Her testimony was hers now, spoken under oath in a room where I had no authority. That was exactly how I wanted it to stay.
When the clerk called my name, I stood too quickly and felt a brief shift beneath my feet. It passed before anyone else noticed, but I took the next few steps slowly and kept my attention on the witness chair rather than the bench.
The judge presiding over the case came from outside Bellhaven County. We had met once at a conference, a connection disclosed and reviewed through the ordinary process rather than left for someone to discover later.