Especially then.
At Holloway’s sentencing, victims spoke.
Not Naomi first.
Terrell Dixon.
A woman whose house had been searched using a forged warrant while her children watched.
A small-business owner whose cash had been seized and never fully returned.
A former defendant who had charges dismissed but lost his job after arrest footage circulated.
Then Naomi.
She stood at the lectern.
Holloway sat behind the defense table.
He looked older.
Smaller somehow.
Naomi did not look at him immediately.
She looked at the judge.
“When Detective Holloway entered my courtroom, I had something many of his previous targets did not.”
She paused.
“A bench.”
“A clerk.”
“A court reporter.”
“Security cameras.”
“Attorneys.”
“An audience.”
“Knowledge of the warrant system.”
She turned slightly toward Holloway.
“He chose one of the worst possible people to hand a forged warrant.”
Then she looked back at the judge.
“That does not make what happened to me more serious than what happened to everyone before me.”
The courtroom was still.
“It makes it easier to prove.”
She continued.
“The deepest harm was not that he tried to arrest a judge.”
“It was that he treated judicial authority as something he could manufacture when lawful authority became inconvenient.”
Naomi’s voice remained controlled.
“A warrant is not decoration.”
“A signature is not a technicality.”
“A seal is not theater.”
“Those things exist because state power must answer to process.”
She paused.
“When process becomes an obstacle to be forged around, every person becomes vulnerable.”
Only then did she look directly at Holloway.
“You grabbed me because you believed a uniform, handcuffs, and a piece of paper would make everyone accept your version of authority before anyone checked whether it was real.”
His eyes stayed on the table.
Naomi continued.
“For a few seconds, you were almost right.”
She returned to her seat.
No applause.
Good.
Court was not theater.
Holloway received a lengthy prison sentence.
Naomi did not celebrate.
She went to dinner with her sister.
Ordered steak.
Ignored her phone.
Then slept badly.
Closure, she learned, was mostly a word people used because real endings were inconveniently incomplete.
The next morning, she returned to Courtroom 6B.
Her clerk had placed a new stack of files on the bench.
Naomi sat.
The same wood Holloway had shoved her against more than a year earlier.
The scratch from her ring was still visible near the edge.
She had considered having it refinished.
Then decided against it.
Not as a monument.
Just because court furniture accumulated marks.
That was what happened when rooms were used.
The bailiff called:
“All rise.”
Naomi entered.
People stood.
She sat.
“Be seated.”
A young public defender approached.
“Good morning, Your Honor.”
“Good morning.”
Ordinary work resumed.
Sentencing.
Probation violation.
Bond review.
Discovery dispute.
One warrant application.
That one made Naomi pause.
The detective presenting it was twenty-eight.
Nervous.
He handed the affidavit to the clerk.
Naomi read every line.
The detective shifted.