"You're lookin' at him," he says, and steps back out of the doorway. "C'mon in."

"Thank you. Chief Swan referred to you as Laney; is that what you prefer to be called?" asks Lucinda. "And are you comfortable talking here?"

"Yeah, sure," he says to both of those things.

"All right. Now, I've read over my copy of the notebook that was submitted as evidence, and the medical reports that the police retrieved, but is there anything else I should know?"

[It's not in your interest to lie to her. She doesn't have any reason to report anything you've done to anyone who'd get you in trouble for it.]

Lucinda does blink, but only just. "Is the incident in any kind of official record?"

"Fucked if I know, but I doubt it. Official records and my dad don't get along."

"Okay. I can probably get out about half a sentence about that before the defense lawyer objects, then, and it's anyone's guess if the judge will let me carry on from there." She produces some notes and consults them briefly. "The notebooks of documentation were submitted with a note saying that you have an eidetic memory, which is how you were able to remember all those events for your friend to write down; is that right?"

"Yep," he says.

"We might want to prove that in court. Some simple feat of memory that almost no one could do. That will go a long way to indicating that the documentation wasn't pure fabrication. I'm sure we can think of something, but if you have a stock party trick to show it off, that's liable to work too."

[Ask everyone in the jury to write down some random numbers and letters, you get exactly a second to look at each paper, the jury get their papers back, you read off the strings,] Bella says.

"That'll do," Lucinda says. "The notebooks also included several mentions of injuries serious enough to leave marks. This is the sort of thing we want to be able to provide more evidence of, but we don't want you getting half-naked in the courtroom either; photographs in advance are the best choice. I can take them, or if you have someone you're more comfortable with available, that will work too."

"Don't really care," he says, shrugging easily. "Might as well be you."

Lucinda nods and produces a camera. There is a pretty much silent photo shoot.

Alice indicates the provenance of various marks—this one from the time his dad broke his ribs in November, that one from a ruler, those ones from a cane. A nasty-looking knife scar across his left hip gets "not Dad, don't bother". As previously indicated, he exhibits no strong feelings about the process.