I left her office feeling entirely defeated.

The community already knew.

Someone had leaked the lockdown to a local Facebook group, and though Toby’s name wasn’t published, everyone in our neighborhood had seen the police cars.

My neighbor, Mrs. Gable, didn’t wave to me when I took the trash out that evening. She just went back inside her house and locked the door.

I knew the police weren’t looking for anyone else.

To them, the case was closed. They had the kid who had the note in his bag.

But I couldn’t sleep.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Toby’s face when he looked at me in that interrogation room.

“I found it on the floor, Mom.”

The way his voice had cracked. He had looked so small, so completely terrified.

I realized that if I didn’t fight for him, nobody would.

On Wednesday morning, I called a private forensic laboratory in Cleveland.

I asked them if they could run a fingerprint analysis on a paper scrap.

“We can do it,” the technician told me over the phone. “But it’s not cheap. For a rush priority job, it will be $1,800.”

$1,800.

That was almost my entire emergency savings account.

That was the money I had set aside for when the old Buick finally gave out, or if the landlord raised the rent.

But I didn’t hesitate.

I drove to the bank, withdrew the cash in crisp hundred-dollar bills, and went back to the police department.

Because the note was still technically evidence, I had to hire a lawyer for $400 just to file an emergency motion to allow a private lab to access the document for testing.

It took twenty-four hours of legal wrangling, but finally, the lab was allowed to take the scrap.

The waiting was pure torture.

Toby didn’t leave his room. He wouldn’t eat.

I would knock on his door, and he would just say, “I’m not hungry, Mom.”

The silence in our apartment was heavy, filled with all the things we weren’t saying to each other.

The lab called me on Friday morning at 8:15 AM.

“We processed the note,” the technician said.

I gripped the kitchen counter so hard my nails dug into the wood. “And?”

“There are two distinct sets of prints on that paper,” he said. “One set belongs to your son, which makes sense if he handled it.

But there is another set. A clean, clear set of prints from a second person. We ran them against the state juvenile database, but we didn’t get a match. That means whoever wrote it doesn’t have a record.”

“But there is a second person,” I whispered, tears finally starting to spill over my eyelashes.

“Yes. And from the oil patterns, this second person handled the paper first. They wrote the note, Sarah.”

I didn’t even hang up properly before my phone rang again.

It was the school counselor, Mrs. Gable.

“Sarah,” she said, her voice sounding completely different than usual. It was high, tight, and she was breathing fast. “You need to come to the school right now. Don’t go to the main office. Come through the side entrance near the library and meet me in my room.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.