Twelve minutes later officers arrived at Freya’s house eight minutes away on a street she had always been proud of, neat lawn, American flag on the porch, the kind of house that announces itself as the home of a respectable person. She opened the door in her bathrobe and when she saw the badges she tried to close it. An officer put his foot in the gap. Unlike her son, Freya yelled. She called it a mistake. She said her Leo would never do something like this. Her neighbor was outside walking her terrier and watched the whole thing, the same neighbor to whom Freya had been bragging for a decade about what a devoted son she had raised.
That is how justice actually arrives in the real world. Not with cameras and dramatic courtroom moments, but early, and quiet, and permanent.
In custody, their story fell apart the way structures fall apart when the central support is removed. They had initially hired the same attorney, who dropped them both within a week because their defenses were going to contradict each other. Leo’s angle was that his mother had pressured him. Freya’s angle was that she had no idea what he was doing. Both of those stories cannot simultaneously be true, and an attorney cannot argue both in the same courtroom. Now they each needed separate lawyers, and all of their assets had been frozen.
