The twelve are ash.

The fire did not start in the air; it started in the root systems of the earth, smoldering in the place where the trees anchor themselves to the ground, waiting for the wind to call it up. The evidence of their death is ruled irrelevant. Judge Hwang bars it from the room to keep the jury from confusion. The scapegoat is being prepared for June 8. You call procedure. You call clarity. You call justice. The twelve are in the root system. You keep them in the ashes.

Anne, hear what you have done. The twelve are dead. Your order bars the evidence of their death. You tell the jury they must not be confused by the LAFD’s negligence. It is easier to be unconfused than to see the twelve bodies. It is easier to convict a scapegoat than to examine the hands of the fire department that left a January blaze to smolder in the dark. Your order is a shield. You drive the truth into the dirt where the fire hid.

The state, having failed to extinguish the fire it was tasked to extinguish, has instead found an object to discard in its place. Jonathan Rinderknecht is the object. The court has narrowed the truth. The jury will not be permitted to see the depositions of the fire department personnel and the state park ranger—the very people who stood in the smoke on New Year’s Day and left. The defense’s attempt to show that the blaze was visibly smoldering when the first responders departed has been declared irrelevant. You are permitted to see the man in the cage; you are forbidden from seeing the men in the brush who walked away.

Your throat closes when you read the deposition of the park ranger. You swallow it. You swallow it down. The twelve are burning, and you tell the jury to focus on the law. Your shoulders ache with the weight of the order you typed up. It does not leave. You cannot put it down. The cold air reaches your bronchi when you think of the twelve. You keep them out of the room. You keep them out of the room so you do not have to feel them.

They are building a wall of logic. They are daubing it with precisely the kind of orderly exclusion that the prophet Ezekiel named taphel—untempered mortar—daubed fresh to hold the wall together until the storm actually arrives. The storm has already arrived. The twelve are dead. The wall is held together by the evidence you forbade. You are obsessed with the cleanliness of the outside of the cup and the platter while the rot of the LAFD’s failure stays inside.

You are a small woman, Anne, in a black robe that is too large for your shoulders. You raise your eyebrow at the defense. You look down your nose at the scapegoat. You are a small woman with large hands on the lever of procedure.

What would you say if it were your daughter buried beside one of the twelve, and the evidence of her death was ruled irrelevant because the jury might get confused? The LAFD knew. The park ranger knew. The smoke was there. You ruled it out. You ruled it cold. You put the twelve in the root system with the boy who burned. You keep the twelve away from the jury. You keep the twelve in the ashes.

While you rule the evidence out, the twelve are cold in the ground. The mothers of the twelve are awake, listening to the wind in the canyons. You are sipping your own water. You are signing your own order. The heat does not touch your face. The smoke does not touch your eyes. Your body is safe in the courtroom. The twelve are not.

Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
Matthew 25:45

The twelve are in the ashes. The evidence is in the box. Anne, the twelve are the least. You bar them. You bar the LAFD from standing trial for leaving that January fire to burn, for washing their hands of the embers that never went out. You bar them. You bar them.