"I don't care what firm you're from," Miller barked, his voice echoing in the small concrete room. "Your client is in police custody. You have five minutes with her, and then she is being transferred to county."
Carter pulled a sleek silver tablet from his briefcase. He tapped the screen twice, and the tablet woke with a soft glow. He held it loosely in one hand, as if it were nothing more than a notepad, and he looked at Miller with an expression that was neither defiant nor pleading. It was patient, and patience, in that room, felt more dangerous than anger.
"She won't be going to county, Captain Miller," Carter said, his voice dropping into a register that sent a sudden, inexplicable chill through the room. "In fact, she won't be going anywhere. But I strongly suggest you and Officer O'Grady take a seat. We have a short film to watch."
O'Grady looked at Doyle. Doyle looked at Miller. Miller looked at Carter, and then at Cynthia, and then at the tablet, as if trying to decide which of these things was the threat and which was the bluff. Cynthia Holloway finally smiled. It was not a warm smile. It was the smile of a woman who had waited, who had listened, who had let a man dig his own hole word by word, and who was now ready to show him the depth of it.
"You really should sit down, Officer O'Grady," Cynthia said. The facade of the frightened victim vanished completely, not with a shout but with a shift in her posture, in her voice, in the way she squared her shoulders and looked directly at him. "You're about to be the star of the show."
Captain Miller's face flushed with anger. It was not the quick flush of embarrassment that had colored O'Grady's cheeks. It was deeper, slower, the flush of a man who was not used to being given orders in his own precinct, let alone by a man in a bespoke suit who refused to identify his firm and who had just told him, in his own interrogation room, to sit down and watch a film. Miller was a captain, and captains in buildings like this one were accustomed to doors opening when they approached, to voices lowering when they spoke, to paperwork bending, just slightly, in the direction they wanted it to bend. He was not accustomed to being told that a woman he had already decided was a statistic would not be going to county, that she would not be going anywhere, that the next thing to happen in his building would happen on someone else's schedule.
He stepped fully into the room, pushing past the two men in dark suits as if their presence were an inconvenience he could shoulder aside. The room, which had felt small with three people in it, now felt crowded, almost airless, with six people standing and sitting around a steel table that had been built for far fewer. Miller planted his feet and pointed a finger at Carter, not at Cynthia, not at the tablet, but at the man who had dared to speak to him as an equal.
"Listen to me very carefully," Miller warned, his voice echoing in the small concrete room, bouncing off the green walls and the two-way mirror and the steel table. "I don't care if you're a senior partner at Kirkland and Ellis or the ghost of Clarence Darrow. You are interfering with an active police investigation. I will have you arrested for obstruction if you don't pack up that toy and leave my building right now."
The threat was meant to restore order. It was the kind of threat Miller had probably made before, to lawyers who arrived too early, to family members who asked too many questions, to reporters who lingered too long in the lobby. It was a threat that worked when the person hearing it needed something from the precinct, a phone call, a visit, a file, a favor. Carter needed nothing from the precinct. He stood very still, and the stillness itself seemed to answer Miller. He did not raise his voice. He did not step back. He did not even look at the finger pointed at him. He looked, instead, at the tablet in his hand, and then at Cynthia, and the brief exchange of glances between them was so calm, so practiced, that it made Miller's anger look, suddenly, like panic wearing a uniform.
James Carter did not flinch. He didn't even look at the captain for a long moment, as if Miller's outburst were a sound from another room, interesting but not relevant to the work at hand. Instead, he swiped a finger across the silver tablet, pulling up a media player interface. The screen brightened, a clean white rectangle with a simple play symbol in its center, and the light from it fell across Carter's hands and across the steel table. It was a small, ordinary gesture, the kind of gesture a man makes a dozen times a day, and in that room it landed like a verdict.
O'Grady watched the swipe with a confusion he could not hide. He had expected an argument. He had expected Carter to defend his right to be there, to cite statutes, to threaten a lawsuit, to do any of the things lawyers did when they were told to leave. He had not expected a man to ignore a captain's threat of arrest and simply prepare to press play. Doyle, by the door, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His arms were no longer crossed. His hands hung at his sides, and he kept glancing at the doorway, as if measuring the distance to it, as if wondering whether he should be the first to leave or the last to be seen leaving.