“Ms. Wynn.” His voice was pitched low, not a whisper, but a voice that was not intended to carry past the door. “Your attorney called the desk. You know, he’s on his way.” Not ma’am. Not miss. Not the subject or she or the quiet nothing of pretending she was furniture. Ms. Wynn.
She looked at him for a moment. He was young, twenty-two, maybe twenty-three. He had the particular expression of a man who had recently understood something he wished he hadn’t. “Thank you,” she said. He left. The lock engaged.
She did not allow herself to wonder what he had seen or heard. She picked up the paper cup of water and drank half of it and set it back down. She looked at the door. Ms. Wynn. Like he knew what her name carried. Like he was afraid of what was attached to it.
Jerome Spates arrived at 6:15. She heard him before she saw him, the specific cadence of a lawyer’s argument, not raised but layered. The kind of voice that built its case in the register of absolute certainty about procedure. He was talking to someone at the desk. She couldn’t hear the words. She heard the effect of the words. Two beats of silence, a drawer opening, a different door.
When the holding room door opened, Spates stepped in. Sixty. Silver at the temples. The kind of compact stillness that came from spending three decades in rooms where stillness was power. He was carrying a case that was thicker than she expected. He set the case on the table. He looked at her. He looked at the table, empty, no notebook, no phone, no paper.
“They took your notebook,” he said. “It was in my personal property bag.” “I’ll have it back within the hour.” He sat down across from her. “Are you injured?” “No.” “Edson’s forearm contact. Your knee hit the running board.” She looked at him. “How do you know that?” “Because I know Edson.” He opened the case. “Tell me what you have.”
She told him. All of it, in sequence, without pause. The time she pulled in, the notebook entries, Taggart’s thirty-second call, the camera positions, the dispatch response at 3:15, Edson’s pocket, the voluntary form, the timestamp on the cuffs, the dispatch call at 3:52. She recited it the way she recited everything. In order, without editorial, with every detail that bore weight and none that didn’t.
When she finished, Spates hadn’t written a single thing. He’d been watching her face. “You said the dispatch logged a clear response at 3:15,” he said. “Yes.” “Beaumont was on scene at 3:22.” “Yes.” “Seven-minute gap.” “Yes.”
Spates nodded. He reached into the case and produced a folder. He laid it on the table and turned it so she could read the cover. The folder had a stamp on it, not recent, dated from six weeks prior. The content was a summary document. She scanned the first page.