Carter didn't look at O'Grady. His eyes bypassed the dirty cop entirely, as if O'Grady were furniture that had been left in the wrong place, and landed on Cynthia, who was sitting at the table, still in her wrinkled blazer, an unreadable expression on her face. For a moment, the room seemed to hold its breath. Carter's gaze softened, just a fraction, in a way that only someone who knew him well would notice, and then it steadied again.
"Are you all right?" Carter asked her, his voice a deep, resonant baritone that seemed too large for the small green room.
"I'm perfectly fine, Jim," Cynthia replied. She said it simply, and she meant it, and the calm in her voice did something to the room that O'Grady's shouting had not been able to do. It reset the balance of power.
"Hey!" O'Grady shouted, stepping into Carter's personal space, close enough that Carter could smell the same stale coffee and tobacco that Cynthia had smelled in her car. "I asked you a question, pal. Who are you?"
Carter slowly turned his gaze to O'Grady. He looked at the officer with the kind of disdain usually reserved for something scraped off the bottom of a shoe, not with anger, not with heat, but with a cold, complete assessment that seemed to take in the damp uniform, the flushed face, the hand still hovering near his belt, and find all of it wanting.
"I am her legal counsel," Carter said smoothly. "And as of this moment, this interrogation is over."
"Oh, it's over, all right," O'Grady sneered, recovering some of his swagger now that he had an audience for it. "Your client just refused to cooperate. She's getting booked into county lockup. She's looking at a ten-year mandatory minimum."
"Is that so?" Carter asked, pulling a sleek leather briefcase from one of the men flanking him. He set it on the steel table next to Cynthia and snapped the latches open with a crisp, deliberate sound. The briefcase was not large, but it seemed to change the room, as if it contained something heavier than paper.
Captain Miller suddenly appeared in the doorway, pushing past Carter's security detail, his face already reddening, his captain's bars catching the fluorescent light. "What the hell is going on in here?" he demanded. "O'Grady, who are these people?"
"Her lawyers, Captain," O'Grady said defensively, stepping back slightly now that his superior was present, as if Miller's arrival would restore the order he had lost. "They just barged into a restricted area."
"I didn't barge," Carter said, looking at Captain Miller for the first time, his voice even. "Your front desk was quite accommodating once I showed them my credentials."
"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."