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.