Brennan cross-examined her, and he tried, as he had promised the jury he would, to make her sound like a woman protecting a career. He asked about her security detail, about her civilian alias, about why she had ordered her detail to stand down that night, about whether she had wanted to drive alone to clear her head or to create a test that no ordinary officer could pass.
"I ordered my detail to stand down because I wanted an hour of solitude," Cynthia said. "I did not order Officer O'Grady to stop me. I did not ask him to search my car. I did not ask him to plant drugs. I did not create the conditions for his crime. He did. The fact that I happened to be the Director of the FBI does not make his crime smaller. It makes it more visible. Most people who experience what I experienced do not have a camera in their car, a deputy director on a secure line, or a server in Washington. That is why I am here. Not for myself. For them."
She paused, and the courtroom was so quiet that the rain outside seemed to have stopped, though it had not.
"I had a camera," she said. "Most people do not. That is why I am here."
When she stepped down, Carter reached out, almost imperceptibly, and touched the back of her chair, as if to steady it. She did not need steadying. She walked back to the prosecution table, sat down beside Reyes, and folded her hands, the same hands that had once been cuffed too tightly, now resting calmly on a legal pad.
The closing arguments were brief, because the case had already been argued by the evidence itself. Reyes reminded the jury of the telemetry, the hash, the satellite, the contradictions, and the deal. Brennan reminded them of doubt, of technology, of the danger of trusting a machine over a man. Judge Marsh instructed them carefully, without favor, and sent them to deliberate.
They were gone for less than four hours.
When they returned, the courtroom rose as one, and the foreperson, a middle-aged woman with steady hands, read the verdicts in a voice that did not tremble: guilty on deprivation of rights under color of law, guilty on obstruction of justice, guilty on perjury, guilty on possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. Each count landed like a door closing, and O'Grady, who had once looked the jury in the eye and denied everything, now looked down at the table, at his hands, at the wood grain, at anything that was not the face of the woman he had tried to destroy.