She does not cry. She does not argue in a way that gives him anything to use. She does not tell them who her father is. She has been taught not to lead with that, and the teaching has gone deep. She makes a single request in the same tone she has used for everything else.
"I'd like to call my father." "You'll get a call at the station." Maul steers her toward his cruiser. He has the right to know I've been detained. He'll know when we call him.
The back door of the cruiser opens. She ducks inside without assistance.
Seldon takes the water bottle from the roof of the Lamborghini and sets it on the roof of the second patrol car. Then she picks up Demi's phone, which had been sitting in the cup holder. Demi had left the door open when she got out, and drops it into an evidence bag without noting it on any visible log. Demi sees this through the cruiser's rear window. She does not say anything.
She remembers it. The Havford County Police substation on Route 9 is not a full precinct. It is a processing facility. Four holding rooms, a booking desk, two interview rooms that smell like antiseptic and old paper. On a Friday night, it handles DUIs, domestic disturbance calls, the ordinary machinery of suburban law enforcement.
A black teenage girl in a gray hoodie, zip tied and calm, is unusual enough that two officers at the booking desk look up when Maul brings her in. Theft suspect, Maul says. Lamborghini on Havford Road. Plates came back clean, but circumstances are suspicious. Clean plates, the desk officer, his nameplate reads Teague, repeats.
He looks at Demi. She looks back at him and she is 17. claims the car belongs to her father. Teague pulls up a terminal. He asks Demi for her name and she gives it. Full name, date of birth, address without inflection.
He types it in. He reads whatever comes up on his screen and something in his posture shifts. Not dramatically, just a degree of stillness that wasn't there before. He reads it again. Caldwell, he says.
Yes. He looks at Maul. Maul is filling out paperwork and does not notice. Teague's expression levels out into professional neutrality and he says nothing more about whatever he just read. Demi is processed, photographed.
Her zip tie is replaced with actual handcuffs. Her wrist in front this time, which is a minor mercy. She is put in holding room 2 with a metal bench and no window. The time on the clock above the door when she enters is 8:47 p.m. Getting from the booking desk to that holding room takes 11 minutes and they are not uneventful.
In the corridor, Maul stops to speak with a colleague. Officer Devett, heavy set, wearing an expression of chronic amusement directed at everything that passes within arm's reach. The two of them stand not three feet from Demi while Maul relays what he pulled in at the Havford Exxon. And Maul's hand stays on her arm the entire time. Not roughly, just continuously.
The way you hold something you own and want to make sure stays where you put it. Claims it's the father's car, Maul says. Devett looks Demi up and down with the deliberate pace of someone who is certain his assessment will not be challenged. Sure she does. Car came back clean on plates.
Funny how that works sometimes. He shakes his head at the kind of performed exhaustion. Every time Demi looks straight ahead, she notes Devett's name plate, his badge number 2247. The corridor clock reads 9:04 p.m. She does not look at him directly, and she does not look away.
She occupies the middle distance with the patience of someone who understands at this moment, like all the others, is evidence. Then Devett reaches out and flicks the hood of her Georgia Tech sweatshirt. Just a snap of two fingers against the fabric. A gesture so petty and so deliberate that it could only be intentional. It is not assault.
It is something more calculated than assault. The kind of casual contempt that says you do not matter enough to bother with. She does not flinch. She locks his face, his number, and the exact time into the same storage space as everything else. Devett walks away.
Maul steers her forward. The holding room smells like industrial cleaner. The light is fluorescent, that particular frequency that makes everything look slightly wrong. She sits on the bench and pulls her knees up and begins very quietly to reconstruct everything that has happened in chronological order. Every word spoken, every movement, every procedural choice made by every officer.
She does this the way someone does when they know that what is in their memory is the only asset they currently have and that assets need to be protected. She has been here approximately 40 minutes when the door opens. Sergeant Duval is not what most people expect when they expect a sergeant. He is wiry, late 40s with gray at his temples and the kind of face that reads as reasonable until you notice the eyes which are always doing a separate calculation from whatever his mouth is doing. He has a file folder which he opens and does not look at as he sits down across from her.
Demi. He says her name like he knows her, like they've met before. I'm Sergeant Duval. I want to help you sort this out. She says nothing.
I know this seems like a lot being brought in. You're 17. This is scary. He tilts his head slightly. Is it scary?
I would like to call my father. We've tried to reach him. Went to voicemail. I would like to try myself. We'll get there.
He sets the folder down and opens it with a kind of deliberate care, like a man arranging items on a shelf. You told officer Maul the car belongs to your father. It does. And your father's name is Everett Caldwell. Yes.