What does your father do, Demi? She looks at him evenly. He works. I'm sure he does specifically though. He travels for work.
I don't know the details of his current assignment. Duval smiles. It reaches his mouth but not his eyes. See, that's what I want to help you with because right now what I have is a clean-plated Lamborghini, a 17-year-old driver with a learner's permit, which technically requires a licensed adult in the vehicle, and no adult verifiably connected to the vehicle or to you that we can currently reach. He leans forward slightly.
That last part is the tricky part. The learner's permit issue alone is a violation of OCGA section 40-5-24. You are operating a vehicle without a licensed supervising driver present. Demi is quiet. She knows this.
She has known it since she left the school parking lot. It is the one technical flaw in an otherwise clean night, and he has found it in less than 3 minutes. "Now," Duval continues, that's a relatively minor thing. equipment violation. Essentially, not something we'd normally hold someone over. He pauses.
But combined with the original report and the circumstances of the stop, it gives us a basis to maintain your detention while we verify the vehicle's ownership through additional channels. What additional channels? DMV cross reference financial records if necessary. We want to make sure the car is where it should be and that you are who you say you are. I provided my state-issued ID.
The registration matches. The plates are clean. She meets his gaze directly. You already have everything OCGA section 40-2-7 requires. Something flickers in his expression.
It is not admiration. It is closer to the look a chess player gets when a piece moves in a direction they didn't fully account for. You know your statutes, he says. The statute numbers are printed on the documents you're referencing. I suppose they are.
He closes the folder. I'm going to get you some water. We'll try your father again. I expect this will be sorted out in an hour or two. He stands, pauses at the door.
Is there anything else you need right now? A record of this conversation in writing. The pause before he responds is 1 second long, maybe two. I can arrange for your detention to be formally logged. Yes, that's standard.
I'd like the log to include the time I arrived, the grounds cited for my continued detention, and the name of every officer who has interacted with me since I was brought in. Duval's hand rests on the door frame. He looks at her, really looks, the way you look at something you are in the process of reclassifying. Then he nods once. I'll see what I can do.
He leaves. The door closes. The lock clicks. Demi Caldwell sits back on the metal bench, closes her eyes, and begins going through everything again from the beginning. She does not know what time her father's flight lands.
She knows it is tonight. She knows that when he finds the voicemail from a police substation, he will call. And she knows what happens after that. But she keeps that knowledge somewhere very deep and very quiet because leading with it would mean she needed it. And she does not want to need it.
She wants to get out of here because she was right, not because of who her father is. That distinction matters to her. It has always mattered. Outside the holding room in the corridor, Sergeant Duval stands by the water cooler with Officer Seldon. His voice is low.
Who is this kid? Seldon shrugs, but it is not a careless shrug. A ID checks clean. Father's name is in the DMV database. Cars registered to him.
No priors on her. She cited two statutes from memory correctly. Maybe she looked them up on her phone. Her phone is in your evidence bag. Seldon is quiet.
Run the father's name deeper. Duval says employer address history. See what comes up. By 10:15, three things have happened that Demi does not know about. First, Officer Teague, the desk officer who saw something on his terminal during booking and went quiet, has sent a text message to a number not in the station's contact database.
The message contains five words. Name came up. Caldwell tonight. Second, Sergeant Duval has run Everett G. Caldwell through the state DMV database and then on a private terminal in his office through a law enforcement cross reference system that pulls from multiple federal directories.
The result has come back with a flag he has not seen before. Not a criminal flag, not a warrant flag, but a restricted access notation that redirects any inquiry to a DoD number. He stared at it for 11 seconds before closing the screen. Third, in holding room 2, Demi Caldwell has found the one thing she was looking for. On the wall beside the door, just above the baseboard, there is a small official notice printed on card stock and laminated.
It is the kind of notice that gets posted in holding rooms because it is required by the Havford County Detention Policy Handbook and that nobody ever reads. She has read it, all of it. She has found section 4 paragraph 2 which states that any individual under the age of 18 held at the substation for more than 2 hours without arraignment proceedings initiated must under Georgia Code section 15-11-42 be transferred to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court of Havford County or released into the custody of a parent or legal guardian. The section further states that if neither option is completed within the 2-hour window, the detention becomes unlawful and all evidence gathered after that point is inadmissible in any subsequent proceeding. The time is 10:21.
She arrived at 8:47, 1 hour and 34 minutes. She has 26 minutes before this clock becomes a problem for them. Not for her, for them. She knocks on the door. No one comes.
She knocks again harder. The slot opens. Teague's face. You need something? I'd like to speak with Sergeant Duval.