Another silence, shorter this time. David Ellis making the specific calculation of a man who has spent years understanding the difference between legal strategy and theater, and recognizing when they are, in fact, the same thing.
"Give me some time," he said. "Sit tight."
"Take your time," Rachel said. "I'm not going anywhere."
She passed the phone back through the bars. She sat down on the metal bench. She put her feet flat on the floor and her hands in her lap, and she looked at the concrete wall. And she was still—the specific, trained stillness of a woman who has waited for verdicts and knows that the waiting is part of the work.
Sergeant Tom Riley had run a very large number of names through the AFIS system across his years at the Oakwood PD booking desk. He had seen results that were expected, results that were surprising, results that were merely administrative. He had seen outstanding warrants, alias flags, records longer or shorter than the person's demeanor had suggested.
He had never seen what appeared on his screen that morning.
He was on his third coffee, working through the notation backlog on two other pending cases, when the AFIS screen updated. The automated system had finished processing. The national database cross-reference had run. The result had returned.
There was a banner he had never encountered—not the standard white or administrative gray: red. Bright, unambiguous red, with a header that he had to read twice before his brain would accept it as real:
RESTRICTED: FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT ACCESS REQUIRED. CLEARANCE LEVEL: TOP SECRET/SCI. AGENCY: DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT.
Below the banner:
BENNETT, RACHEL M. DEPUTY CHIEF, FEDERAL CRIMINAL DIVISION. ACTIVE FEDERAL PROSECUTOR. CURRENT STATUS: IN GOOD STANDING.
Riley stared at the screen. He read it once. He leaned slightly forward and read it again. He removed his reading glasses, wiped them on his shirt in the automatic gesture of a man who does not trust what his eyes are reporting, replaced them with precision, and read it a third time.