"Who's the visiting-program supervisor?" he asked.
Pike cleared his throat. "I am, sir. Lieutenant Corbin Pike."
"And that inmate?"
"Kitchen porter. Warren Doyle."
"Why was a kitchen porter with a documented assault history approaching a nine-year-old visitor?"
"He has a clear work record," Pike said quickly. "The incident reports—"
"Are incomplete," Soto interrupted. "That's one of the reasons we're here."
The silence that followed was different from the first one. People were no longer waiting to see what Warren might do. They were waiting to hear what the investigators already knew.
Soto turned to a female officer standing by the exit. Her name tag read HERNANDEZ. "Please escort Mr. Doyle away from the visitors without physical confrontation. Notify the shift commander that he's to have no contact with the Brooks family or any witness to this incident."
Warren laughed once, a harsh sound with no humor in it. "You're making a big deal out of a little milk."
Price looked directly at him. "The milk is not the biggest problem in this room."
Officer Hernandez gave Warren a clear direction, and after a moment he followed her out. Pike opened his mouth to protest, then seemed to decide against it. He stood with his hands behind his back while Soto asked another officer to take over immediate supervision of the visiting families.
Mrs. Kessler brought towels and a clean shirt from the family-program storage room. Lena walked Micah to a small interview room off the corridor. Micah would not let go of his drawing. His fingers pressed so tightly around the plastic sleeve that the corners bent.
Isaac watched them leave. He wanted to follow, but he was a prisoner under orders, not a father free to walk wherever his child went. Reed noticed the way he held himself and asked Price for permission to conduct a supervised conversation in an adjoining room. Price nodded. Whatever else needed to be done, Isaac would not be punished for asking whether his son was safe.
For the first time that day, Isaac took a full breath.
He did not yet know why three suited men had come to the cafeteria. He knew only that someone had finally asked the question he had been afraid to ask aloud: who was allowing Warren to do these things, and why?
The answer had begun months earlier in a place much less dramatic than the cafeteria: a storeroom with a flickering fluorescent light, where Isaac had discovered a discrepancy between two numbers on a piece of paper.