She said it plainly, but he heard what was under it. He had sat on the other side of enough tables to hear it.
"When you file," she said, "they send out notice. To the DA's office that prosecuted. To the police department that made the arrest. They ask for comment. Most of the time nobody writes anything; you get a form letter, no objection. Sometimes the chief writes. Sometimes the arresting officer." She let that sit a moment. "I imagine there's a letter on somebody's desk on the second floor of the Brockton police station right now with my name on it. Jessup, Antoinette L. I imagine somebody's going to pull the old report out of the basement and read it, and I imagine they're going to read what you wrote about me in October of 2004."
He did not remember what he had written. He knew the shape of it. He knew it the way he knew the shape of his own handwriting. Subject was uncooperative. Subject was evasive regarding the whereabouts of Sykes. Subject's statements were inconsistent. Subject stated she had no knowledge of the contents of the box, which statement this officer believed to be false.
"Uncooperative," Antoinette Reddick said, as if she had heard him think it. "Evasive. I've read it. I paid for a copy when I filed. Twenty-two years and it's still the truest thing anybody in a uniform ever wrote about me, because I was. I was uncooperative and evasive. I was so scared I peed myself in that hallway, did you know that, Sergeant? Standing there in my nightgown in front of my neighbors, with my daughter up on that bunk bed watching. I don't imagine that went in the report."
He did not answer. He did not have an answer. Across the lobby, Maureen had sat down at the far end of the chrome-armed chairs, beside the DA's man, and was looking straight ahead with her pocketbook upright on her knees.
"I'm not telling you this so you'll write something for me," Antoinette said. "I want to be very clear. I didn't come here today to trade. You could write the nicest letter in the history of the Brockton Police Department and it wouldn't change one word of what I'm going to say about your son in there, and you could write the worst, and it wouldn't change one word either. I decided that in the parking lot at Norfolk seven years ago. Whatever he earned, he earned in front of me. Whatever you did, you did. They're two different ledgers."
"Then why tell me at all?"
She seemed to think about it honestly, with her head tipped a little to one side. "Because you asked," she said. "You walked over and asked me who I was. Twice now. This time I decided to answer."
The outer doors opened, and the vestibule filled with people, and Neal turned, because he could not help turning.
Sheila Galvin was smaller than he remembered. Fifteen years had taken an inch off her, maybe more, and the long braid had gone entirely white. She was not wearing the purple cardigan. She wore a black coat and a black knit hat, and she walked with a cane now, a plain aluminum one with a gray rubber foot, and she was leaning on the arm of a tall young woman in a hospital-blue fleece jacket with a lanyard tucked into its collar, whom Neal recognized after a moment as Elijah's sister, Jada, who had been seventeen at the trial and must be thirty-two now. Behind them came two men he did not know, cousins maybe, or uncles, solid quiet men in sport coats, and a woman from the DA's victim witness office with a badge on a lanyard of her own and a box of tissues under her arm, the way they always carried the tissues, like a hymnal.