Slowly. The way people stand when they're not sure their legs will cooperate. He said, "Excuse me one moment. " And walked out of the room and closed the door behind him with the careful quietness of someone who understood that whatever happened next needed to happen away from her. Serena heard his footsteps move quickly down the hallway. Then she heard them stop.
Then she heard his voice low and urgent, and another voice responding, and then a third, and then the particular quality of silence that follows when multiple people in a room suddenly understand that something has gone very wrong. She folded her hands in her lap and waited. The hallway outside room three became busy in a way it had not been 2 minutes ago. Footsteps. Voices dropping to near whispers.
Someone said Dutton's name twice. A door opened and closed. The fluorescent light above Serena's head flickered its steady indifferent rhythm. At the booking desk, Sergeant Pete Navarro finally placed the memory that had been sliding away from him all morning. He'd seen her photo in the all staff memo.
He'd read her name. He'd seen her record 18 years. Three cities, a list of commendations that took up most of a page. He sat back in his chair and put both hands over his face and stayed that way for approximately 4 seconds. Then he stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at the parking lot for a while without seeing anything.
Dutton was called into Farrell's office. He went in with his shoulders straight and his chin up and the particular confidence of a man who had followed procedure and therefore had nothing to worry about. The door closed. 4 minutes later when the door opened again, the confidence was gone. Not replaced by anything clean or simple, just gone.
Leaving behind it something that looked like a man suddenly aware of standing on ice that had always been thin and had finally cracked. He walked back to his desk, sat down, stared at the submitted report on his screen for a long time without touching the keyboard. Webb watched him from across the room, said nothing. Detective Imani Rhodes stood in the doorway of the break room with a coffee cup she'd forgotten to fill and looked at Dutton and thought about the seven calls from Cartwright Lane that she hadn't yet pulled up, but already knew were there. Serena was released 20 minutes after Farrell's exit.
A female officer she hadn't seen before unlocked the holding room door and said with the overly careful neutrality of someone who had been briefed, "You're free to go, ma'am. Your belongings are at the front desk. " Serena stood, straightened her swimsuit still damp the cold air of the station having done nothing to help, walked down the hallway with the measured pace of someone who owned every step. At the booking desk, Pete Navarro slid the plastic bag across the counter without meeting her eyes. She signed the release form, checked her belongings, put her phone in her bag. The form had a line for complaints and she looked at it for a moment and did not fill it in.
She walked through the glass front doors and into the cold gray Saturday outside. Zoe was there standing beside Mrs. Dorothy Chang's silver Honda, arms crossed, eyes red at the edges, but jaw set hard. Mrs. Chang 68 stood next to her with the quiet steadiness of a woman who had seen enough in her life to know when standing beside someone was the only right thing to do.
Serena crossed the parking lot. Zoe moved toward her and then stopped like she'd run out of words. Like all the things she'd prepared to say on the drive over had dissolved the moment she saw her mother walking out of those doors in a red swimsuit in the middle of a cold January morning. Serena opened her arms. Zoe walked into them.