The name that had been sitting in a file on Nathaniel's desk for 3 years. 14 Complaints, statistical anomalies in sentencing. A pattern so clear it practically drew itself. Black defendants in Cole's courtroom received sentences averaging 340% heavier than white defendants charged with identical crimes. Three years of data, not enough to act, not enough for a federal case.
Always just below the threshold until now. I'll be there in two hours, Nathaniel said. Don't leave the courthouse. He hung up. Diane stared at the phone.
The screen went dark. Her reflection stared back. Swollen eyes, smudged mascara, one earring missing. She put the phone back in her pocket. She pulled her one shoe off so both feet were bare on the cold marble floor and she waited.
Nathaniel Wells hung up the phone and stood motionless behind his desk for exactly 4 seconds. His office was on the ninth floor of the Illinois State Justice Building in Springfield. Corner office, Florida to ceiling windows, American flag in one corner, state flag in the other. Dark wood desk, clean surface, two files, one pen, one framed photo turned face down that no one on his staff had ever been allowed to ask about. He picked up his desk phone and pressed one button.
Patricia, his chief of staff answered in two seconds. Sir, pull the Harrison Cole file. Everything complaints, sentencing data, the statistical analysis from January. I want it printed and in a binder in 15 minutes. The coal file has been flagged pending for 3 years.
Sir, we don't have sufficient. We do now. 15 Minutes. And call Deputy Director Owens at the FBI field office. Tell him I need two federal marshals ready for courthouse detail in Milfield.
Authorization is mine. I'll sign the paperwork in the car. Silence on the line, then. Yes, sir. He hung up.
He opened his desk drawer and took out a federal badge in a leather case. He hadn't carried it in the field in over a decade. Most days, it stayed in the drawer next to a sealed envelope with no return address that contained a single photograph of a baby boy taken 18 years ago. He put the badge in his jacket pocket. He straightened his tie, burgundy, the one he wore on days when he needed people to remember his face.
He buttoned his navy three-piece suit. He checked his reflection in the window glass. The same face, the same jaw, the same dark brown eyes, his son's face. He'd seen it only in photographs, birthday pictures Diane mailed once a year to a P. O.
Box he kept under his middle name. No note, no letter, just a photo and a date written on the back. He had 17 of them locked in a safe in his apartment, arranged in order, 1 through 17, each one showing the same face growing into his own. He'd never met the boy, never heard his voice, never watched him walk or eat or laugh or argue. And now that boy was sitting in a holding cell with a life sentence stamped on a piece of paper by a judge who called him fatherless.
Nathaniel took the elevator to the parking garage. His driver, a retired state trooper named Phil, was already waiting. Black SUV engine running. Milfield County Courthouse, Nathaniel said. Don't stop.