Pruitt raised his hand, then lowered it, then raised it again. He unclipped the key ring from his belt and held it out. Two agents walked with Constance down the hallway. She stopped at the third door on the left. Through the small wire-reinforced window, she could see a figure on the bench, upright, hands folded, entirely still, facing the door as though she had known exactly when it would open.
The key turned. The door swung. Naomi stood. She adjusted the cuffs of the sweatshirt, the worn elbows, the cracked letters, with the deliberateness of a woman who has been sitting in a holding cell for 41 minutes and has used every one of them. "Injuries?"
Constance asked. "Cuff marks on both wrists. I'll need them photographed." Naomi rolled one sleeve back briefly, showing the deep red grooves where the metal had bitten in. "I'm fine.
What do we have outside?" "Everything we asked for. U.S. Attorney has been notified. State Patrol has the perimeter.
Atlanta Field Office is fully deployed. We also have a contact. Local civil attorney named Pratt has been building a parallel file on this department for 2 years. She says there is a departmental log that does not correspond to any public arrest record." Naomi looked at her. ""A shadow log?"" ""Her words."" Naomi walked out of the cell and back into the booking room.
The room had been transformed. Federal agents moved through it with quiet efficiency. Computers being imaged, file drawers photographed before cataloging, officer-issued weapons collected and receipted. Shepherd was standing against the far wall with two agents beside him. Dodd had not moved from the edge of his office doorway.
Naomi stopped in the center of the room. "Officer Shepherd," she said. He looked at her. The arrogance was still technically present, the way a fire is technically still present in its ash, but it had become entirely structural, a shape with nothing left inside it. "Assistant Director Caldwell," she said before he could speak.
"Let me tell you what occurred on Route 9 this afternoon, so we are aligned before your legal counsel arrives. You stopped a vehicle with no legal justification. You fabricated a traffic infraction. You and your partner falsely claimed to detect a controlled substance to justify a warrantless search conducted in violation of the Fourth Amendment. When that search produced nothing, you arrested a cooperative lawfully traveling individual on fabricated charges.