So, I'm going to ask you one time, who sent you? Malcolm looked at Hollister. He studied the man's hands. The way they rested on the folder, the way the left thumb tapped the edge of the manila paper in a slow metronomic rhythm, calm, controlled. This was not a man in a panic.
This was managing a situation. The folder on the table, the prepared pages, the fact that Hollister had arrived at the station within 16 minutes of Keats's text message, a message sent at 2:29 p.m. from a personal phone to a contact listed only as RH. Handle the paperwork before they get processed. And here he was handling it. I'd like to make a phone call, Malcolm said.
You'll get your phone call when I'm satisfied you're not a threat to this facility, Hollister replied. Under Florida statute 901.23, a person taken into custody must be allowed to make a phone call to an attorney or family member within a reasonable time of arrival. Hollister's thumb stopped tapping. He looked at Malcolm. Really looked at him the way Keats had looked at him in the corridor when he recited the trespassing statute.
That same flicker of recognition. Not who the man was, but what the man was. Someone who cited statutes by number. Someone whose voice didn't shake. Someone who sat in handcuffs in an interview room with a dead camera and spoke as if he were the one conducting the interview.
Hollister closed the folder. You'll get your call, he said, and stood up, took the notebook, and walked out. The door closed behind him, the lock engaged, a magnetic bolt audible through the steel frame. Ror and Nolan remained in the room. Ror leaned against the wall by the door.
No one stood in the corner, arms crossed, watching. For the first time since the bench, Malcolm and Darius were left in something approaching stillness. The fluorescent light above them buzzed at a frequency that Malcolm could identify, 120 hertz, the harmonic of a 60 cycle ballast running slightly out of specification. He had spent time in rooms like this before, many times, usually on the other side of the table. At 3:07 p.m., 16 minutes after Hollister left, the door opened again.
A woman in a federal court security uniform stepped in. She was delivering paperwork, a form that work needed to sign related to a courthouse incident log. Administrative routine. She placed the form on the table, handed Ror a pen, and waited. Then she looked at the two men seated across from her.
She looked at Malcolm. Her eyes widened, a fraction barely perceptible, the kind of microexpression that only someone trained in behavioral analysis would catch. Her lips parted, then closed. She straightened her posture. Mr. Avery, she said quietly.
Two words, respectful. Not sir, not hey, not buddy. Mr. Avery. His real name, not the legend name on the ID in the evidence bag. She said it before she could stop herself.