“Channing!”
She took the yard at a run, saw tire tracks in the grass, and the door broken in its frame. On the porch she hit the door with a shoulder, felt it rock on a single hinge. Inside, she found out-of-place furniture, dirty footprints, and the bathroom door, blasted off the hinges, too.
She was too late.
That was real.
She checked the house, anyway. Bedrooms. Closets. She wanted to find the girl, hidden maybe, or tucked away. But she was kidding herself, and she knew it. The warrant wasn’t for Channing, but they had a subpoena, and Hamilton and Marsh would use it, were probably talking to her now.
What happened in the basement?
Who pulled the trigger?
In a fog, Elizabeth stepped outside and wedged the door shut behind her. They had the girl, and the girl would talk. Whether from guilt or na?veté or the desire to help Elizabeth, Channing would eventually break.
Elizabeth couldn’t let that happen.
The shooting was too political, too racial. They’d burn her down to make an example.
“I saw it happen.”
The voice came from beyond the hedge, and Elizabeth recognized the neighbor who lived to the right, an elderly man with a ’72 Pontiac station wagon he polished on weekends as if it were made of something more precious than steel and paint. “Mr. Goldman?”
“Must have been twenty cops. Assault rifles and body armor. Goddamn Nazis.” He pointed and ducked his head. “Sorry about your door.”
“There was a girl.…”
“A small one, yes. Two tough old bastards hauled her out.”
“You saw her?”
“Hard to miss, really, hanging between them like she was, all bright-eyed and flushed and kicking like a mule.”
*
For a hard flat second Elizabeth didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t go to the station with a murder warrant on her head. It was beyond even Dyer to help her, now. Hamilton and Marsh had their indictment. That meant they’d pick her up and drop her in a hole. Even if she won at trial—which was doubtful—she’d be vilified by the national press, picked apart, and stripped to her bones. It was an angry nation and she was another white cop on the wrong side of a shooting. It couldn’t play otherwise, not with fourteen bullet holes in the floor.
And that was best-case scenario.
Worst case, Channing would talk. That meant time mattered, and not the kind that would be counted in days.
Hours, she thought. Minutes.
Would the girl even fight?
Elizabeth’s paralysis snapped like a glass rod. She started the car and had Channing’s father on the line before she reached the first turn. He would move heaven and earth, but his lawyers were in Charlotte. That would take time. So, she went the only place that made sense: around the city, across the river. Box bushes took paint off the car, but she found the old lawyer sitting in the same chair on the same porch. He offered pleasantries, but she shut him down before he could rise from the chair. “No time, Faircloth. Just listen, please.”
She started too fast, too shaky.
“Slow down, Elizabeth. Catch your breath. Whatever it is, we’ll handle it. Sit down. Tell me from the beginning.”
“It needs to be privileged.”
“Very well. Consider me your attorney.”
“You’re not licensed.”
“Then consider me a friend.” She hesitated, so he spoke carefully to make his point. “Anything you tell me I will take to my grave unless you instruct otherwise. You cannot shock me or dissuade me or make me anything less than your ally.”
“I’m not the only one at risk.”
“Five decades before the bar, my dear, and you would not believe the secrets I have kept. Whatever the problem, you have come to the right place.”
“Very well.” She took a deep breath and focused on his hands, on the class ring and creases and parchment skin. He leaned into her words, and she told him everything, her eyes never leaving the crooked fingers, her words rising from some dim, far place. She started with the subpoena for Channing and her own indictment, then moved to the horrible truth of what really happened in the basement on Penelope Street. It hurt like being naked in the cold, but there was no time left for shame or self-pity. She told him everything and let her wrists show to make it real. He interrupted only once, when he whispered, “You poor dear girl.”
Even then she couldn’t look him in the face. It was the shame of it, as if she weren’t just naked but nailed to a board. “I don’t know what she’ll say, Faircloth, only what will happen if she tells the truth.”
“And you wish to put her interests above your own.”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain of that? If she tortured those men—”
“That’s on me. My decision.”
“May I ask why?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not if you understand the consequences of what you’re asking me to do. The indictment has your name on it, not hers. You’re risking prison—”