Part Six: After She Left
The café stayed still for a moment after the door closed.
Then the man in the construction jacket sat back down. The server set down the dish she had been holding for several minutes. The student put their headphones back on and then took them off again immediately, as if realizing that listening to music was not the appropriate response to the preceding five minutes.
The two officers were with Brennan.
The one who had opened the notebook was writing. He wrote with the specific, careful attention of someone who understands that what they write will be read by people who will weigh every word, and who is therefore choosing every word.
The other officer was looking at Brennan with the expression of a colleague who is assessing the damage and has decided not to minimize it.
“You know her?” the notebook officer said.
“No,” Brennan said.
“Judge Elena Vasquez,” the officer said. He had looked at the identification she had held out, or had been told by the server, or had recognized the name when she stated it. “She’s been on the circuit court for eleven years. Before that, assistant district attorney for seven.” He looked at his partner. “She’s argued before the state supreme court.”
Brennan said nothing.
“She handles police misconduct cases,” the officer said. Not as an additional fact — as a specific, pointed fact. “That’s part of her docket. Police misconduct cases.”
The silence in the café was now a different kind of silence — the silence of people who are absorbing information and sitting with its implications.
The server came out from behind the counter. She was a young woman, perhaps twenty-two, and she looked at Brennan with the expression of someone who has been in this café for two years and has the investment in it that two years of daily presence produces.
“Sir,” she said. “I need to ask you to leave.”
Brennan looked at her.
She did not look away.
He left.
