“How did you become involved in the case we’re examining today?”

He leans back. He seems to spill over the chair, to fill the entire witness stand. “I got a call from Mr. Bauer, and I told him to come down to the station so I could take his complaint. He was pretty distraught at the time. He believed that the nurse who had been taking care of his son had intentionally withheld emergency care, which led to the baby’s death. I interviewed the medical personnel involved in the case, and had several meetings with the medical examiner…and with you, ma’am.”

“Did you interview the defendant?”

“Yes. After securing an arrest warrant, we went to Ms. Jefferson’s house and knocked on the door—loudly—but she didn’t come.”

At that, I nearly rise out of my chair. Howard and Kennedy each put a hand on my shoulder, holding me down. It was 3:00 A.M. They did not knock, they pounded until the doorjamb was busted. They held me at gunpoint.

I lean toward Kennedy, my nostrils flaring. “This is a lie. He is lying on the stand,” I whisper.

“Ssh,” she says.

“What happened next?” asks the prosecutor.

“No one answered the door.”

Kennedy’s hand clamps tighter on my shoulder.

“We were concerned that she might be fleeing through the back door. So I advised my team to use the battering ram to gain entrance to the home.”

“Did you in fact gain entrance and arrest Ms. Jefferson?”

“Yes,” the detective says, “but first we were confronted with a large Black subject—”

“No,” I say under my breath, and Howard kicks me under the table.

“—whom we later determined to be Ms. Jefferson’s son. We were also concerned about officer safety, so we conducted a cursory search of the bedroom, while we handcuffed Ms. Jefferson.”

They tossed aside my furniture. They broke my dishes. They pulled my clothes off hangers. They tackled my son.

“I advised her of her rights,” Detective MacDougall continues, “and read her the charges.”

“How did she react?”

He grimaces. “She was uncooperative.”

“What happened next?”

“We brought her to the East End station. She was fingerprinted and photographed and put in a holding cell. Then my colleague, Detective Leong, and I brought her into a conference room and again advised her she had the right to have her lawyer there, to not say anything, and that if she wanted to stop answering questions at any time she was free to do so. We told her that her responses could and would be used in court. And then I asked her if she understood all that. She initialed every paragraph, saying that she did.”

“Did the defendant request an attorney?”

“Not at that time. She was very willing to explain her version of events. She maintained that she did not touch the infant until he started to code. She also admitted that she and Mr. Bauer did not—how did she put it?—see eye to eye.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, we wanted to let her know that we were looking out for her. If it was an accident, we said, just tell us, and then the judge would go easy on her and we could straighten out the mess and she could get on with raising her boy. But she clammed up and said she didn’t want to talk anymore.” He shrugs. “I guess it wasn’t an accident.”

“Objection,” Kennedy says.

Judge Thunder winces, trying to pivot toward the court reporter. “Sustained. Strike the witness’s last comment from the record.”

But it hangs in the space between us, like the glow of a neon sign after the plug has been pulled.

I feel negative pressure on my shoulder and realize Kennedy has released me. She stands in front of the detective. “You had a warrant?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call Ruth to tell her you’d be coming? Ask her to come voluntarily to the station?”

“That’s not what we do with murder warrants,” MacDougall says.

“What time was your warrant issued?”

“Five P.M. or so.”

“And what time did you actually get to Ruth’s house?”

“About three A.M.”

Kennedy looks at the jury as if to say, Can you believe this? “Any particular reason for the delay?”

“It was fully intentional. One of the tenets of law enforcement is to go when someone is least expecting you. That disarms the suspect and moves the process along.”

“When you knocked on Ruth’s door, then, and she didn’t immediately welcome you with a coffee cake and a big hug, is it possible that was because she was fast asleep at three in the morning?”

“I can’t speak to the defendant’s sleep habits.”

“The cursory search you did…in fact didn’t you actually empty the drawers and cabinets and knock over furniture and otherwise destroy Ms. Jefferson’s home when she was handcuffed and unable to access any weapon?”

“You never know when a weapon might be within someone’s reach, ma’am.”

“Isn’t it also true that you pushed her son to the ground and pulled his arms behind his back to subdue him?”