Mercer noticed her watching. “Famous already,” he said.
Nia could have told him about the courthouse event, about the students who had asked her whether the law protected people who were unpopular. Instead she asked, “Will my attorney be permitted to view the booking record?”
He set down his coffee. “Later.”
An hour passed, then another. Nia was placed in a holding area with two other women, both of whom moved aside when they heard her name whispered between officers. One, a thin woman in a faded sweatshirt, asked whether she was really a judge. Nia said yes. The woman looked at her for a long time before saying her brother had been arrested by an officer who claimed to have found drugs in a car that did not belong to him.
“Everybody said the camera wasn't working,” the woman added. “They said that settled it.”
“What happened to your brother?” Nia asked.
“He took a plea. Couldn't risk losing at trial. He's got two kids.”
Nia wanted to ask the brother's name, the year, the officer involved. She stopped herself because she had no privacy and no way to know whether a stranger's experience belonged in her own case. But the sentence stayed with her. Couldn't risk losing. It was a phrase that appeared nowhere on the formal paperwork and shaped countless decisions in the real world.
At ten forty-seven that evening, a staff member finally led her to a telephone. Nia dialed Alyssa Moreno, a defense attorney she had known for more than twenty years. They had begun as young lawyers arguing opposite sides of a civil-rights case, and their friendship had survived because each trusted the other to tell the truth when the truth was uncomfortable. Alyssa answered on the second ring, her voice brisk and awake.
“Nia?”
“I'm at municipal detention. Officer Grant Halverson arrested me on a drug allegation after a traffic stop. The evidence was planted.”
There was a short silence, not disbelief, but the immediate calculation of a lawyer who knew how serious the situation was. “Are you hurt?” Alyssa asked.
“My shoulder. Wrists. Nothing I can assess properly from here.”
“Have you spoken about the allegations?”
“Only to deny them and request counsel.”
“Good. Don't discuss the facts with anyone else. I'll find out who's handling the booking and arrange representation. I'll also get someone to collect your car before it disappears into an impound process.”
Nia closed her eyes. “There were witnesses.”
“I've seen the video,” Alyssa said. “There are more than you think.”
They gave her less than three minutes before an officer said time was up. Nia began to say something about the second patrol car, but the line disconnected. She returned to the holding area with the faintest sense that the ground beneath her had become firm enough to stand on. Alyssa was not a miracle worker. She could not undo an arrest by arriving angry. But she would ask the questions that institutions preferred to postpone.