Her voice had become very quiet.
“You should stop.”
Mercer interpreted restraint as defiance.
“Or what?”
She said nothing.
That silence enraged him more than shouting would have.
He had dealt with protesters screaming inches from his face.
He knew how to handle anger.
He understood fear.
What he did not understand was a woman looking at him as though she were already reading tomorrow’s evidence.
Mercer stepped closer.
“You think you can sit here spying on officers, refuse identification, interfere with police operations, then tell me how to conduct myself?”
“I have interfered with nothing.”
“You refused a lawful command.”
“Name the law.”
Price closed his eyes briefly.
Mercer’s jaw flexed.
Then his right hand moved.
Fast.
The slap cracked across the park.
The woman’s glasses shifted crookedly across her face.
Her head turned slightly with the impact.
The park fell silent.
Even the fountain seemed suddenly too loud.
Price stared at his chief.
Mercer stared at his own hand.
For perhaps half a second, even he seemed surprised.
Then training in self-justification took over.
“Maybe now you’ll understand—”
“CHIEF!”
Lena Morris’s voice cut across the park.
She hurried toward them with the camera raised.
Mercer turned.
“Stay back.”
Lena did not.
She had covered Atlanta courts for eleven years.
She knew Mercer.
He knew her too.
That fact should have worried him.
Instead he pointed toward the woman.
“She’s interfering with an investigation.”
Lena stopped six feet away.
Her face showed disbelief.
“Investigation?”
Mercer’s confidence returned slightly.
“She refused lawful identification.”
Lena looked toward the woman.
The woman had calmly straightened her glasses.
One cheek was reddening.
Lena looked back at Mercer.
“Do you have any idea who you just hit?”
Mercer scoffed.
“Some woman who thinks she knows the law.”
Lena’s expression changed.
Not amusement.
Something closer to horror at the scale of his ignorance.
She slowly pointed toward the federal courthouse across the street.
“That woman is Chief Judge Amara Bennett.”
Mercer stopped moving.
Lena continued.
“Chief Judge of the federal district court.”
Price’s mouth opened.
Mercer stared at the woman.
Amara Bennett said nothing.
Lena’s voice became colder.
“The same judge assigned to your department’s federal consent decree.”
Mercer’s face drained of color.
For the first time that afternoon, he truly looked at Amara.
Not her clothes.
Not her skin.
Not her notebook.
Her.
Recognition came slowly.
He had seen her before.
Not often in person.
Mostly from a distance.
Robes changed people.
So did elevated benches.
In court, Judge Bennett wore black judicial robes, sat beneath the seal of the United States, and was surrounded by marshals, clerks, flags, attorneys, microphones, and dark polished wood.
Here she wore burgundy and white.
She sat alone.
Mercer had seen what he expected to see.
A civilian.
A problem.
Someone beneath him.
Amara picked up her phone.
The screen had cracked.