“Then you’ll have no problem preserving that documentation while the police do their jobs,” I said. “Did you come here before or after your client called 911?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
When he was gone, Chief Hayes turned back to me.
“Your daughter’s in Interview Two,” he said quietly. “One responding officer believed there was probable cause based on visible scratches on Mr. Cole and statements at the scene. She has not been booked yet. We’re still in the initial hold.”
“Has anyone photographed Natalie?”
A pause.
“Not thoroughly.”
“Then that’s where you begin.”
He nodded. “Sergeant Elena Torres is on her way in. She handles domestic violence cases. We’ll document her injuries.” Then he lowered his voice. “You may be right that we’re missing something.”
“I know I’m right,” I said. “The question is whether you’re willing to find out how much.”
He held my gaze, then said, “Come with me.”
Natalie was sitting at a gray metal table under a camera dome, both hands wrapped around a paper cup she wasn’t drinking from. Her hair, usually pinned neatly, had come loose around her face. A bruise was beginning to darken along her jaw. One sleeve of her blouse was torn near the wrist. She looked up when I entered, and I saw the exact age she had been at seven when she fell off her bicycle and came home trying not to cry because she thought pain was impolite.
“Mom,” she said.
I crossed the room and put both hands around her face gently.
“Let me see you.”
Under the bad fluorescent lighting, the damage came into focus. Red marks along her wrist. Tenderness near her collarbone. Swelling at the back of one hand. Not the body of someone who had moved through the evening in control.
My anger settled into something cold and exact.
“Did he do this tonight?” I asked.
Her mouth trembled. “Some of it.”
Some of it.
That, more than anything, told me how far it had gone.
I sat beside her.
“Natalie,” I said, “look at me. From now on, you tell the truth plainly and only once. You do not minimize. You do not protect him. You do not protect yourself from embarrassment at the expense of accuracy. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
Sergeant Elena Torres arrived with a camera and a legal pad, dark-haired and no-nonsense.
“I’m going to photograph every visible injury,” she said. “Then I’m taking your statement from the beginning. Not from when officers arrived. From the beginning.”