Voss snapped at him to shut up, but his voice didn’t carry the way it had in the diner. He turned toward me and tried to smile. It came out as a grimace.
“Judge Whitlock,” he said, “if that’s really who you are, maybe we can clear up this unfortunate misunderstanding privately.”
I tilted my head.
“You arrested me without probable cause,” I said. “You accused me of resisting when I never resisted. You told me no one would hear me scream.” My voice stayed calm, but every officer in that room heard every word. “And now that you know who I am, you’d like to resolve things privately?”
Voss opened his mouth, then shut it when he saw his deputies listening.
“Deputy Miller,” I said. “Please remove these handcuffs.”
Miller looked at his sheriff for permission. Voss couldn’t bring himself to give another order.
With shaking hands, the young deputy unlocked the cuffs and stepped back. Deep red marks ringed both my wrists. The left one had started to swell where Voss had twisted it against the booth.
The clerk behind the desk, a gray-haired woman whose nameplate read DORIS KEELER, quietly picked up a pen and began writing on a legal pad. Later I learned she wrote down the exact time the cuffs came off: 1:47 p.m.
“Thank you, Deputy,” I said to Miller. I said it without any anger, because something told me this young man was standing at the most important fork in the road of his life, and I wanted to see which way he’d turn.
The sirens got louder. Then the station’s front doors swung open.
Three federal agents walked in, two women and a man, in dark windbreakers with FBI in yellow letters across the back. Behind them came a tall, silver-haired man in a gray suit carrying a thick accordion file with PELL COUNTY written on the tab in black marker. Behind him was a sharp-eyed woman in a navy pantsuit with a leather portfolio under her arm.
