"Naomi," the voice of her administrative assistant, a sharply intelligent young man named Elias, crackled through the speaker. "David Aris is on line one. He says it’s urgent, and he completely ignored my attempt to screen the call."
Naomi pressed the blinking button on the console, a faint smile touching her lips. David had transitioned from her Chief of Staff to the executive director of a prominent regional civil liberties coalition. "David. To what do I owe the pleasure of you terrorizing my assistant?"
"Naomi," David said. His voice lacked any of his usual political banter. It was flat, urgent, and heavy. "I have a situation. And I need you to look at it. Today."
"I am currently drafting a brief for the Fourth Circuit, David. I'm not taking trial work right now."
"You're going to want to take this one," David insisted, the sound of papers shuffling in the background. "His name is Julian Hayes. Twenty years old. Engineering sophomore at the state university. Full scholarship. No criminal record. Not even a parking ticket."
Naomi picked up a silver pen, her legal instincts automatically engaging despite her refusal. "What are the charges?"
"Felony evading, resisting arrest with violence, and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer," David read the list grimly. "He's currently sitting in county holding. The bail is set at a quarter of a million dollars, which his family absolutely cannot post."
Naomi frowned, writing the name Julian Hayes on a legal pad. "That’s a heavy stack of charges for a college kid with a clean jacket. What happened?"
"That is exactly why I am calling you," David said, his voice dropping lower. "Julian tutors high school kids in advanced calculus to send money home to his mother. Yesterday afternoon, he was walking to a client's house in the affluent west side of Oakhaven County. A resident saw him walking down the sidewalk, looking at the house numbers. The resident called dispatch. Suspicious person."
Naomi’s hand stopped moving across the legal pad. The silver pen hovered perfectly still over the yellow paper. The air in her pristine office suddenly felt very cold.
"Two cruisers responded," David continued, the anger vibrating through the phone line. "According to the police report, Julian 'took an aggressive stance and made furtive movements toward his waistband.' The officers moved to detain. Julian panicked. He ran. They chased him into a cul-de-sac, tackled him on the asphalt, and used a Taser to gain compliance. During the struggle, one of the officers suffered a broken nose. Hence the aggravated assault charge."
"Body cameras?" Naomi asked, her voice completely devoid of emotion, operating now in pure, cold clinical assessment.
"Oakhaven County just upgraded their systems last year," David said. "But mysteriously, both responding officers reported that their cameras became dislodged and deactivated during the initial foot pursuit. There is no video of the actual apprehension or the alleged assault. Just their written reports."
Naomi closed her eyes. She saw the flash of Grant Mercer’s face. She felt the ghost of the cold steel around her left wrist. She remembered the sheer, suffocating terror of being at the complete mercy of an armed man making an assumption. Julian Hayes didn't have federal SUVs waiting around the corner. He didn't have a title that would make the officers freeze.
"Who is the arresting officer?" Naomi asked quietly.
"Officer Thomas Mercer," David replied.
Naomi’s eyes snapped open. "Excuse me?"
"Grant Mercer’s younger brother," David confirmed. "He lateral-transferred to Oakhaven County two years ago. Naomi... they are railroading this kid. The local prosecutor is a hardliner running for a judge seat. He’s going to use this kid as a 'tough on crime' campaign poster. Julian is facing fifteen years in a state penitentiary for walking down a sidewalk while Black."
Naomi looked at the half-finished appellate brief on her computer screen. She reached over and clicked 'Save and Close.'
"Have his mother in my office at two o'clock," Naomi commanded. "And David? Send me everything you have on the Oakhaven County prosecutor's office. Every case file, every conviction rate, every dismissed complaint. I want his entire professional life on my desk by noon."
"Consider it done," David said, a fierce satisfaction in his voice.
At exactly two o'clock, the heavy mahogany doors opened again. Elias ushered two women into Naomi’s office. The older woman, Sarah Hayes, looked completely exhausted, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from a sleepless night of weeping. She wore a faded blue uniform from a local commercial cleaning company. Beside her stood Alicia.
Naomi’s daughter had graduated with her master’s in public policy six months prior and had immediately refused three lucrative offers from high-powered consulting firms in Washington. Instead, she had walked into Naomi's new practice and informed her mother that she was the firm's new lead investigative analyst. Naomi hadn't argued.
"Mom," Alicia said softly, guiding Mrs. Hayes to one of the plush leather chairs opposite the desk. "I met Mrs. Hayes downstairs in the lobby. David sent over the preliminary discovery files."
Naomi stood up, walking around her desk to greet the woman directly. She extended her hand. "Mrs. Hayes. I am Naomi Brooks. Please, sit down."
Sarah Hayes took Naomi's hand. Her grip was trembling. "They told me you were the Attorney General. They said you were the only one who could stop this."
"I was the Attorney General," Naomi gently corrected her, taking the seat next to her rather than retreating behind the massive desk. "Now, I am a private defense attorney. Which means I don't have to worry about political optics anymore. Tell me about Julian."
For the next hour, Sarah Hayes painted a picture of a young man that stood in stark, glaring contrast to the violent felon described in the police report. Julian was an honor roll student. He was the captain of his high school debate team. He volunteered at a local community center teaching robotics to middle schoolers. He had been accepted into the university's highly competitive aerospace engineering program. He was terrified of police, having grown up watching the news, and had always been meticulously careful about how he dressed and how he carried himself when he left their working-class neighborhood.