He handed her the Mace. “That’s a present from your uncle Zee. Keep it where you can use it in a hurry if you need to. I’m gonna let you do this interview.”

“You are? How come?”

He shook his head. “Again with the questions. Sometimes, little girl, you gotta just trust me and go with the flow, okay? You’re gonna talk to her because in my experience, sometimes elderly black ladies don’t especially want to open up to white dudes, especially former cops, like me.”

She let the “little girl” reference pass. “How did you find Mrs. Estes?” Drue asked.

“Her name was on the police report. She’s the one who called the ambulance after our client fell.”

“Anything special I should ask her?”

“Ask her what she saw in the 7-Eleven that day. Get everything, down to the tiniest detail. Ask her if it looked like our client was just a law-abiding citizen, minding her own business, when she slipped and hit her head. Ask her why she called nine-one-one. Like that.”

“Anything else?” Drue asked.

“Be sympathetic. Win her over to our side. And don’t screw it up,” Zee said. He opened the truck door and as he got out, carefully pulled his shirt over the holstered gun.

The front door to apartment 8 was open. A television was on inside, and the smell of frying fish wafted into the humid mid-morning heat.

Zee rang the doorbell. Nothing. He pounded on the aluminum frame of the screen door. “Mrs. Estes? Mrs. Estes? Are you home?”

A woman’s voice called out from inside. “Who’s that?”

Zee nodded at Drue.

“Hi, Mrs. Estes,” she called. “Could we please talk to you for a few minutes?”

A heavyset woman walked slowly toward the door. She wore a short-sleeved flowered cotton housecoat, similar to the ones Drue’s grandmother once favored, with thick rolls of flesh extending to her hands. Her head was covered with a pink vinyl shower cap, and she wore backless gold bedroom slippers.

Delores Estes peered at the two strangers from behind thick-lensed glasses. She made no move to unfasten the screen door. “What do y’all want?”

Drue cleared her throat. “Uh, well, my name is Drue Campbell, and this is my associate, Mr. Zee. We’re here about that accident we believe you witnessed at the 7-Eleven. When that woman slipped and hit her head?”

Mrs. Estes took a step backward. “How’d y’all get my name? Who told you where I stay?”

Drue glanced at Zee, who nodded approvingly.

“The woman who fell that day hired our law firm, Campbell, Coxe and Kramner, to represent her,” Drue said. “She was hurt pretty badly, you know. But thank goodness you called nine-one-one and spoke to the police. We got your name from the police report.”