“Can I make a phone call?” she said tearfully. “Isn’t that my right?”

The detective’s eyes softened slightly. “Who do you want to contact?”

Gabe. He was the only person who would know how to get her out of this mess. He was a lawyer; he had money. But Gabe was dead. And the police thought Nat had killed him.

She would have to call her mom, though the news would devastate her. Allana would not be able to help her daughter financially, would not be able to fly across the country to come to her aid. Her mother had Nat’s young siblings to care for. But there was someone else she could try.

“I’d like to call my dad,” she said.

48

Holding

After Nat spoke to her father, she was “processed.” A fresh-faced male officer recorded her biographical details, swabbed her cheek for DNA, and took her photograph. With her hair dried into a crazy helmet, her puffy face, a scrape on her chin, she looked like a lunatic. Criminally insane. She had to hand over her phone, her apartment keys, even a receipt she’d found in the pocket of her rumpled sweatpants. Her fingernails were cut and collected, her hands tested for gunshot residue before she was digitally fingerprinted. Not once did the young officer look at her like she was a person. She was simply a project.

After what could have been two, three, or four hours—Nat had lost all sense of time—she was cuffed and taken out to a van. It was dark as she and two other females were led to the vehicle that would shuttle them to central booking. The late hour did not bode well for a short stay. They would have to spend the night, would be arraigned the next day, if they were lucky.

Her dad had said he’d come. Despite their distant and strained relationship, he would help her through this, would not let her go down for a murder she didn’t commit.

“Did you do it?” he’d asked her, point-blank.

“No.” But her voice had wobbled, relaying her doubt. Because Gabe was dead. And she couldn’t remember what she had done that night. But still . . . “I could never kill anyone,” she said, as adamantly as she could.

At central booking, Nat and her cohorts were led through a maze of dimly lit, concrete corridors to a windowless holding cell. Outside, it was night, but in there, it was broad daylight. Brighter than broad daylight. Eleven women sat on hard metal benches pressed up against the light green walls. A short partition hid a toilet and a sink that Nat resolved not to use. (The smell emanating from the general area was not inviting.) She and the other recent arrivals were given a sandwich and a carton of milk, and then the heavy bars to their enclosure were slammed shut. A large woman with a tattoo snaking out of her shirt got up from the bench. “Are you going to drink that?”