Little Birdie lets go of her mother’s shirt and runs toward Shannon, who cannot embrace her with his hands shackled. Instead, she leans into his leg, and he says, “Hey, Bird,” with a catch in his throat.

Pearl Jenkins has a long but seemingly shallow cut along the left side of her head, dried with blood, caked over with dirt and scabbing.

The judge raps his gavel once. “Detectives,” he says, unaware that Kateri has been placed on leave, “please conduct your investigation outside my courtroom. This has clearly taken a turn.”

“Why’d you come back?” Shannon asks his mother, while Hurt puts cuffs on her and Mirandizes her.

Pearl hangs her head, her teeth clenched, possibly in pain, Kateri thinks, looking at the wounds on her head and hands. Defensive wounds.

“I heard about the arrest,” she says. “I couldn’t.” She stops and coughs, and then straightens her back to look up at her son. “I couldn’t let you go down too.”

The judge, with his eyes on Pearl Jenkins, alive and harmed but here of her own free will, tells Shannon that he accepts his not-guilty plea and will release him on ten thousand dollars’ bond.

Shannon weeps, his mouth open, his eyes raw.

“There’s money in my car,” Pearl says. “From him.” She does not elaborate; she just looks at Shannon.

“Where did you get the car?” Shannon asks.

“From Jane,” Pearl says. “You know him.”

“The car’s a piece of shit,” Birdie says, and Shannon unexpectedly laughs.

“It kept overheating,” Pearl says. “It would just turn off. And we’d have to wait. We didn’t make it to Canada,” she says. “And then I heard the news.”

They take them in separate directions, Pearl off to booking and Shannon to a holding cell, while the cash is extracted from the Buick and his release paperwork is processed.

They send Birdie with Kateri.

She is not assigned to the case any longer, and the chief made it clear that Hurt would close it. There was no plan made for who would take custody of the child if Pearl came back alive, but Kateri tells the judge she should be with her family.

“Her family?” the judge says.

“Her brother,” Kateri says.

The judge frowns, shuffling papers. Nothing is in place. He grants temporary custody and sets a date for family court in ten days.

It’s Hurt who walks Pearl down to an interrogation room. When everyone else is dismissed, Kateri takes Birdie by the hand and meets Mandy Donovan in the hallway.

Kateri stops her. “Please,” she says, and “I’m sorry,” handing Birdie off to her. “Just for a while, here in the building,” she says. “I need to be in that room.”

Hurt doesn’t give Pearl the benefit of the softer room with the stuffed chair and the bookshelves; he takes her straight to Interrogation B, with its metal table and cold cinder blocks. Pearl is quiet, compliant. She flinches when the guards come to take her clothing, when they strip her naked and search, when they shine a light into her mouth and inspect between her legs. She’s covered in stab wounds on her body and defensive slashes on her arms.