A patrol car came, blue and red lights washing over the storefronts down the street, coming closer. McCoy talked to her, calm and quiet, while two uniformed officers stood patiently beside their car until Colleen could make herself hang up the phone and step out of the booth.
When the police officers took Colleen to the 15th Precinct Danielle Melnick from the New York Women's Safety Project was there, little and fierce and stunningly pretty. She held Colleen's hand in both of hers while Colleen faltered through a statement. It all sounded so trivial when she said it out loud — the sort of things that happened in every marriage, every marriage where the husband had a hot temper and his wife was a fool who didn't know how to keep him happy.
"Has he ever injured you?" the detective asked.
Colleen shook her head. "Not … not really. He was very sorry about it, afterward. And it was my fault."
"May I?" Danielle asked, and when the detective nodded, "Colleen, how many times was he very sorry, afterward?"
"I'm … I'm not sure."
Danielle's voice was warm and even. "More than once? More than twice?"
Colleen nodded.
"More than three times, this year?"
Colleen closed her eyes. "Yes," she whispered.
"And what sort of things was he very sorry for?"
"He —" She couldn't say it. She lifted the hand that Danielle wasn't holding and touched her cheek. "For the bruise."
"Where he hit you," Danielle said steadily, not a question. "Hard enough to leave a bruise."
Colleen nodded.
"And why did you leave, last night?"
"He, he, he —" She squeezed her eyes shut and held hard to Danielle's hands. "He said it was time for me to go off the Pill."
And that would be it, she knew. They both knew now that she hadn't left because she was scared of Dan. She hadn't left because he'd hurt her. She'd left her husband because he wanted to start a family and because she was such a useless excuse for a wife that the thought of bringing a child into the world, with him, to raise, with him, had filled her with terror instead of joy.
She kept her eyes closed so as not to see the realization and the disgust on the detective's face.
"Do you have enough?" Danielle asked.
"I don't know how well it'll stand up in court, but yeah," the detective said, and Colleen opened her eyes to see him looking at her with kindness, and perhaps with pity, and nothing else.
Danielle smiled at her, and squeezed her hand. "It's not for court," she said. "Come on, Colleen. Let's get you somewhere safe where you can get some sleep."
Somewhere safe turned out to be an anonymous brownstone in an unremarkable street with a dozen women and children inside. Women who were running from men who were worse than Dan, some of them, women who closed around Colleen as she started to cry and took it in turns to hold her hand and pat her shoulder and tell her that she was going to be alright.
Danielle Melnick came back in the evening, with a note in a white envelope. Colleen opened it and read Jack McCoy's familiar handwriting. Adam Schiff has personally signed off on your emergency leave, it said. So don't worry. I need a couple of days to sort things out at the office. Call me at the end of the week.
At the office. Colleen hadn't even thought about it except to know that she could never go back. Work with Dan all day, every day? She couldn't even let him see her, ever again.
Some of it must have showed on her face, because Danielle put a hand on her arm. "It'll be all right, Colleen. Jack is working some angles."
And when the end of the week came and Colleen called McCoy, she found that Danielle had been right.
"Mrs James, you can come in to work any time you feel up to it," McCoy said. "Your husband has taken a job at the Maricopa Country Attorney's Office. In Phoenix. He left this morning. I put him on the plane myself."
All Colleen could think to say was, "Why Phoenix?"
"They had an open position, and the DA owed Adam Schiff a favor."
"But — why? Dan — why did he —?"
"Because he didn't have a lot of options, Mrs James," McCoy said. "Come up to eighth when you get back to work. We can talk then."
