"Keep looking."
He ignored her and pulled the recorder over close in front of him.
She stood and slowly pulled her chair away from the table. She walked over and exchanged her chair for one from the end of the table.
"What are you doing? Sit down. Leave the chairs alone."
"I noticed your chair is much higher than mine. Okay that's better."
He clicked a button on his recorder. "All right, let's begin. Good afternoon, Miss Reid."
She put her handbag on the table beside her, took out her phone and another small device. She moved them around a bit, played with some buttons and then announced, "Okay, I'm ready."
He was grim. "Now what are you doing?"
"I'm recording our conversation."
"This is the official recorder."
"That's fine. Yours is the official one. Mine is nothing special."
"Turn off that recorder. It's not permitted. You don't record anything. Do you know to whom you're speaking?"
"Yes."
"Do you realize I have the full legal and prosecutorial power of the entire state of Florida behind me?"
"Yes."
"That's better. Now, do you know why I ordered you here?"
"I'm not certain, Mr. Moran. My hope was we could discuss some compromise regarding bail for my brother."
He clenched both fists. "Wrong!"
She took his defensive attitude to mean he was still afraid of what the newspaper was going to print. That was good. If he was just going to play the harassment game, then she saw no point in trying to reason with him. One thing she had learned was you must stand up to a bully. "Then I guess I'm here because your case is falling apart, and you have a special pill you want me to swallow."
He came up out of his chair, pointed his finger at her, and commanded, "Turn off that recorder!" She didn't move. Her expression was emotionless. He reached down and punched off his recorder. In a sudden movement, he reached across the table, grabbed her small device and threw it hard against the wall. It shattered and fell to the floor. "That's what you can do with your nothing-special fucking recorder!" He sat back down. "Let me see your phone. Does it record?"
She pushed her phone across the table to him. "Take a look, just a plain-Jane phone, no photos, no tunes, no Internet."
He inspected the phone carefully and slid it back across the table to her. "Now let me see your handbag."
"My handbag is personal property. You've no right to search it...fourth amendment."
"Give me your damn purse!"
She handed it across. He crudely turned it upside down, spilling everything hard out on the table. He shuffled through it. He pushed the mess back across the table, took a deep breath and nodded okay. He clicked his recorder to rewind and then restarted. "Good afternoon, Miss Reid. Thank you for coming. Shall we begin?"