TWO POLICE OFFICERS SHAVED MY HEAD—THEN DISCOVERED I WAS THE JUDGE ASSIGNED TO THEIR CASE.

“PIN HER DOWN!”

The officer’s voice hit the concrete walls an instant before his boot struck my ankle.

I was face-down in the basement of a Georgia courthouse, my wrists cuffed behind me, when Derek Voss switched on a pair of electric clippers.

Their ugly buzzing filled the room.

“Please,” I said. “You need to call the marshal’s office.”

“Still giving orders?” Voss asked.

His partner, Shane Pruitt, tightened his hold on my shoulders.

Ten minutes earlier, I had entered through the service corridor because the public elevators were being repaired. I had shown them my judicial credential. Voss had called it fake and torn it in half.

Now Pruitt twisted a fist into my natural hair.

I felt the blades touch my scalp. A warm, horrible vibration passed over my head. Thick curls fell onto the gray floor.

My name is Naomi Ellison. I am a federal judge in the Middle District of Georgia. My mother spent thirty-one years cleaning the very building where these men were trying to strip me of my dignity.

“Tell anybody,” Voss said, “and you won’t make it out of here.”

I was terrified. I kept my eyes open anyway.

Beyond the frosted glass in the door, a shadow shifted. A young woman stood in the narrow gap, one trembling hand holding a phone.

Camille Ross. An intern from the public defender’s office.

A small red dot glowed on her screen.

Recording.

Voss didn’t see her. He was too busy enjoying my silence.

He had no idea that, in less than twenty minutes, he and Pruitt were expected upstairs for a hearing in a federal civil-rights case.

The judge assigned to that case was me.

Then Pruitt stopped pulling my hair.

He stared at the frosted door and whispered, “Derek. Somebody’s there.”