Mrs. Carter's voice rose above the others. "A man from Vision Heights offered me three times the assessed value last week. I still told him no. The next morning, two officers came to inspect my porch."
Holt turned red. "These accusations are baseless. You are listening to a woman obstructing an active investigation."
"Then show us the evidence," Angela said. "Show us the fugitive you came to find."
The captain leaned close, lowering his voice so that his threat belonged to her alone. "You think exposing a few uncomfortable details changes anything? We can make this street so unpleasant nobody will want to stay."
Angela met his eyes. "A street isn't yours because you can frighten the people living on it."
He straightened at once. "Arrest her. Obstruction and resisting. She's encouraging interference with a police operation."
Griggs dragged her toward a cruiser while the neighbors protested. Angela repeated that she was cooperating, then called to Mrs. Carter to keep every letter and to the Martinez family to save the recordings. Holt ordered everyone to stop filming and threatened to confiscate phones as evidence. But the crowd remained behind the curb, and more than one person announced that copies had already been sent elsewhere.
Griggs pushed Angela into the back seat of the patrol car. She had to twist awkwardly because her hands were secured behind her, and the hard plastic edge of the seat pressed against her bruised shoulder. Through the rear window, she watched Mrs. Carter come down the path toward the street, stopping only when another officer blocked her. The elderly woman placed a hand against her own heart and nodded to Angela as though repeating a promise neither could speak.
Holt walked toward the phone lying on the pavement. He glanced at the illuminated screen, recognized an active call, and pressed his boot down until the glass fractured with a sharp crack. A second movement crushed it further. Angela could no longer hear Marcus, but she imagined he had heard the footsteps and the sudden interruption.
Holt looked through the cruiser window at her. His expression said he considered the broken device a victory. Angela looked back without giving him one.
The car pulled away under a canopy of trees, leaving the waving porch lights and the raised phones behind. Mrs. Carter was the last person Angela could see clearly, standing straight despite her small frame. The sight steadied Angela more than any reassurance could have. Holt had wanted the street to learn what happened to anyone who challenged him; instead, he had given a whole neighborhood a reason to remember every detail.
At the central district station, Angela discovered that the worst part of being arrested was not the cell. It was the constant assumption that her version of events no longer mattered. The woman at intake spoke as though the police report had already settled every disputed fact, and a male officer repeated that she had been disorderly even after she pointed out that nobody had described what she had supposedly done. Her requests for medical attention were entered into a form she could not see.