Francis recognized the signs of delayed shock. On the hospital floor, Regina could organize a trauma team around a patient without allowing her hands to shake. But a crisis involving somebody she loved offered none of the emotional distance of professional work. He approached carefully and touched her shoulder, and she turned into his arms as though holding herself together had finally become too much work.
"I thought he was going to do it," she whispered. "I thought I was going to watch him hurt you." Francis held her close. "I know." She pulled back and looked at him with furious, frightened eyes.
"You knew that officer, didn't you?" Francis nodded and told her about the confrontation at the grocery store. She had heard a shorter version three weeks earlier, when he returned home irritated but unwilling to make a complaint over what he then considered a rude exchange. Now she wanted every detail, and he gave them to her without minimizing anything.
Regina listened with her hands wrapped around a mug she had not filled. "So he remembered you correcting him in front of an older woman," she said, "and he came to our house with three other officers." Francis carefully distinguished what he knew from what he inferred. He knew Mason mentioned the parking lot before drawing the encounter to its conclusion.
He knew the stated complaint was a suspicious person, but he had not heard the original dispatch information. He knew he had complied with instructions to remain still and show his hands. He did not yet know who made the initial call, whether one had actually been made, or what the other officers understood about the situation when they arrived.
"You're doing it," Regina said after a moment. Francis looked at her. "Doing what?" She managed a small, strained smile. "The case voice.
You're lining up facts as if they're boxes on a shelf." He sat beside her at the table. "It helps me think." Regina nodded.
"I know. It scares me a little when you do it about yourself." That stopped him, because he realized he had been speaking about the event as though it belonged to a stranger. The fear had not caught up with him yet, and he suspected it would when the house was quiet.
By dinner, the first neighborhood video had been posted online. Regina's phone buzzed repeatedly as friends forwarded links and asked whether they were safe. Caleb's recording showed the confrontation from across the street, beginning after the backup units arrived.
One clip ended abruptly when an adult called him away from the curb. Another came from Mrs. Alden's porch, its audio partly obscured by traffic. The recordings differed in quality, but all captured officers surrounding Francis while he remained near the garage.