Inside the cruiser, she heard Copeland dictating his report to himself while he wrote. He described her as an unidentified female who had refused lawful commands and raised a metal weapon toward an officer. He added that Fowler had recovered a handgun beneath the driver's seat and that the weapon had been accessible to her before she was restrained. Monica corrected the record from behind the partition, telling him that she had never turned and that his body camera should show the wrench lying beneath her palm. Copeland glanced into the rearview mirror and said, "I write the report, lady. You don't."
Fowler signed the witness section on the clipboard after a single glance at the page. Monica watched the motion, noting that he did not read the section he had just certified. The cruiser pulled away from Larkspur Bend, leaving Ralph alone in the road with his phone in his hand. She caught one last glimpse of her open garage and the empty place where the sedan had stood. Then the neighborhood disappeared behind a curve, and the route toward the Silver Pines station began.
At the station's rear entrance, Copeland checked his watch and told Fowler his shift had ended eight minutes earlier. He explained that he had a boat waiting at the lake and a cooler full of ice, then handed over the clipboard without accompanying Monica inside. She watched him cross the parking lot to a pickup equipped with fishing-rod racks, laughing at something on his phone before turning it off. The casualness of his departure troubled her almost as much as his behavior in the street. He had treated the detention as an ordinary errand completed before lunch.
Fowler escorted her through a narrow hallway to a booking desk where a woman in her fifties sat behind a computer with reading glasses hanging from a cord. Her mug read WORLD'S OKAYEST GRANDMA, and her nameplate said EDY. She looked from the report to Monica and frowned at the words IDENTITY UNKNOWN. "Honey," she said, "do you have a name, or are we supposed to call you 'unidentified' all afternoon?" Monica replied that she had a name and that no one had let her give it.
"Monica Shepard," she said clearly. "I can also provide a badge number and a federal duty telephone number to verify my employment." Edy uncapped a pen and asked what kind of federal office she meant. "The United States Marshals Service, District of Colorado," Monica answered, then recited the information from memory. When Edy asked her to repeat the number, Monica did so at the same unhurried pace with which she had read the serial number in the street.
Edy's eyebrows rose when she finished writing. She glanced at the report again, at the description of an unidentified woman, and then at the injured knee beneath Monica's torn trousers. "You understand I've got to check this?" she asked. Monica told her she would be disappointed if she didn't. Edy gave a small, uncertain laugh and picked up the telephone.