People were shouting now, some demanding to know why a woman who had been standing still was being arrested, others simply calling out for the officers to identify themselves. Nia caught sight of the teenager under the pharmacy awning, still recording with both hands. She forced herself to remember the girl's location: left corner, blue backpack, yellow phone case. Perhaps a defense attorney would need that detail later. Perhaps she would.
“You can tell everybody your story at the station,” Halverson said, marching her toward the cruiser.
“It isn't a story,” Nia answered. “It's what happened.”
He pushed her into the back seat with a false warning to watch her head. The car door closed against the noise of the street. Through the tinted glass she saw someone bend to pick up her fallen handbag, then hesitate as the second officer told them to leave it alone. Halverson stood outside talking with his colleague, grinning broadly. To anyone passing by, he looked like a policeman pleased to have completed an ordinary arrest.
Inside the car, Nia sat upright and felt the watchband bite into her wrist. She imagined her father in his blue mechanic's shirt asking what she could prove rather than what she felt. She had a name, a badge, a time, the shifting explanation for the stop, two patrol cars, and the possibility of witnesses with recordings. She had pain in her shoulder and a certainty about the bag that made her feel almost sick.
Then she had a thought that frightened her more than the arrest itself. If a man could do this to a federal judge in daylight, with twenty people watching, how often had he done it to somebody who could not afford to make anyone listen?
The ride to the detention center took seventeen minutes. Nia counted them using the dashboard clock she could see between the front seats, not because the number would necessarily help her, but because counting gave her something solid to hold. Halverson talked into his radio with an easy confidence that made her stomach turn. He described her as combative, said she had attempted to conceal suspected narcotics, and added that she had invoked a judicial position in an apparent effort to avoid arrest.
Every sentence reversed what had happened. Nia watched the back of his head and recognized the peculiar boldness of a man who assumed the official record would automatically become the truth. She had seen that assumption destroy lives in court. The testimony was always delivered in a confident voice, the arrest narrative typed in capitalized categories, the irregular details softened until they fit the familiar shape of procedure. This time she was hearing the story manufactured before the report had even been written.
“Please note,” she said, “that I have requested a supervisor twice and that you have refused to identify the second officer.”
Halverson glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “You keep talking and I'll note that too.”
She fell silent. Not because she agreed with him, but because she understood the difference between preserving information and offering a hostile man more words to distort. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth to stop herself from speaking again. The cuffs were tight, her hands beginning to tingle, and the right side of her shoulder throbbed each time the cruiser turned.