Cross’s voice sharpened.
“You’re refusing to cooperate.”
“I have done everything you asked except agree that your suspicion makes sense.”
“Same thing.”
“No.”
James’s answer was immediate.
“Those are not the same thing.”
The woman with the SUV had stopped loading groceries.
Her name was Teresa Collins.
She was forty-one, an accountant, mother of two, and had no intention of involving herself in police business when she first noticed the interaction.
Then she heard James say he had just left the store.
She had seen him.
He had been two customers ahead of her at checkout.
She had watched him place groceries into reusable bags.
Now an officer was treating him like a vehicle burglar.
Teresa pulled out her phone.
Not dramatically.
She simply began recording from beside her SUV.
An older white man named Charles Warren did the same a minute later.
Charles had been returning his shopping cart.
He stopped when he heard Cross say the credentials might be fake.
James noticed both witnesses.
He did not acknowledge them.
Cross did.
“Folks, keep moving.”
Teresa answered.
“I’m not interfering.”
“I said keep moving.”
“I’m standing by my car.”
Cross pointed.
“This is an active investigation.”
James almost laughed.
He did not.
“Of what?”
Cross turned back toward him.
“That attitude right there is exactly the problem.”
“No.”
James’s voice remained low.
“The problem is that you have reached a conclusion and every fact that contradicts it becomes attitude.”
The second patrol car arrived.
Officer Malik Benton stepped out.
He was thirty-one, six years on the department, and Cross had once trained him during a temporary field assignment.
Benton approached carefully.
“What’ve we got?”
Cross spoke first.
“Possible vehicle tampering. Subject claims car is his. Says he’s federal.”
James pointed toward the hood.
“My Department of Justice credentials are sitting right there because Officer Cross says they might be fake.”
Benton looked at them.
Then at James.
Then at the grocery bags.
His expression changed.
“Cross, did you run the plate?”
Cross paused.
“Not yet.”
Benton looked at him.
“You blocked him in before running the plate?”
“I had a call.”
Benton walked back to his patrol vehicle.
Thirty seconds later, he returned.
“BMW comes back to James Edward Mitchell.”
He glanced at James.
“Address on registration is less than a mile from here.”
James looked at Cross.
Cross looked toward the store.
“I still need to determine whether he was checking other cars.”
Benton’s face tightened.
“What did you see?”
“I arrived and he was at the BMW.”
“Doing what?”
Cross did not answer immediately.
James answered for him.
“Putting groceries in the trunk.”
Cross turned.
“I didn’t ask you.”
Benton looked uncomfortable.
Then Sergeant Denise Harmon’s SUV entered the lot.
The moment she saw Cross standing beside a Black man and an expensive car, something in her chest sank.
She knew his history.