"Hands behind your head," Cheney shouted. "You move, I shoot." Nathaniel obeyed. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Calvin standing beside the front fender with both hands raised, his face tense and almost colorless. Beasley remained several feet away, looking from the gun to Nathaniel and back again, as though he had just realized that the scene he had entered could become a tragedy in a single second.
The road beneath Nathaniel's cheek was rough, and he could feel small stones against his skin. A thought came to him with terrible clarity: his mother might be arranging plates for a birthday dinner while her son lay on the road a few miles away, hoping that an officer would not mistake a breath for a threat. He thought about Thomas Langford, about the old rules his father had given him, and about how confidently he had once believed those rules belonged to the past. He stayed still.
"Brett," Beasley said from somewhere above him, "his hands are where you asked." Cheney snapped at him to keep his eyes on the other man. The gun remained pointed down for another few seconds before Cheney finally returned it to his holster. Nathaniel heard the officer's boots scrape against the pavement as he stepped toward the Escalade, leaving Nathaniel face down on the road.
Calvin looked at the small dash camera fixed behind the rearview mirror. It had been recording their journey since the driveway in North Carolina, saving the view through the windshield and sound from inside the cabin. He did not know how much of the encounter its microphone had captured after both doors were opened. He did know that the memory card would need to be protected if the events on this road ever became a question of one person's word against another's.
He reached toward the phone in his pocket slowly enough that Beasley could see the movement. "I'm starting an audio recording," Calvin said, without trying to hide it. Beasley looked at Cheney, then back at Calvin, and said nothing. From beneath the church roof, another camera continued to watch the shoulder and the road. None of them knew that the congregation had installed it for reasons painfully close to what was happening now.
Cheney entered the Escalade without consent, pulling open doors, lifting floor mats, and moving items from the center console. Nathaniel could hear the dull thump of the glove compartment opening and the sharp sound of something being dropped onto the gravel. Every few seconds Cheney muttered about expensive vehicles and people who thought money placed them above the law. Calvin watched with a tightening sense of dread, knowing there was nothing in the car that could justify this search, yet fearing the officer was already committed to producing a justification.
Then Cheney stepped back into view with a small clear plastic bag pinched between his fingers. Inside was a crumbled green substance. He held it up where the other officer could see it and smiled. "Well, look what I found," he said. "Right under the passenger seat."