"That bag wasn't in the car," Calvin said. His voice was louder than he intended, sharp with disbelief. "You put it there." Cheney turned his head slowly, studying him with a cold expression. "Say that again and you'll be joining your friend," he said. "You can add obstruction to whatever else I decide you're doing."
For a moment Calvin's anger almost carried him forward. Then Nathaniel spoke from the pavement, his voice quiet enough that Calvin had to strain to hear it. "Calvin, call Simone." Only three words, but they restored the order of the world more effectively than any shouted command could have done.
Calvin stepped back, nodded, and focused on remembering every second.
Cheney hauled Nathaniel to his feet a few minutes later and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. The cuffs were tight, and Nathaniel told him so in the same steady voice he had used throughout the stop. Cheney ignored the request and guided him toward the rear of the patrol car with a grip that made the muscles in Nathaniel's shoulder ache. Beasley opened the door, then stood aside while Cheney pushed the prisoner into the narrow seat behind the protective partition.
"What about the vehicle?" Calvin asked. Cheney turned back toward him. "You can move it, unless you'd like me to find a reason to take you in too." Calvin did not answer. He watched Cheney slide the clear bag into an evidence envelope without making any effort to explain precisely where it had come from, then glanced at Beasley, who had been present for the search and looked deeply uncomfortable.
Nathaniel sat upright as the cruiser pulled away from the shoulder. Through the rear window he watched the Escalade grow smaller until it disappeared around the bend, and he tried to remember everything about the officer's movements. The exact words, the position of the cruiser, the sound of the bag being shaken, the moment Cheney drew the gun. He had spent most of his adult life insisting that after-action accounts begin with what could be established, not with what anyone wished had happened; now he was constructing an account of his own arrest by the same standard.
Cheney drove without speaking for the first several minutes, occasionally checking the rearview mirror. Eventually he said, "Guys like you think a nice car and a little ID mean you can do whatever you want." Nathaniel looked at the reflection of his face in the scratched plexiglass. "I haven't asked for special treatment," he said. Cheney laughed. "That's what they all say once the cuffs are on."
The car turned onto Main Street, passed the shuttered movie theater and the old grocery store where Nathaniel had worked as a teenager, and stopped in front of a low brick police building. The words CARTHAGE POLICE DEPARTMENT were mounted over the entrance in dull metal letters. A faded American flag hung above a set of concrete steps, barely moving in the heavy afternoon air. Nathaniel looked at it for a moment and wondered how many times he had seen that building without knowing what happened inside it.