Two college-aged women stood near the corner. One was already narrating quietly into her phone's camera, her voice low but her eyes sharp.
Clark did not look at any of them. That was the tell. A man with nothing to hide looks around. A man performing authority for its own sake keeps his eyes on his subject because the subject is the point. The audience is beneath acknowledgment.
He tapped the roof of the car once with two fingers. "Step out of the vehicle."
Richard's hands stayed on the wheel. His voice stayed even. "Am I being detained, sir?"
"I asked you to step out."
"I understand that. Am I being detained, or am I free to go?"
It was a legal question, calmly asked. The kind of question that required a legal answer. Clark's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, the micro-expression of a man who had just been handed a problem he had not anticipated.
Not a combative driver. Not a frightened one. An informed one. Somehow, that seemed worse.
"You're being asked to cooperate with a lawful traffic stop."
"I am cooperating, sir. My hands are on the wheel. I've provided my documents. I'm asking a straightforward question."
On the sidewalk, the woman in the yellow blazer exhaled audibly. Someone muttered something that was not quite loud enough to make out but carried the unmistakable tone of agreement.
Clark straightened. He looked at the license in his hand for the first time, really looked at it, and then looked back at Richard with an expression that had curdled past frustration into something uglier. It was the look of a man who realized the script was not going the way he wrote it and decided the answer was to press harder rather than reconsider.
"You think this is funny?"
"No, sir."
"You think because you've got an audience, you can—"
"Officer."
The voice came from the back seat. Quiet. Measured. Not loud, but with a quality that cut cleanly through the afternoon noise, the way certain voices do, voices accustomed to being heard in rooms where decisions get made.
Clark stopped. He turned his head toward the rear window for the first time since approaching the car.