I thought: good.
I thought: let them see.
Behind me, I could hear Reynolds — the officer from the second cruiser, who had arrived with a different quality from the start, whose approach had been slower and more deliberate — moving around my car. The glove compartment opening. Papers. A pause.
“Brentwood,” he said. His voice was careful in the specific way of someone who had found something and was trying to figure out how to introduce it without causing an escalation.
Brentwood did not respond.
Reynolds moved to the back of the car. I heard the trunk release. The metallic sound of it. Then silence — a longer silence this time, with a different weight.
My judicial robes were in the trunk.
I always kept them there, hung on a small portable hook I had attached to the coat anchor. Every morning, the robes went in the trunk when I left the house and came out at the courthouse. It was a logistics solution that had become a habit.
