Malcolm remained still. “Am I under arrest?”
“No. Investigative detention.”
“Then I will comply.”
He turned.
Cole placed him in handcuffs.
Across the driveway, Evelyn’s posture changed instantly. The tears stopped almost as quickly as they had begun. She folded her arms and watched. Malcolm felt the cuffs close around his wrists and heard a small sound from Marisol Vega’s house. She had come outside and was walking toward them with one hand raised.
“Stop.”
Everyone turned.
Marisol moved faster than anyone expected from a sixty-eight-year-old woman with arthritis. “He did not hit her.”
Evelyn glared. “You weren’t here.”
“I have a camera.”
That changed the street.
Brooks stepped toward her. “What camera?”
“My doorbell. It sees the sidewalk.”
Evelyn’s face lost color.
Marisol continued. “Malcolm came from my house. He helped me move the blue planter. The camera should have him from when he left until maybe halfway past Evelyn’s house.”
Brooks looked toward the geometry. Marisol’s home stood diagonally across from Evelyn’s, with a wide-angle doorbell camera aimed partly down the street. It might not show the entire driveway, but it would likely show the public sidewalk.
Evelyn spoke quickly. “A doorbell camera that far away won’t show anything.”
Brooks asked Marisol, “Can you access the footage?”
“Yes.”
“Please don’t delete or alter anything.”
“I don’t know how to alter anything.”
For the first time that afternoon, Malcolm almost smiled.
Cole left the cuffs on.
Malcolm noticed that too.
Marisol returned with her phone. Brooks stood beside her while she opened the application. It took nearly two minutes because Marisol forgot the password, entered it incorrectly twice, then became angry at the phone as though it had personally betrayed her. Evelyn filled the delay with complaints. She said she felt unsafe. She said Malcolm had “always had an attitude.” She said the neighborhood had gone downhill. Each sentence seemed to make Brooks’s expression flatter.
Finally the video loaded.
The camera angle was better than expected.
Malcolm appeared walking from Marisol’s driveway along the sidewalk, his hands empty. Evelyn came from her flower bed toward him. No audio at first because the clip began before motion activation captured sound fully, but the picture was clear. Malcolm stopped on the sidewalk. Evelyn stepped within several feet of him. They spoke. Malcolm never crossed into her flower bed.
Then the audio became audible.
“You people always think you can do whatever you want.”
Malcolm’s recorded voice answered, “What exactly do you mean by people like me?”
Brooks looked toward Evelyn.
Evelyn stared at the phone.
On video, she glanced across the street.
Then something extraordinary happened.
She took one quick step backward.
