The first officer asked them to move away from the truck. Luis told him they couldn't keep the lane blocked much longer. They had another customer, another loading slot, three men who needed to be paid whether they were carrying furniture or standing still.
“I understand,” the officer said.
“I need you to do more than understand.”
He didn't say it angrily. He said it like a person who had used up the time he could afford to be polite.
They moved into the open strip beside the building. Another officer spoke to the man who had filmed Owen and asked how to get a copy. Nina gave her account, stopping when she reached something Luis or Beth had seen better. No one asked for her Threadline credentials. They asked for her name, where she'd been standing, which hand Owen had used, what she'd heard him say.
She showed the sore place at her wrist from the morning. Beth showed her own arm. Both separated the earlier assault from this one. Dani stood nearby holding the keys so hard that one had cut a little mark into her finger.
“I know her,” she told the officer. “She lived here. He doesn't get to come and say he's taking her. I don't care what paperwork he thinks he's got.”
“Did he show you any?”
“No. He showed us his hands.”
The officer wrote that down more plainly than she'd said it. Dani watched the pen, then looked at Beth.
Nina's bag was recovered from beside the car. A few pages had blown beneath the truck and were wet from a puddle; a wheel had caught one corner of the packet when the driver shifted forward. The work phone's case was broken and the screen remained dark. Nina identified it. She didn't try to turn it on for them.
“Company property?”
“Yes. They've already suspended my access. It was in the bag. The papers are my notes of references and what I reviewed.”
She explained where copies survived and which parts had never been copied at all. The officer photographed the condition of the things. Nina felt a foolish embarrassment at the contents of the bag laid out on a clean piece of cardboard: a sweater, a hairbrush with a cracked handle, a packet of mints, her careful notes. She had wanted to look like a person who knew what she was doing.
Beth stood with her own bag closed. No one asked to empty it simply because Owen had wanted it.
When the officers had what they needed for the immediate report, they told the crew which part of the lane they could use. The driver lifted the ramp. The man with the crushed box went to look for tape. Work began in pieces around the people still answering questions.
Luis came to Nina. “Was he looking for you too?”
“I don't know exactly what he wanted.”
“Did he know you?”
“Yes. He'd already offered me a ride when I didn't want one.”
“Next time tell the person you ask to bring something to the car.”
There was no useful correction. She could say they'd arranged to leave if they saw him, that she'd tried, that a bag should have been a simple thing. Luis had been standing in the door when simple stopped being available.
“I should have told you,” she said.
He nodded once. “I don't want my guys surprising somebody who's already got a problem.”
He went back to the truck without waiting for gratitude.
Dani was sitting on the low wall by the entrance now. Beth sat beside her with the bag between her feet. Nina remained near the car, sorting what could go back into her own bag and what needed to remain undisturbed. Her phone rang. Iris.
“Are you coming?”
“Yes. We had a problem.”
“How much of a problem?”
Nina told her enough. Iris said a word Nina rarely heard from her.
“Is Beth okay?”
“She's here. We both are. Police are here.”
“Good. Theo's asking. What do I tell him?”
Nina looked at the two women on the wall. “Ask his mother. I'll bring her the phone.”
Beth took it. She listened, then told Iris she'd call Theo on her own phone in a minute. She looked at Nina as she returned it.
“He doesn't need to hear it from a stranger.”
“No.”
Dani stood. “I have to finish.”
Beth stood too. “What can I do?”
“Nothing. Go.”
“Dani.”
The other woman turned back. “You don't get to stay and make me feel like I have to take care of you. I'm angry.”
“I know.”
“I don't even know if it's fair. I'm still angry.”
Beth's hand moved to her bag, stopped, and fell to her side. “I can take the little kitchen boxes down. While they're loading. If Luis says it's all right. I owe you the time anyway.”
“You don't owe me a shift.”
“Then let me do a piece of it.”
Dani looked toward the truck. Luis was arranging furniture with one of his men. The police car remained at the curb; an officer was still speaking to the person who'd filmed. Everything was inconvenient and public and, for the moment, safe enough to move a few boxes in.
“The ones by the kitchen door,” Dani said. “Not the bedroom.”
Beth put the sealed bag into the car and locked it. She took the keys from Nina only long enough to do that, then gave them back. “You don't have to wait.”
“Theo's waiting for you.”
“I know. Ten minutes. You can tell me when it's ten.”
Nina almost objected. Instead she set an alarm and watched Beth go with Dani into a house that no longer belonged to her.
She could carry one of the boxes. She could go behind them and make herself useful until everyone was too busy to remember what she had failed to say. She stayed by the car instead. There were still questions the officer might need to ask. Someone had to be where she'd said she would be.
Beth came down with a box marked cups. Dani followed with a bag of loose kitchen things. They walked without talking, set them where Luis pointed and returned upstairs. On the second trip Dani said something. Beth replied, and the reply was not about Martin or Owen or Nina.
The chair with the painted dinosaur arm emerged last, carried by two crew members. A green jaw opened along its worn wood. Nina could see the effort in it, the uneven row of white teeth somebody had painted one at a time.
Dani looked at Beth. Beth nodded toward the neighbor who had come out to watch.
“He wants it,” she said.
“You asked?”
“He asked me.”
They helped the men set it down near the neighbor's door. There was no ceremony. It was a chair someone could use. Beth ran her hand once over the painted arm and let it go.
Nina's alarm sounded before Beth reached the car. She stopped it. Beth heard and held up one finger while she went back to Dani.
They spoke quietly. Nina saw Dani shake her head, then nod. They didn't embrace. Beth took a little bundle of cloth from her and put it into the sealed bag, beneath the folder, before closing the top again.
“Ready,” Beth said when she got in.
“What was that?”
“A dish towel. Theo used it for the river.”
Nina nodded and started the car.
At the street she waited for a clear gap. Dani stood beside Luis, describing what still had to go. She didn't wave. Beth raised a hand anyway.
They drove to the district. Beth held the bag at her feet, one hand resting on the closed top.
In the parking area Beth called Theo. He came to the entrance with Iris, saw the bag in his mother's hand and stopped trying to walk slowly.
Nina stayed beside the car while he reached her. Iris looked past them at Nina.
“Your car is still at mine,” she said.
“I know.”
“Good. One thing we haven't lost.”
Nina laughed, unexpectedly. It came out wrong, close to a sob, but Iris smiled as though she had understood the intended sound.
Theo caught the strap of the recovered bag before Beth could lift it again.
“I'll take it.”
“I've got it.”
“Mom.”
She let him have it. He swung it onto one shoulder too quickly and winced when it struck his hip. Beth reached out, then stopped as he shifted it into a position he could carry.
Iris waited until they were a few steps ahead.
“They're asking you to come in,” she told Nina. “Not right this second. When you've finished with whoever's outside.”
“There's always somebody else.”
“Yes. I have to go in a bit.”
Nina looked at her. There were marks at the bridge of her nose where her glasses had been. A folded grocery list stuck out of her pocket, almost rubbed through at the crease.
“I said I'd get back.”
“I know what you said. Tell me when you need a ride for your car. If I can do it, I will.”
“I'll find a way.”
“Fine. Tell me before you find three ways and blame me for not being the fourth.”
Nina stared at her, then laughed again, properly this time. Iris smiled and put the list farther into her pocket.
Inside, Theo had stopped by the wall. The bag was on the floor between him and Beth.
“He was there?” he said.
Beth glanced toward Nina. “Owen. Yes.”
“You said you'd leave.”
“We tried.”
“Then you got the bag.”
“We got it before we saw him.”
He looked down at it. “You could have left it.”
“I wanted my things.”
“It's your bag. All this, for your bag.”
Beth's face changed. She looked at the strap on his shoulder, the camera he had been keeping so close to his body all morning.
“Yes,” she said. “Mine. Not because you needed your films back. I wanted it.”
He crouched beside it and opened the top just far enough to see the magazine and card case. Then he shut it again.
“Are you hurt?”
“I'm all right.”
“Don't say all right. Are you hurt?”
“My arm's sore. They looked at it.”
He stared at her arm as though he could assess it through the sleeve. Beth turned a little so the place Owen had grabbed was away from him.
“Did they get him?”
“Not there. They know who he is. Other people saw.”
Theo pulled the bag upright. “You keep saying people know.”
Beth sat in the chair behind her. For once she didn't try to stay on her feet while he was angry. He stood beside her with the bag, looked at Nina and then at Iris, and finally sat too.
Iris went to ask which officer was ready for them. Nina stayed a few paces away. Beth put her hand on the closed bag. Theo covered it with his for a moment and then moved his hand to the strap.
When they were called, he carried it in himself.