Halstead stopped short. "Excuse me?"
"Did you query the California Department of Motor Vehicles and the county criminal index?" she asked.
"What systems I check are none of your concern," he barked.
"Which means yes," Kendra concluded smoothly. She turned her gaze past Halstead’s shoulder to the younger deputy, who looked as though he were about to be sick on his boots. "Deputy Miller, pick up your cellular phone, dial the Clerk of the Court for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, and ask which judge sits in Courtroom 4."
Miller’s hand actually twitched toward the personal phone in his trouser pocket.
"Nobody is calling anybody!" Halstead roared, slapping his palm against the hood of the cruiser. "She’s playing you for a rookie, Miller!"
Kendra tilted her head slightly to the left, studying the sergeant’s sweating face in the sunlight.
"How interesting," she murmured.
Halstead glared at her. "What’s interesting?"
"You seem remarkably terrified of making a thirty-second telephone call for a man who claims to be certain I am lying," Kendra said softly.
The blood surged back into Halstead’s face until his temples throbbed beneath his campaign hat. Rather than look at her for another second, he grabbed the black plastic microphone clipped to his left epaulette and keyed the transmit button hard.
"Unit Four-Eighteen to Dispatch," Halstead barked into the mic. "Send me a caged transport unit to the Route One-Sixty checkpoint, northbound half a mile south of the city line. One adult female in custody for one-forty-eight PC, plus a motorcycle tow for an impounded Ducati."
Deputy Miller took a sharp step forward, forgetting all protocol. "Sergeant Halstead—"
"What?!" Halstead wheeled on him.
"Maybe hold off on the tow and the cage wagon for five minutes," Miller pleaded, his voice cracking slightly. "Just let me look up the federal court docket on my phone—"
"Are you questioning my command at an active scene, Deputy?" Halstead demanded, his voice low and menacing.
Miller froze, glancing from his sergeant’s furious face to the woman standing calmly in handcuffs beside the barrier. "No, Sarge, I'm not questioning you, but—"
"But nothing!" Halstead snapped, jabbing a finger toward Kendra. "She’s detained, she’s booked, and the bike goes on the hook!"
Kendra didn't look at Halstead. She kept her dark, clear eyes fixed exclusively on Deputy Miller’s pale face.
"Deputy Miller," Kendra said quietly.
The young man looked at her helplessly. "Ma'am?"
"Look at your watch right now," Kendra said, her voice steady and almost gentle. "And make sure you remember the exact minute on the clock when you realized that this arrest was unlawful and tried to warn your supervisor."
Miller swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing above his collar. "Why?"
"Because before this week is over," Kendra said, "investigators from the Department of Justice and your own Internal Affairs division are going to ask you that exact question under oath, and the difference between your answer and his is going to determine whether you keep your badge."
"That’s enough!" Halstead shouted, stepping bodily between Kendra and the younger deputy to block her line of sight. "One more word out of you and I'll put you in the back of the cruiser with the windows up until the wagon gets here!"
Kendra said nothing more. She didn't need to. She simply stood straight-backed in the heat with her hands locked behind her, watching the clock on the Ducati’s dashboard tick from 10:26 to 10:31.
Seven minutes after Halstead’s radio call, instead of a caged prisoner van, a third sheriff’s vehicle pulled off the highway into the coned lane, tires crunching sharply over the gravel shoulder.
It was a slick-top white Chevrolet Tahoe bearing the gold door decal of a Patrol Watch Commander.
The driver’s door swung open and Lieutenant Teresa Morales stepped out onto the asphalt. She was a trim, sharp-eyed woman in her early forties with silver bars on her collar, her dark hair pinned in a tight regulation bun beneath her hat, and twenty years of internal affairs and patrol supervision etched into the no-nonsense lines around her mouth. She had been monitoring the radio from two miles away near the county line and had come down personally to check on the checkpoint backlog before heading downtown to watch the eleven o'clock federal hearing.
Morales adjusted her Sam Browne belt, walked past the idling cruisers, and stopped ten feet away, her eyes moving instantly from the gleaming red Ducati to the composed Black woman standing in full racing leathers with stainless-steel handcuffs locked around her wrists.
"Talk to me, Sergeant," Morales said crisply. "Why is traffic backed up half a mile to the bridge, and what do we have here?"
Halstead straightened his posture, putting on his smooth, official courtroom voice. "Routine checkpoint inspection, Lieutenant. Subject rolled in on a high-value sportbike fitting the profile of stolen corridor traffic. When instructed to dismount and open the vehicle compartments for a compliance check, the subject refused lawful commands, became argumentative, and obstructed the investigation."