He is in handcuffs. He has not been told what he is being charged with. He has not been read his rights. And I am standing here asking you respectfully, clearly, and on the record to check the serial number before this goes any further. Phelps did not move.
His hand was still on his belt. His jaw was tight. The muscle along the left side of his neck was pulsing. A small visible tell that Malik noticed and Marcus noticed and neither of them mentioned because noticing things without reacting to them was a skill both of them had learned from different teachers for identical reasons. "Sir, I need you to produce identification."
I will gladly. But first, I need your badge number and your name for my records. The silence again, heavier this time. "My name is Officer Phelps, badge 471." Marcus repeated it quietly, not to Phelps, to himself.
The way a person commits information to memory, precise, sequential, retrievable. A woman across the street had her phone raised. She was recording. She had been recording since Marcus arrived. Her name was not important yet, but her camera was.
Because the footage on that phone combined with the Ring camera on the porch of 3110 Maple Brook Drive in the body cam on Phelps Chest that was running, but would later be discovered to have a 9-minute gap beginning at exactly 3:53 p.m. would become the architecture of everything that followed. Marcus reached slowly into his back pocket. He produced his wallet. He opened it and removed his driver's license, holding it between two fingers, armfully extended, the way a man presents identification when he knows, because he has been trained in environments where this knowledge was not optional, that reaching toward a pocket in the presence of a nervous officer is a gesture that can be misread fatally. Phelps took the license.
He looked at it, looked at Marcus, looked at the at the address, 62 Brierfield Lane. "That is correct. Four streets from here, in this neighborhood where I own my home and where my son rides his bicycle because that is what children do in neighborhoods with sidewalks." Phelps handed the license to Corbin. Corbin looked at it, wrote the address down, and reached for his radio.
Dispatch, unit 7 requesting property check. Bicycle blue trek brand recovered at 3112 Maplebrook. Any stolen property report on file matching this description. The radio crackled. 11 seconds of static.